Tag: 230323

Sister power

All-woman showcase at Shaskeen

An upcoming Saturday afternoon of music will be an eclectic gathering of four women, each with a unique voice. Rachel Berlin echoes Ladies of the Canyon-era Joni Mitchell, Bri Bell writes and records lush folk pop as a solo artist and plays in a hardcore metal band on the side, Savoir Faire offers noir jazz with a sharp lyrical edge, and Fatma Salem’s songs are raw, spare and full of life experience.

The four will meet for the first time when each does a half-hour set at Shaskeen Pub on March 25. The common thread bringing them together is the WMNH-FM local music program Granite State of Mind. Each has appeared there recently.

“I went in search of more female performers … as a winter task for myself and the show,” host Rob Azevedo said recently.

As to why he chose these four performers, he said, “I found Savoir Faire to be symphonic almost. Fatma was refreshing, endearing, quietly captivating. Bri sounds like street love to me and her delivery is striking. Rachel was instantly next-level in her command and presence, and her voice melts into each song.”

Salem works as a mental health counselor in the same building as WMNH. Azevedo first met her in the hall there, then learned she was a musician. Her music often reflects her work.

“To have the background of life experiences adds another layer,” Salem said on her GSOM appearance. “You can track my journey through my songs.”

Berlin only recently made her first song public, but it is full of promise, and she has many more in waiting. “Wandering One Ways” has a verse/refrain structure and alternate tuning resembles Mitchell’s “Cactus Tree,” which is no accident. “I really wanted to write a song that is inspired by her,” she said in a recent phone interview. “Her ability to stay on one emotion and just really dig into it, lay it out there … I really wanted to be able to do that.”

Though both her parents are music teachers, Berlin’s journey to the stage wasn’t a given. “I’m definitely not a natural-born performer,” the 20-year old said. She’s battled stage fright since her childhood piano recital days. But after polishing up her guitar skills during the pandemic, she decided it was mind over matter and started hitting open mics.

When Lamont Smooth, a band from her hometown of Concord, invited her to sing with them at their Bank of NH Stage show last year, Berlin nervously agreed. “I couldn’t eat before I went on,” she said, “but … I turned off my feelings and just got into the music.”

Her songwriting heroes inspired Berlin to become a lyricist. “Anytime I thought I had a good line, I would write it down, and then I would try to mold all those lines into something,” she said. “Now, because I started doing it, it’s just an impulse; I can’t not do it. It feels wrong to hold it all in.”

Conversely, Bri Bell is a veteran of the Manchester scene. She started playing in 2013 at the Central Ale House open jam, an experience she remembers warmly. “

If you put yourself in a circle of other people who are creative and have similar goals, you almost feed off each other,” Bell said by phone recently. “It became like a family. We taught each other things, played together and just grew up as musicians.”

That led to playing out in local bars, but that didn’t last long for Bell. “I definitely did the grind, which a lot of my fellow musicians, peers in this area do,” she said. “Playing any show you can get … playing covers. Unfortunately, it’s something that I personally don’t like.”

These days, she plays fewer but more satisfying gigs. “I like to be in an environment where I can be heard … appreciated, if that makes sense.”

Bell released the all-acoustic Depressive Times in 2022, later fleshing out those songs and a few others into two EPs, Fall and Winter. Both were made in her home studio and came out in the past few months. She cites Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Power and Massive Attack as influences. Her friend Monica Grasso, who plays bass in the Graniteers, had an interesting response to the records.

“She told me, ‘I could never play the kind of music that you do, but I need to hear it’ — I appreciate that compliment,” Bell recalled. “It is very depressing music, but that’s my process. It’s very vulnerable. My music will make you sad, but the goal is to relate in those emotions that we’re not alone.”

Rising Star Series: Savoir Faire, Fatma Salem, Bri Bell & Rachel Berlin
When: Saturday, March 25, 4 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
More: facebook.com/rob.azevedo

Featured photo: top left: Savoir Faire, top right: Fatma Salem, bottom left: Bri Bell and bottom right: Rachel Berlin. Courtesy photos.

