Tag: 241017

Hometown rock

Four-band Shaskeen show

A local band that’s made many quick moves since forming last year is among four acts rocking the Shaskeen backroom in an upcoming show. Hell Beach is a uniquely configured quartet. Former Secret Spirit members Jordan Hill, KB Boutin — bass, guitar, drums and bass respectively — and keytar player Megan Simon play melodic, tightly constructed punk pop.

Jordan Hill, Hell Beach’s lyricist and lead vocalist, began writing songs for the project during the early days of lockdown. His old band was still a thing and would be until an oft-delayed farewell show in mid-2022. “It was just a project for fun, and over time the others got on board with it,” Hill said by phone recently. “Then somebody asked us to play a pretty fun show, and we couldn’t turn it down.”

That was just over a year ago. After a flurry of early gigs, they released the love-hate-love romp “Fits Okay” in May 2023. An eponymous six-song EP came a few months later, and early this year they headed to Nada Recordings in upstate New York to work on their debut album, Beachworld, which they finished at Meade’s home studio in Manchester.

The new LP is packed with hooky tracks. “Meltdown” is a headbanging joyride, while the churning “Poison Mind” is an invitation to sing along to its “I can feel my nerves about to break” chorus. “Another Bogey Breakfast” and “Gory Days” are two more tight, lively and danceable tracks. It’s hard to find a dud on the disc, frankly.

Hill points to a bevy of influences. “It’s definitely that early ’70s punk, certainly the Ramones,” he said. “I love The Clash and I’ve been a huge Green Day fan since I was young; that got me into pop rock. When it comes to more modern stuff, there are a lot of bands right now that we definitely pull some influences from like Wildlife and Bad Nerve.”

Simon’s keyboard contributions add some left field joy — as intended, according to Hill.

“I knew I wanted something weird from the beginning,” he said. “I didn’t want to just do the standard two guitars, one bass and a drummer. I wanted something interesting. I hadn’t thought about a keytar, just someone playing keys and synthesizer stuff. Megan ended up being a great fit for that. As it turned out, they are also extremely good at writing harmonies.”

Hell Beach will be the penultimate act at the Shaskeen, with Rebuilder headlining, while pop punk powerhouse Donaher, whose front man Nick Lavallee booked the show, and Cigarette Camp round out the bill. Hill’s band has shared the stage with a few of them, and he expects a happy reunion

“This is going to be an extremely fun show where most of the people all know each other,” he said. “I’ve known Rebuilder for a long time … my bands have been playing shows with them for years, and they have a Manchester connection because Daniel from Rebuilder is from Manchester. It’s going to be a lot of friends, it’ll probably be packed, a really fun time.”

It’s one more example of a healthy independent music environment, Hill said, mentioning the huge turnout they had for a release show in early August at Candia Road Brewing.

“It was a Sunday matinee, and I just didn’t know if anyone was going to go,” he said. “But it was one of those moments…. Manchester has a scene of people who really support music even if it doesn’t sound like the music that they make or they usually listen to. It’s extremely tight knit, everybody knows each other, and people come out and support everybody.”

Asked what’s next for his band, Hill answered, “I want to start working on the second record…. That’s really what it’s about for me. I just want to write a lot more songs and get them out there. Besides that, I would love to play some new places we haven’t played; we’d love to do some West Coast stuff, and there’s a lot of bands we’d love to play with.”

Rebuilder, Hell Beach, Donaher, Cigarette Camp
When: Friday, Oct. 18, 9 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
More: kineticcity.com

Featured photo: Hell Beach. Photo by Cat Confrancisco.

The Music Roundup 24/10/17

Local music news & events

• Real Carrie: Hear from the source of Sex and the City as Candace Bushnell brings her one-woman show to town. The multimedia production blends clips from the television series with details of Bushnell’s life to tell a complete story on an apartment-like stage adorned with Manolo Blahnik shoes. Thursday, Oct. 17, 7:30 p.m., Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord, $40 and up at ccanh.com.

• Comic redemption: Based on the idea that the day after the Almighty rested He created humor, Robert Dubac performs Stand-Up Jesus, a one-man show that skewers false prophets, religious and political. Fans of Dubac’s Book of Moron will enjoy the intelligent satire on display, “intelligently designed to redeem sinners of all faiths … so let he who is without sin cast the first heckle.” Friday, Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $39 at palacetheatre.org.

