Tag: 221117

Holiday tradition

Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s big show returns

Few acts usher in the holiday season quite like Trans-Siberian Orchestra, with its Christmas cocktail of classic rock, classical music and theatrical flourish topped with lasers and smoke bombs. Fans set their calendars by them, gathering families to take in a show that gets bigger and better each year.

For their stop in Manchester on the day after Thanksgiving, TSO will reprise the rock opera that put them on the map, The Ghosts of Christmas Eve. Originally a 1999 television special, it offers traditional songs such as “O Come All Ye Faithful” and originals including “Music Box Blues” and “Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24),” the latter the template for the massive band that’s captivated audiences for over 25 years.

Recent times have been challenging. In 2017, visionary founder Paul O’Neill died, but at the behest of his widow Desi and other family members TSO carried on. Three years later, the pandemic sidelined them from playing live; instead they did a virtual pay per view show that was a far cry from their epic arena firepower.

“It was as strange for the band members as it was for the fans,” drummer Jeff Plate said of the lost year in a recent phone interview. Returning to the stage in 2021, he had “a whole new appreciation for wow, we are so lucky to do what we do. But we were also in the bubble; we were anxious, there was this anxiety … I was so relieved when we got done.”

Breathing easier this time around, the group is focused on keeping O’Neill’s vision going, a task that in the days after his death seemed overwhelming.

“When we lost Paul, I’ll be honest with you,” Plate recalled, “there was a moment when I sat down on the couch with my wife and said, ‘maybe that’s it’ … none of us were really sure what was going to happen.”

However, it soon became clear that continuing was “exactly what Paul would want us to do … he had said many times, ‘It’s going to outlive us all, we’re going to pass this on from generation to generation.’ The reality is, TSO has become a tradition. That’s a pretty heavy statement, but it’s true…. Some people can’t even function until they see TSO to get their holidays going.”

Moving forward was also helped by the fact that TSO is a well-oiled touring machine, with separate East and West Coast runs. Each has its own cast, crew and semi-truck fleet.

“We’ve been operating like that since the year 2000,” Plate said. “Losing Paul was huge, but everybody knew the job at hand and just how much more focused we needed to be…. There’s no way to make these tours as good as they are, and as successful as they are, without that kind of commitment.”

Plate first worked with O’Neill in Savatage, the band that spawned TSO, on their 1995 album Dead Winter Dead. “It was a really interesting time, because the band had changed so much and Paul’s gears were turning all the time,” Plate recalled. At first, no one knew what to make of the “Carol of the Bells” meets Emerson, Lake & Palmer track “Sarajevo,” which would reappear on the first TSO album, Christmas Eve and Other Stories.

“We were all questioning, what was Paul thinking, putting this song on this record, but there was no denying how great the final version was,” Plate said. “To see that song take off in a completely different direction and all of a sudden become this huge hit, it was like, you know, Paul could see down the road further than the rest of us.”

Once again, the upcoming show will be divided into two acts, starting with Ghosts of Christmas Eve stitched together with narration, followed by a greatest hits segment. “This is a fan favorite, and it’s a band favorite too,” Plate said, “one of my favorite shows to play. It’s high energy, with a really good vibe to the whole thing.”

As the interview ended, Plate made sure to make a note of another TSO tradition: donating a dollar from every ticket sold to a local charity. It came with another nod to their founder’s family. “Over $16 million we’ve donated across the country all these years,” he said. “It could have easily gone away when we lost Paul, but his wife and daughter really stepped up. … We can’t thank Paul enough for everything that he’s done, but his family has also been very, very critical to all that too.”

Trans-Siberian Orchestra – The Ghosts of Christmas Eve
When: Friday, Nov. 25, 3 and 7:30 p.m.
Where: SNHU Arena, 555 Elm St., Manchester
More: $52.50 to $102.50 at snhuarena.com

Featured photo: Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 22/11/17

Local music news & events

• Listen & learn: Given the recent focus on her career and a summer return to performing, The History of Joni Mitchell is a timely celebration hosted by the guitar/vocal duo of Chris Albertson and Cait Murphy. They’ll discuss her growth as an artist, and the performers Mitchell influenced, while playing selections from her debut Song to a Seagull through Shine, her final record, released in 2007. Thursday, Nov. 17, 7 p.m., Leach Library, 276 Mammoth Road, Londonderry. See facebook.com/TheChrisandCait.