The Music Roundup 23/03/23

Local music news & events

• Laugh buffet: When he’s looking to feel humbled, comedian Francis Birch watches the decade-old YouTube clip that someone recorded of his open mic debut, an effort prompted by his office mates’ encouragement that he was funny enough to try standup. Fortunately, he’s much better now, and topping the bill with Dave Twohig, Jim Laprel and Alana Foden. The latter is a longtime promoter of shows in the area. Thursday, March 23, 7:30 p.m., Soho Asian Restaurant, 49 Lowell Road, Hudson, $18 at square.site.

• Rock revival: From its beginnings as a duo of guitarists Liv Lorusso and Jordan Brilliant, Feverslip has fleshed out into a powerhouse blues rock quintet fronted by ex-Red Sky Mary vocalist Sam Vlasich, with a steady rhythm section of Brad Hartwick and Harrison Forti, both formerly in Victim of Circumstance. Their rollicking song “Tombstone” is reminiscent of Aerosmith in their prime and other classic rockers. Enjoy them playing an early acoustic set. Friday, March 24, 6 p.m., Village Trestle, 25 Main St., Goffstown, feverslip.com.

• Standard bearing: A fixture at Whippersnappers in Londonderry before it closed, Souled Out Show Band is a tonic for fans of brass rockers like Chicago. They’re performing on the big stage in Concord, doing a decades-spanning set list with everything from “Knock on Wood” to Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA,” along with dance-inspiring deep cuts like “One Fine Morning” from Lighthouse and Billy & the Beaters’ “At This Moment.” Saturday, March 25, 8 p.m., Bank of NH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $24 at ccanh.com.

• Heavy handed: Touring in support of a new album due end of March, Kingsmen is a high-velocity metalcore band from Rhode Island that broke through with its 2020 release Revenge. Forgiveness. Recovery. The lead single from the upcoming disc is “Bitter Half,” a furious, percussive screamer about casting out life’s dark forces. Joining them for their downtown show is modern rock group Rise Among Rivals. Sunday, March 26, 7 p.m., Jewel Music Venue, 61 Canal St., Manchester, $12 at eventbrite.com.

• Guitar prowess: Melding elements of jazz, rock and flamenco, Kaki King is a musician’s musician. Dave Grohl once brought her onstage, saying, “There are some guitar players that are good and there are some guitar players that are really f-ing good, and then there’s Kaki King.” Modern Yesterdays, her collaboration with D.J. Sparr, recently premiered at the American Composers Orchestra in New York City. Monday, March 27, 8 p.m., Music Hall Lounge, 131 Congress St., Portsmouth, $33 and $43 at themusichall.org.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods (PG-13)

Shazam! Fury of the Gods (PG-13)

Billy Batson is trying to keep the Shazam team together even though his family of superhero kids is growing up in Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

Actually, I lie, the movie isn’t about that at all. It states that a few times as Billy’s (Asher Angel as the teen, Zachary Levi as the Shazam superhero he can turn himself in to) current concern, with him insisting that all his siblings and fellow superheroes attend all rescues and family meetings together. But the movie doesn’t really seem to know how to make his desire to hold his new family together part of the story, either plot-wise or emotionally, in any kind of an organic way. Mary (Grace Caroline Currey, in both her incarnations) has in fact aged out of the foster care system but continues to live with parents Rosa (Marta Milans) and Victor (Cooper Andrews) and works between super-suiting up to contribute money to the household. Billy is himself only a few months away from turning 18, as is his bestie Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer/Adam Brody), who occasionally superheroes alone and is trying to impress new girl Ann (Rachel Zegler) at school. Younger kids/Shazam team members Pedro (Jovan Armand/D.J. Cotrona), Eugene (Ian Chen/Ross Butler) and Darla (Faithe Herman/Meagan Good) are, uhm, also there. I feel like there was a plan for them to have story lines but it doesn’t really pan out.

Meanwhile, Greek goddesses, the Daughters of Atlas (who sound like a pretty good all-lady metal cover band) — Hespera (Helen Mirren) and Kalypso (Lucy Liu) — retrieve the staff that the movie thankfully reminds us that Shazam broke in the first movie. As it turns out, breaking the staff actually broke the barrier between the worlds of the gods and humans. (Wizard Djimon Hounsou had domed the gods off in a floating bubble or something — look, all the lore stuff in this movie presented dumbly and I’m not going to worry about it too much). So these ladies, dressed in full Greek warrior garb, go retrieve the staff and force the Wizard to put it back together and then head to the human realm to find and take their power back from Shazam(s).