• Hurdy gurdy: Enjoy raucous Quebecois folk music as Le Vent Du Nord appears in the Lakes Region. The beloved band performs in French, but one doesn’t need to be fluent in the language to enjoy their mix of Celtic reels, lovely ballads and sweet close harmonies, marked by incredible musicianship, including Nicholas Boulerice’s otherworldly hurdy gurdy. Saturday, Oct. 19, 7 p.m., Brewster Academy, 80 Academy Drive, Wolfeboro, $37.50 at wolfeborofriendsofmusic.org.

• Foundational folk: Early in his career, Tom Rush was the first to record songs by Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne. His own “No Regrets” became a standard, covered by Emmylou Harris and Midge Ure, among others. He’s been touring for more than 50 years and remains one of the funniest and most engaging performers around. His latest LP, Gardens Old, Flowers New, is among his best. Sunday, Oct. 20, 7 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $50 at tupelomusichall.com.

• Guitar power: English-born guitarist and singer-songwriter John Smith has a lot of well-known fans. John Renbourn called him “the future of folk music” a while back, and he’s guested with everyone from Jackson Browne to David Gray and Joan Baez. His new album The Living Kind is acoustic with a rock spirit, a song cycle modeled after Joni Mitchell’s Hejira. Wednesday, Oct. 23, 7 p.m., The Word Barn, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter, $16 and up at portsmouthnhtickets.com.

Salem’s Lot (R)

The town of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, suddenly has a surprisingly high mortality rate in Salem’s Lot, a straight down the middle horror story based on the Stephen King novel.

Late 20something, early 30something author Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) returns to the small town of Jersusalem’s Lot in 1975. He grew up in The Lot until age 9 when his parents died in a car accident. He has returned to research a book on something — the town, his parents’ death, the creepy house at the top of the hill? Unclear. What we do learn while he scrolls through microfiche at the town library is that Susan (Makenzie Leigh), a local girl who went to college in Boston but came back to help out her family, is way more interested in Ben than in whatever local weenie her mom is trying to set her up with. Susan yells over to Ben that she’ll be at the drive-in that night, indirectly asking him to hang out with her, which he does.

Also new in town is Mark (Jordan Preston Carter), an elementary schooler who is basically just a Chekov’s gun of skills and knowledge — he’s a fan of classic monster movie monsters, likes to build things, is knowledgeable about Harry Houdini and escape tricks.

Meanwhile, Mark’s new school buddies, brothers Danny (Nicholas Crovetti) and Ralphie (Cade Woodward), are walking home when they run in to another new resident, R.T. Straker (Pilou Asbæk), the co-owner of an antiques shop who has a funny accent and wears odd old-timey clothes. The boys super wisely decline Straker’s offer of a ride but he looks after them menacingly.

Straker has a giant heavy crate shipped to him from Europe and pays some men to take it to the big creepy house on the top of the hill he has recently purchased. The crate is filled with dirt, the men discover, after a slat at the bottom cracks. They run off, Ralphie goes missing shortly thereafter, Danny gets sick after going to look for Ralphie in the middle of the night, another person gets sick after working in the graveyard at night. What could be causing all of this trouble? Is it the world gone mad, as the given-up sheriff (William Sadler) and the depressed, alcoholic priest (John Benjamin Hickey) think? Is it an aggressive form of anemia, as Dr. Cody (Alfre Woodard) diagnoses?

Naw. It’s vampires.

Matt Burke (Bill Camp) figures out “vampires” a few minutes into talking with one “sick” acquaintance and then tells everybody it’s vampires and then everybody is pretty all in on the vampires idea, especially after Mark shows up at the church with a bag of stakes matter-of-factly filling a thermos with holy water in preparation for doing battle. This movie is not, for the most part, jokey-joke funny but it does have a lightness and oftentimes a real brevity in going from “what’s happening” to “vampires.” And we get, at least for a while, a fun Scooby gang of Matt, Mark, Susan, Dr. Cody, the priest and Ben trying to fight the vampires. Individually no particular character is blowing anybody away with their charisma, but they form a good monster fighting team, not all of whom make it, thus providing (ha) stakes.B-

Rated R for bloody violence and language, according to the MPA at filmratings.com. Written and directed by Gary Dauberman and based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, Salem’s Lot is an hour and 54 minutes long and is distributed on Max.

Hold Your Breath (R)

Sarah Paulson is a mother losing her mind in Depression/Dust Bowl-era Oklahoma in the Hulu horror movie Hold Your Breath.