• Funny Friday: A triple bill of jokesters hold forth at Tupelo Night of Comedy, led by veteran comic Kenny Rogerson, who began in Chicago before moving to Boston during the burgeoning early 1980s comedy scene. He later appeared in Fever Pitch and Something About Mary. He’s joined by Ryan Gartley, who was goaded by friends on a Portsmouth booze cruise into doing standup over two decades ago, and local favorite Dave Decker. Friday, Nov. 18, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $22 at tupelohall.com.

• Power pop: Making the case for an oft-neglected musical decade, Donaher delivers songs clearly inspired by ’90s bands like Weezer, Nirvana and Jellyfish. Their newest record, Gravity And The Stars Above, released earlier this year, is packed with gems like “Lights Out,” a hook-tastic breakup song brimming with pain, and the equally happy/sad “Sleepless in New England.” Lovewell and Cool Parents round out a rocking trifecta. Saturday, Nov. 19, 9 p.m., Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester, shaskeenirishpub.com..

• Local lights: Though officially disbanded, JamAntics continues to perform, and the JamAnnual GetDown is becoming a regular thing. This year’s celebration welcomes another area fixture, Supernothing. Being in the band, which formed in the mid-2000s and helped jump-start the Concord music scene, is like riding a bicycle; however long its five members are apart, at the moment they plug in and play, their reliable groove reappears.. Saturday, Nov. 19, 8 p.m., Bank of NH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, tickets $15 to $25 at ccanh.com.

• Get chronic: Mississippi by way of the West Coast rapper Afroman rose to fame on his early millennium hits “Because I Got High” and “Crazy Rap,” earning a Grammy nomination in 2002. He’s appearing at a downtown bar/restaurant just in time to roll out a few selections from his unconventional mid-2000s holiday disc A Colt 45 Christmas, which has bangers such as “O Chronic Tree” and “Afroman Is Coming To Town.” Sunday, Nov. 20, 8 p.m., The Goat, 50 Old Granite St., Manchester, $29.50 at ticketmaster.com.

At the Sofaplex 22/11/17

Sassy girls in olden times edition

Rosaline (PG-13)

Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced.

Before there was Romeo and Juliet, there was Romeo and Rosaline — also a Capulet who was wooed by Montague Romeo in secret. An off-screen character who just rates a mention in the Shakespeare play, Rosaline (Dever), here the center of the story, is so certain of her True Love for Romeo (Kyle Allen) that she makes an extra effort to scare off all the potential husbands brought to her by her weary father (Bradley Whitford), who really just wants her to pick someone and leave the nest already. But Rosaline, when she’s not dreaming of Romeo, dreams of being a cartographer and not so much of being some thrice-married widower’s most recent wife. Rosaline is particularly peeved when one of these forced dates — with actual handsome young man Dario (Sean Teale) — makes her late to the masquerade ball where she was planning to meet up with Romeo.

Rosaline writes letter after letter to apologize for missing him but later learns that he has been spending all of his time writing letters to her young cousin, Juliet (Merced). Rosaline tries to convince Juliet to enjoy the single life and forget about this sweet-talking phony Romeo but, with a kind of Disney princess sweetness, Juliet can’t quit the equally besotted Romeo.

Rosaline is a fun bit of romantic comedy using the familiar story to (lightly) examine romantic heartbreak and the dearth of occupation choices for women in Renaissance-era Italy. Dever is a treat as Verona’s Daria, who doesn’t like to admit when she’s wrong, and Merced does a good job of walking the line between dopily innocent and smarter than people give her credit for. Allen makes his Romeo a goofy but good-natured dude who could be plausibly appealing to two very different kinds of girls. B Available on Hulu

Catherine Called Birdy (PG-13)

Bella Ramsey, Andrew Scott.

Or, if you prefer, Game of Thrones’ little badass Lady Lyanna Mormount playing the daughter of Fleabag’s hot priest/Sherlock’s Moriarty. In this Lena Dunham-written and -directed movie (based on the book by Karen Cushman), Birdy (Ramsey), as Catherine, the oldest daughter of a noble but not terribly flush family in 1290 England, is called, gets her period and finds out that she’s the most valuable asset her spendy father Lord Rollo (Scott) has. Thus is Birdy paraded in front of a series of men, whom she is able to scare off by pretending to be various kinds of unhinged — or just demonstrating that she’s mouthy and willful, which, this being medieval times, is enough to brand a woman unmarriable. But Rollo keeps on — he’s in need of the cash a dowry will bring, what with Birdy’s mother Lady Aislinn’s (Billie Piper) regular (if sadly unsuccessful) pregnancies, his son Robert’s (Dean-Charles Chapman) own marriage hopes and the family manor to run. But Birdy wants to stay at her family home with her nurse (Lesley Sharp), her childhood buddy Perkin (Michael Woolfitt), fellow reluctant-marriage-market-participant Aelis (Isis Hainsworth) and her mother’s brother, Uncle George (Joe Alwyn), a former soldier in the crusades whom Birdy girlishly worships. She sees him as a hero and wishes to either be him or marry him — oh if only he were her cousin and not her uncle, she says with “I know that boy band singer and I would be perfect together” breathlessness.