Eventually, there’s a dragon, a giant tree that creates serious root-based damage to the Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park, and winged lions and cyclops causing havoc in the streets of Philadelphia. And, hoo-boy, is it all boring. Let me say that again: Helen Mirren is a god (typecasting) and Lucy Liu rides a dragon to fight Shazam — and this movie could not figure out how to make any of that interesting, even in a campy way.

Every dumb bit of DC Extended Universe business was a drag on the movie (there are apparently two credits scenes, I stayed for one and I don’t regret leaving before the other). There is an absolutely baffling cameo at the end of the movie that is so ham-fisted it made me mad about a character I have previously liked. The movie cares way too much about the minutiae of the backstory of Daughters of Atlas without ever bothering to make the characters of Hespera, Kalypso and mystery sister No. 3 (not really a mystery) interesting. There are a lot of things that are started, little story elements that seem like they’re going to add emotional heft to the movie, that are just dropped like they were forgotten about. The movie feels senselessly loud — not just in volume but in how everything feels three times too much as if to distract us from how nothing it is. It is brightly colored scarves thrown all over the living room in hopes you won’t notice there’s no furniture or carpet or TV.

The only time this movie shows any bit of charm is when the family — specifically, with the kids in their child versions, sometimes with the parents — is together. (In general, this movie does not have a good balance of the kids and their adult superhero avatars.) I think the heart of this superhero character and his story comes back to his family, specifically his family of people who have ultimately chosen to be each other’s family. Their kindness and empathy and decision to trust and love each other after whatever traumas and losses they previously faced are the superpowers of this group, and the first Shazam! did a good job of making that an organic element of the story. This movie seems to forget that completely, which is perhaps why most of it feels so hollow despite being so packed with superhero-movie bloat.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods feels like an inferior product whose only selling point is familiar packaging rather than a story with characters we know and care about. C-

Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by David F. Sandberg and written by Henry Gayden and Chris Morgan, Shazam! Fury of the Gods is two hours and 10 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by New Line Cinema.

Featured photo: Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai

I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai (Viking, 435 pages)

When the protagonist of Rebecca Makkai’s gripping new novel is a teen, she arrives at a boarding school in New Hampshire knowing little about the school or the region.

“I remembered wondering if New Hampshire kids had accents, not understanding how few of my classmates would be from New Hampshire,” she says. Bodie Kane was not headed to Phillips Exeter, but to the fictional Granby School, somewhere deep in the woods in the general vicinity of Manchester, Concord and Peterborough.

It’s now two decades later and Kane, a successful podcaster in Los Angeles, is headed back to her alma mater to teach a two-week “mini-mester” on podcasting and film. The trip is stirring up troubling memories about the death of her beautiful Granby roommate named Thalia Keith, whose body had been found in the school pool.

A Black athletic trainer had been arrested, tried and found guilty of the murder, but enough questions remained that the case had attracted national attention, even being featured on “Dateline.” And with the rising interest in true crime and an attendant rise in internet sleuthing, people were still talking about the case online and pointing out problems with the state’s case against the trainer, even picking through a grainy video of the musical that Thalia had performed in shortly before her death.

Despite their being roommates, Bodie had not been especially close to Thalia, who was one of the “in” crowd. Thalia had the sort of effortless beauty that attracted everyone to her: “She played tennis, and suddenly tennis practice had spectators.” And Thalia had arrived at Granby with an exquisite wardrobe that contained 30 sweaters, while Bodie, whose tuition was paid by kindly members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wasn’t remotely prepared for cold weather.

But Bodie, whose “Starlet Fever” podcast probed into little-known stories of often troubled Hollywood stars, has a knack for investigation. And so when one of the students in her podcasting mini-course proposes doing her initial podcast on Thalia’s murder — with the premise that Omar Evans had falsely confessed and was innocent — Bodie agrees.

Meanwhile, she seems to have trouble brewing back at home, where the father of her children (to whom she is legally married, but only on paper) is asking nervously if she has read the news and is asking her to stay off Twitter.

It would be reductive to call I Have Some Questions For You a thriller or a whodunit, although it has many components of both. Bodie, the narrator, has her own dark past; both her father and her brother are dead (the father having died because of something her brother did). When her mother fell apart, she was taken in by the Latter-day Saint family who paid for her to escape Indiana by going to Granby. And she brings parts of her own troubled history to her obsession with cases of abused and murdered women across geography and time, even while acknowledging the moral questions about probing into their cases in true-crime shows and podcasts.