Catherine Called Birdy sort of straddles the line between being a thoroughly modern story with a medieval setting and being a peek at life in an earlier time. Birdy is sassy and opinionated and often scored with a solid line-up of pop songs that would make Sofia Coppola proud. But she also has only the life options of a 1290s girl. Even as she scares off some suitors, it’s clear that eventually she will have to let one of them catch her and that the rough stuff of childbirth and mothering is in her future, like it or not.

Watching Birdy grow up a little, going from a clearly loved and indulged child to someone who comes to understand more of the balance of bitter and sweet in life, is surprisingly affecting. Beneath all the veils and period dress, we get a lot of frustrated parents trying to help their kids find their way and very teen-like kids trying to balance duty and their own desires. Ramsey does this well, making for a compelling not-quite-kid but not-yet-adult woman coming to terms with society’s limits and how and when she can push them. It’s a sweet story, told with a winning sense of humor. B+ Available on Amazon Prime Video.

The Princess (R)

Joey King, Dominic Cooper.

A princess in unspecified olden times wakes up to find that the jerk (Cooper) her father the king (Ed Stoppard) wanted her to marry has seized the castle and is holding the king, the queen (Alex Reid) and the princess’ younger sister (Katelyn Rose Downey) hostage. She left him at the altar, correctly sensing his tyrannical ways, but now he’s going to force a marriage like it or not. The princess is chained and locked in a tower until the ceremony; good thing her warrior buddy Linh (Veronica Ngo) has spent years teaching her to sword fight with the best of them.

Look, this ain’t Shakespeare or even a riff on a Shakespeare tertiary character, but The Princess is real punchy kicky swashbuckle-y fun. It’s an hour and 34 minutes long and could probably lose another 20 minutes, much in the manner that the princess loses bits of her fancy wedding dress with each fight, becoming more badass with each encounter. We get some training flashbacks, some flashbacks to “girl as a ruler? Preposterous!” from the father-king. But mostly it’s just the princess, kicking and stabbing as she grows more determined to save her family and friends. B Available on Hulu.

The School for Good and Evil (PG-13)

Sofia Wylie, Sophia Anne Caruso.

Besties find themselves at a boarding school for the future heroes and villains of one-day fairy tales in this Harry Potter-y, The Descendants-ish warmed over mash with a strangely good cast.

Behind the scenes: director Paul Feig. In front of the camera: Michelle Yeoh, Rachel Bloom, Rob Delaney and Patti freaking LuPone, all in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bit parts, as well as Kerry Washington and Charlize Theron as the leaders of the Good and Evil schools respectively and then Laurence Fishburne as the one school headmaster to rule them all. How? Why? And if you have them, why not give them something interesting to do?

Teenage-y Sophie (Caruso), living in a crummy ye olden days village filled with small-minded ye olden days peasants, is a crackerjack dress designer who dreams of becoming a fairy tale princess and has the talking-to-squirrels skills to back up that dream. Her best friend Agatha (Wylie) is the daughter of the town witch and shunned as a witch herself. When Sophie is dragged off to the School for Good and Evil after making enrollment there her fondest wish-upon-a-wishing-tree wish, Agatha follows her in hopes of keeping her friend safe. They’re dumped off in the school yards — but are they the right school yards? The golden-haired princess-wannabe Sophie finds herself at the School for Evil, where the students are called Nevers. Agatha is in the taffeta nightmare that is the School for Good, where the Evers might be future heroes and princesses but they are currently snotty jerks. Not that the goths at Evil are any better. Why are all these fairy tale folk so awful? Can Agatha save Sophie? Did this movie need to be two and a half hours?

To answer the first and last of those questions: because this is basically high school, and not at all. “People are not all good or all bad” is the message of this movie, but rather than examine this the movie mostly just states it over and over. There are not-bad ideas here about not letting yourself believe whatever arbitrary labels your school or peer group puts on you, but the movie never goes more than half an inch deep. It doesn’t even dig deep enough to be the sort of silly fun that something with Theron as a vampy villain should be. C Available on Netflix.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (PG-13)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (PG-13)

Marvel says goodbye to Chadwick Boseman, his T’Challa and his version of Black Panther while expanding the ideas of Wakanda and its place in the world in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, a lovely, complex entry in the more thoughtful side of the MCU.

The movie opens on a desperate Shuri (Letitia Wright), sister to King T’Challa and Wakanda’s scientific genius, trying to save an off-screen T’Challa who is dying from illness. His death seems to not only shake her emotionally but sever some connection to her culture and family’s sense of spirituality. She sinks into extreme rationality and guilt about not being able to cure her brother.

We jump forward a year, when Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) has become Wakanda’s leader. With T’Challa dead and the country’s Black Panther protector gone (the flowers that make new Black Panthers were destroyed by Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger in the first movie), Ramonda has to fight off international attempts to obtain the country’s all-powerful element, vibranium. At the United Nations, Ramonda endures the insincere disappointment by Western countries who want Wakanda to willingly share (or just give up) their vibranium — while at the same time those countries try to steal vibranium via military raids.

Plan B when Wakanda’s Dora Milaje (the country’s army of female warriors) prove to be more than equal to fighting off those raids is for Western nations to find their own vibranium elsewhere. A machine designed by Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), the Shuri-level genius who is still a college student in Boston, looks for vibranium in the oceans — and finds it in the Atlantic. But much like other things “discovered” by Western nations, this vibranium has been long claimed by another nation.

K’uk’ulkan, also called Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), is the king of a people who live in Talokan, a nation under the ocean. Once living in Central America, the Talokanian ancestors escaped the colonizing Spanish and their diseases with the help of a plant that, similar to the flower Wakanda used for Black Panthers, offered extraordinary strength and an ability to live under the water. The people moved into the sea where their vibranium-dependent city has kept them safe for centuries. But now that the wider world knows about vibranium and its potential, Talokan is at risk and Namor blames Wakanda and T’Challa’s push for openness.

I like how this movie can be both about T’Challa and the grief over his (and Boseman’s) loss and about the unintended consequences of his response to Killmonger’s argument that the prosperous and powerful Wakanda owes something to the oppressed elsewhere in the world. Like Wakanda before the first movie, Talokan has chosen to hide its power from the rest of the world in response to colonialism and theft of resources. But Wakanda’s openness has made Talokan vulnerable. Does this make them natural allies, natural enemies or something else? I rewatched a bit of 2018’s Black Panther and that movie has a well-defined purpose and clarity of mission that this movie doesn’t. But this movie’s murkiness largely works, as some of the questions here are just messier and the overall story feels more contemplative.

Of course, we get great performances all the way around — including from returning players Danai Gueria, as the badass Dora Milaje general; Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia, who has been working as a school headmistress in Haiti, and Winston Duke as M’Baku, the leader of a Wakandan tribe. Bassett and Wright do an excellent job of giving us the weight of grief — a weight they each carry in a different way. Mejía offers a nuanced Namor — not a villain but not a saint either. The movie’s actual villains — represented by someone who I guess is one of the Disney+ Marvel TV show characters (it’s hard to keep up) — are the predatory U.S. and European powers and their plans for vibranium, which don’t seem great based on the CIA director’s near cackled “I dream about it,” a response to the question of what the U.S. would do if it had vibranium.

Namor isn’t quite the electrifying antagonist Killmonger was and, though cool, the watery Mesoamerican wonderland of Talokan isn’t quite as thrilling as the Afro-futurism of Wakanda (as with Aquaman’s Atlantis in the DC universe, making bright and majestic-looking stuff under water is just tough). And, despite its two-hour-and-41-minute runtime, there is a slight “sudden stop” quality to the movie’s final conflict (perhaps because of the nature of “the true villain is colonialism”). Wakanda Forever is nevertheless a deeply touching movie that holds your attention with enough Dora Milaje fighting action to add some pep. A-

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, action and some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Ryan Coogler with a screenplay by Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is two hours and 41 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Featured photo: Wakanda Forever.

Mad Honey, by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

Mad Honey, by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan, Ballantine, 450 pages

The new novel by Jodi Picoult, co-written with Jennifer Finney Boylan, is too much about bees. Its protagonist, a divorced New Hampshire mother whose profession is apiarist — beekeeper — describes her work this way: “Like firefighters, we willingly put ourselves in situations that are the stuff of others’ nightmares.”