“I have opinions about their deaths, ones I’m not entitled to,” Bodie says. “I’m queasy, at the same time, about the way they’ve become public property, subject to the collective imagination. I’m queasy about the fact that the women whose deaths I dwell on are mostly beautiful and well-off. That most were young, as we prefer our sacrificial lambs. That I’m not alone in my fixations.”

Thalia Keith’s murder is, in a sense, a fictional scaffolding on which Makkai builds a serious discussion about abused and murdered women, and how we exploit and fail them. While it’s a page-turner in a practical sense — the reader is carried in the current of wanting to know what really happened to Thalia, and what the role was of the teacher that Bodie keeps addressing in the narrative -— there are frequent mentions of real women who had violent, premature deaths, and the men responsible.

If this sounds like a lot to put on the reader, well, it is; the novel feels mildly oppressive at times, with all it is trying to take on. Plus, we know there is not going to be a happy ending: Thalia is dead when the novel opens; she will be dead when it ends. Meanwhile, we are going to hear about a lot of other dead women, abused women and sexually harassed women. Amazingly, in all of this, New Hampshire comes off just fine except for the repeated insinuations that its winters are cold. Makkai is careful not to suggest that any real-life police departments would force a false confession or that any real-life attorney would have so horribly failed the wrongly convicted man.

“New Hampshire’s public defenders are apparently excellent, and know everyone in the legal system of what is, after all, a very small state. They know the culture, and they don’t overdress for court,” she writes in what seems a bit of overkill. (In her acknowledgements, Makkai also credits Portsmouth public defender Stephanie Hausman, “who course-corrected and fine-tuned the legal parts of the book.”)

As such, while it’s not a novel that New Hampshire’s chambers of commerce will want to use for marketing, it’s not a bad one for the Granite State. And every good book is made better when it’s set in familiar environs. Look for this one when the lists of the best books of 2023 emerge later this year. A

Album Reviews 23/03/23

Personal Blend, Inhale and Release (self-released)

Rochester, N.Y.-based seven-piece reggae-rock band for parties, bar mitzvahs and rock clubs, if those things even still exist. Surf, reggae, rock, dub and Rasta are the game that’s afoot here; I’d agree with the press blurb that pronounces these songs “complex arrangements” featuring digital drum rhythms, punchy horn lines and ambient vocal melodies, but really, how complex would you want your drinking music to be? OK, maybe something along the lines of Disco Biscuits, Minus The Bear or geez, I dunno, there are times when these guys go off on a prog tangent (“Skin Deep” is quite priceless). It’s pretty tight for sure, probably owing to the machine-made drums. Overall there’s a psychedelic vibe to this stuff, I suppose, but this band is dedicated to standard-issue riddims even when they throw in arena-rock curveballs like spaghetti Western guitars for mariachi-esque effect (“Watch Your Step”). Nothing wrong here. A

Walking Bombs, Spiritual Dreams Above Empty Promises (self-released)

I’m told that DIY punk dude Morgan Y. Evans — not to be confused with country music’s Morgan Evans, who recently went through a painful divorce — will be releasing several albums this year, including this one, a set of lo-fi creepy tunes “about trying not to lose hope and to remain centered despite the world’s sorrows and perils.” Written just after the death of Evans’ mother, it deals with topics like mortality, spirituality, individuality, gun violence, love and being startled awake by technology. It definitely has an early Nick Cave-in-gloom-mode feel as it labels out sentiments intended to fix someone (probably the artist himself, it would seem), for instance how we need to remember that cynicism is not as powerful as our deeper hopes, dreams and empathy. If you have any love for the Throbbing Lobster era, there’s a lot here to like; I’d offer Swans as a comparison but it’s a little too speedy (as in midtempo) for that. Same ballpark, though. A