That includes schlepping out to rescue bees in the cold and dark after a bear has broken into their hive, a first-world problem for sure, but also an old-world problem; beekeeping is the second-oldest profession. And also: informing the bees when their beekeeper has died and formally requesting that they accept the replacement. “In New Hampshire, the custom is to sing, and the news has to rhyme.”

And you thought your job was tough.

This custom is so fanciful that it seems made up, especially being told by two master storytellers. But a quick search of Google confirms that “telling the bees” is actually a thing — not just of deaths, but births, marriages and other momentous events. Mad Honey indeed.

The novel could have been subtitled “more than you ever wanted to know about bees,” and the constant presentation of bee facts at times makes Mad Honey seem like it has a third co-author named Wikipedia. But there is, in fact, a good story here to justify the bee trivia.

Olivia McAfee lives in Adams, New Hampshire, with her son Asher, having moved there from Boston after her marriage to an abusive surgeon blew up. Their lives intersect explosively with a young woman named Lily, who takes turns narrating the novel with Olivia. The narrative conceit is that Olivia tells her side of the story going forward, while Lily tells her side looking back.

Lily moved to Adams seven years ago after her forest-ranger mother found a job that would enable them to escape a bad situation in Seattle. (In one funny moment, when Lily’s mother is telling her about the move, she says she has one question: Where are the White Mountains?)

Asher and Lily are dating and are finding in each other kindred souls, as both are being raised by single mothers and have fraught relationships with their fathers. (Asher meets his dad surreptitiously once a month at a Chili’s in Massachusetts.) They reach the point in their volatile but passionate relationship where they are confiding their deepest secrets and on the verge of becoming intimate.

Soon after, Lily is found dead, and when police arrive, Asher is standing by her body. Despite his insistence that he wasn’t responsible, Asher is charged with first-degree murder. As we work our way to the apex of the trial, we learn more and more about both families’ backgrounds — the difficulties of both the mothers and their children.

Aside from the occasional stilted recitation of bee facts, Mad Honey is skillfully plotted, and Picoult and Boylan have created deeply sympathetic characters who are intelligent and interesting; it’s impossible not to care about them. They authors are, however, a bit slow getting to the point; it’s as if when divvying up the writing tasks, they dispensed with the pesky business of editing and decided they would both write the equivalent of a full book, readers be damned.

But Mad Honey also has an underlying purpose, which is to pull back the curtain on a certain divisive social issue and give readers a glimpse into the humanity at the center of it. I can’t say any more without spoilers. Of course, the biggest spoiler of all is that we know Lily dies at the start, and so there’s no happy ending to be had. But it is not an unhopeful novel, nor depressing; it is saturated more with love than with cruelty. And the ending is as perfect as it can get under the circumstances.

How this book came to be is a story in itself. As Boylan tells in the authors’ notes, she dreamed the basic plot of this book, and that she had co-written it with Picoult. Then she tweeted about her dream, and Picoult reached out, asked what the book was about, then said, “Let’s do it.” (The two had read each other’s work, but never communicated before.) So it’s hard to be too critical of a book that seems to have sprung fully formed from the universe; it was clearly a book meant to be. Picoult says she expects to get hate mail about it, but it won’t be from beekeepers clearly. And for those who just can’t get enough of the sweetness, there are a handful of character-connected recipes at the end of the book. For those of you who like this sort of thing, you’ll love it. For those who don’t, wait for the movie. B+

Album Reviews 22/11/17

Enuff Z’Nuff, Finer Than Sin (Frontiers Music)

Early holiday present for me; new albums from long-irrelevant (at least in the U.S.) hair-metal bands basically write their own reviews after about a minute, unless there’s some smidgeon of off-kilterness present (there never is). This is another band I really never listened to, mostly because of their stupid name, but trust me, I’ve listened to plenty of hair-metal bands (and was in one back when I was a simply irresistible babe), so when I say really dumb band names said all there was to say about a hair-metal album, it’s true. These guys formed in Chicago and were known for their obligato power ballad “Fly High Michelle” (um, wow, this isn’t all that bad) and an obligato dance-metal tune, “New Thing” (well well, ditto). So yeah, singer Donnie Vie is gone; bassist Chip Z’Nuff runs the show now, “Intoxicated” is the obligato power ballad, “Catastrophe” is a decent midtempo rocker. It’s not bad, really, this stuff. The takeaway for me is that these guys did have the potential to become a hair metal Cheap Trick. Too bad about that dumb name. A+

Long Mama, Poor Pretender (self-released)

This Milwaukee-based band has gathered a relatable-enough bunch of tunes together for their debut album, its inherent humanness coming courtesy of singer Kat Wodtke, whose voice traverses the wintry border that separates Dolores O’Riordan from Natalie Merchant (which means it’s pretty thin, which I’d never noticed before). Standard guitar-bass-drums setup here, one that you’d picture floating the background to a k.d. laing record or something like that, but there’s also engineer Erik Koskinen, who added lap steel, electric guitar, and Wurlitzer. Don’t let the Wilco comparisons lead you into this if you happen to see any; it’s really pretty basic Americana-indie-pop, very light on the indie, although there are some punk-ish passages here and there, which is as advertised. The tunes benefit quite a bit from Koskinen’s seemingly ubiquitous steel guitar, leaving me wondering why he’s not a permanent member. Picture a country-fied 10,000 Maniacs and you’d be about there. A+

Playlist

• Uh-oh, look what’s coming, it’s Friday, Nov. 18, only like 10 seconds left for your holiday shopping before all the corporate music-streaming platforms and rock stars starve and become skeletons, all because you had to be all like, “It’s too commercial, what care I if the dude from Coldplay can’t buy his weekly Maserati?” Always thinking of yourself, do you know it’s Christmas, don’t be such a Grinch, holy crow! I mean it’s definitely a festive day for me, because look over there, it’s one of the favorite punching bags of rock ’n’ roll critics all over the world! Yes, I’m talking about none other than Canadian false-metal muttonheads Nickelback, with an album titled Get Rollin’, how could they have thought of such an original thing? Ha ha, you want to know something awesome, upjoke.com has a collection of the best Nickelback jokes, ready? “Fire alarms should just play Nickelback: Anyone who stays in the building deserves what they get,” and, “I can’t get over how cruel some people are. I had some Nickelback tickets on the passenger seat of my car, and I popped into the shop for just five minutes. When I came back, someone had smashed the window and left two more.” Now that is some good old down-home hilarity, isn’t it folks, but uh-oh, there are five or six dudes looking at me all mad right now, and they have mullets and knockoff WWE championship wrestling belts, so I reckon I’d better get a move on, huh? OK, moving on, there’s a video here for the new single “These Days,” look at them, the fellas are walking into someone’s garage, and there’s a lava lamp, a random first-generation Atari system, and now they’re playing, and it’s kind of a neo-country half-ballad that’s just lame and emo-y. It’s like they’re trying to be some sort of boy-band for soccer moms? I don’t know. Anyway, the ’Back is back folks, Nickelback, everyone.

• So I saw that Richard Dawson has a new album coming out called The Ruby Cord this Friday, and then I was like, wait, is he even alive anymore or is he hosting some bizarre version of Family Feud in heaven for the entertainment of all the angels and whatever. OK, I found a video trailer for something that will be on this album apparently, something called “The Hermit,” which is billed as “the trailer for the film,” which means that there will be a movie featuring this dude I guess — Wait a freakin’ minute homies, that isn’t Richard Dawson, it looks more like Ricky Gervais, help me, Hippo readers, I don’t know what I’m even looking at. He’s sleeping in some bed, and the music is sort of like an unplugged Red Hot Chili Peppers B-side but there’s no singing and — wait, some YouTube review says that the opening track for this album is 41 minutes long, I’ll be taking a hard pass there, like, if it’s all like this boring snippet I’d rather eat a bowl of crickets. Another few commentators on YouTube are warning that this dude is into some sort of weird evolutionary theory and he’s sort of insane. Let’s leave this all right here and get out while we can, whattaya say?

• Boy howdy, if there’s anyone who knows how to put out two or three albums every year just to get on my nerves with their bad singing and prehistoric hippie iconography, it’s Neil Young & Crazy Horse, and it’s time for a new one, World Record! Short and sweet: New single “Break The Chain” is like a basic Tom Petty song except the guitar has heavy distortion on it, and, you know, that voice. Aaaand we’re moving.

• Finally, let’s listen to “Denimclad Baboons,” from Röyksopp’s new album, Profound Mysteries III. It’s (spoiler alert) krautrock with some mid-Aughts-house and ’70s-radio-pop vibe. I pronounce it “Fine, whatever.”

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

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