Playlist

• New albums will magically appear this Friday, March 31, so that you can buy them, like a good doobie, for your music collection! Let’s see here, we’ve got Packs, an Ottawa, Canada-based indie quartet that’s fronted by some art school slacker named Madeline Link, who decided that her chosen career of making papier mache animals or whatever she makes out of papier mache wasn’t as spiritually fulfilling (i.e. profitable) as making awful music to go with it. Anyway, Packs’ new album, Crispy Crunchy Nothing, is just about here, and man, the new single is so awful I can’t even comprehend it, like, if they’d at least add a weird Clinic-style organ player it’d be less bad than Broadcast, but no, they’re truly out to annoy me as much as they can. It’s like Pavement, but even more Pavement-y than the average human constitution is built to withstand. My, what wonderfully off-key guitars you have, Packs! Did they hold open auditions for the very worst musicians in Canada, or — you know, I mean, how could a band even be this bad? This junk is out of style anyway, if you ask me, like I really doubt Generation Z wants nothing more out of the party lives than listening to junk that sounds like it was rejected from the Juno soundtrack, you know? I was watching some “Why New Music Sucks” influencer video where some millennial girl was trying to explain that “sorry, older people, tastes change” (Really?! Someone call the New York Times!), and that now, in her wizened wisdom, she’s figured out that Zoomers want a mixture of styles, can you imagine such a thing? This means that when Zeppelin mixed early 1900s-era American folk with heavy metal, that didn’t count as a “mixture of styles,” nor did it count when her own generation (when it wasn’t listening to truly horrible bands like Slint and Franz Ferdinand) was guzzling purple drank and watching YouTubes of Megadeth vs. Pointer Sisters mashups. I mean, I’m confused, guys. I’m confused about a lot of things, actually, but I’m not confused about how awful Pavement was, nor am I convinced that garbagey trash like this Packs album has any redeeming musical qualities at all. But really, bon appetit if listenability doesn’t matter when you’re compiling your daily Soundcloud. (Note to self: How did this ever happen?)

• Great, time once again to try to remember the difference between Deerhoof, Deer Tick and Deerhunter, oh that’s right, I don’t care. No, I’m kidding, Deerhoof is the indie band who did — let’s see, blah blah blah — never mind, no one reading this has ever heard any of their songs, unless they were at a frat party in 2005 maybe? So anyway, their fast-approaching new disk, titled Miracle-Level, features the single “Sit Down, Let Me Tell You a Story,” and boy is it awful. Absolutely terrible.

• Right, right, so James Holden is a British weird-beard electro DJ, and his new LP, This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities, has a new single making the rounds, called “Common Land,” which is pretty cool, some bizarre but accessible noise loops and a neat breakbeat. I have heard much worse songs before in my life.

• Lastly, let’s get the new Hold Steady album, The Price of Progress, out of the way so I don’t have to think about oi-rock again this week. Hm, wait, this new single, “Sideways Skull” is OK if you like noise-rock. It’s like Frank Black playing for early Big Black, a comparison you’d appreciate if you had any shred of hope that rock ’n’ roll might rise again (it won’t, but that hasn’t stopped it from trying once in a while).

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).

The berry best cookies

Winter should be winding down at this point, but fresh local produce is still months away in New Hampshire. However, with a little creativity, you can enjoy treats that are full of summer flavors.

These cookies are reminiscent of summer, thanks to the addition of freeze-dried strawberries. This ingredient is the most important to consider when shopping for this recipe. You cannot use fresh or dried strawberries. Fresh strawberries have too much moisture, and dried strawberries would be chewy. However, freeze-dried strawberries are perfect, as the flavor is intense, and their crispness allows them to be diced easily.

The other ingredient of note is the white chocolate chips. They add a nice contrast of sweetness to the strawberries. Together they mimic a strawberry shortcake topped with whipped cream.

The cookies puff up when baking but flatten out while cooling. Don’t be alarmed when you return to check on them. They still are perfect. The cookies should have a moist and tender interior with a slightly crispy edge.

Now you can enjoy the flavors of summer even on a chilly day!

The berry best cookies
Makes 20

½ cup unsalted butter softened
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
1 large egg
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1⅓ cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup freeze-dried strawberries diced
½ cup white chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, cream butter and both sugars on speed 2 for 4 minutes.
Add egg, beating to incorporate.
Add vanilla, and mix.
Add flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, and mix until incorporated.
Add diced, freeze-dried strawberries and white chocolate chips, stirring until combined.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Place heaping teaspoonfuls of batter on the baking sheet about 2 inches apart.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until bottoms are golden.
Transfer to a baking rack to cool completely.

Featured photo: The berry best cookies. Photo by Michele Pesula Kuegler.

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