Margaret (Paulson) is trying to keep her daughters Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins) alive on their dusty, barren farm, where they have barely enough hay to keep the cow giving milk. Her husband has left to work on a construction project and a younger daughter has died from scarlet fever. Now it is the dust that could kill Margaret’s girls — she shoves fabric in the cracks in her house and makes the girls wear masks when outside but the dust still makes its way in.

The dust and something else? Rose tells Ollie a story about “The Grey Man” who killed his family and then himself died in the flames, becoming dust. If you don’t wear a mask, you might breathe him in and do terrible things — is the story’s warning. Ollie asks a question about Margaret having breathed in the Grey Man — no, Rose tells her, Mommy was just a little off from not sleeping and grief over their baby sister. Thus do we know that Margaret isn’t entirely stable and that the real horrors of their situation easily blend with stories.

Hold Your Breath is largely about what disaster and grief can do to people, how real dangers can become outsized and how reality can become hard to discern. All of this makes for some very solid, relatable horror where you don’t need magical boogeymen to be terrified. B+

Rated R for violence/disturbing images, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Karrie Crouse and Willaim Joines, with a screenplay by Karrie Crouse, Hold Your Breath is an hour and 34 minutes long and distributed by Searchlight. It is streaming on Hulu.

Entitlement, by Rumaan Alam

Entitlement, by Rumaan Alam (Riverhead, 288 pages)

One of the more peculiar aspects of our society is that some of us have so much money that it’s actually a challenge to get rid of it, and some of us have so little that we work multiple jobs just to keep the lights on. In a just world, the former problem would cancel out the latter, but it’s not.

Rumaan Alam tackles this paradox in Entitlement, his fourth novel, which explores the prickly issues of both money and race. It is a compelling storyline: A young Black woman is hired to work for an aging white billionaire who has established a foundation to distribute his money to worthy causes.

The fictional Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation has shades of the real-life “Giving Pledge” that many billionaires have signed. Asher Jaffee made his money with a company that delivered office supplies (“Jaffee … in a Jiffy!” was its brilliant motto). Now 83, he still has the kind of energy in which he bounds, rather than walks, and has no interest in retiring. In fact, he is more comfortable in an office than at home. “The office was the place where things happened, the place where he was necessary, the site of his every victory.”

At the foundation, Asher has a small and fiercely devoted staff that tends to his four-day work week, which is filled with people wanting to talk to him about his money.

Brooke Orr, 33, enters this world after nine years of unsatisfying work as a teacher. She is the adopted daughter of a single mom, an attorney who works in the vaguely defined field of reproductive health and who chose to raise her children with the help of three close female friends, rather than within the confines of marriage. Brooke’s own circle includes the daughter of one of her mother’s friends, Kim, and a gay man, Matthew, that they befriended while all were matriculating at Vassar College. (“As Brooke saw it, she and Kim were continuing what their mothers had started: a most modern little family.”)

When she joins the Jaffee Foundation, Brooke is doing well enough but is also in the vaguely annoying position of watching those around her seem to do even better. Her brother is engaged to be married, and though she loves him and doesn’t herself want to get married, her interactions with the couple give way to sardonic inner dialogue on “the smugness of young people who believe they have invented love.” Meanwhile, her friend Kim has recently come into an enormous inheritance, sum unknown, that has allowed her to pay cash for an apartment worth $2 million.

While Brooke loves her friend and is genuinely glad for her good fortune, the imbalance still puts a quiet strain on their relationship. After seeing the new place for the first time, “She saw Kim’s succession of Sundays in this two-bedroom apartment. She saw coffee-stained cups upside down in the dishwasher, saw flowers bought on impulse slouching on a table, saw an orange peel, dried into brittle shells, left to molder on the marble countertop. The cleaning lady would see to that. She saw comfort and solitude and joy and it looked absolutely thrilling to her. Kim was dear, Kim was good, but Kim had done nothing to deserve any of this earthly comfort. And wasn’t the universe meant to work that way, wasn’t it governed by justice?”

But Brooke is enjoying her own good fortune, in that Asher Jaffee has been impressed by their limited interactions and wants her to have more responsibility. She’s smart, and he sees this, but it’s also possible that he’s wanting to have a fatherly influence on Brooke — with her father out of the picture all of her life, and his own daughter having died in the 9/11 attacks at age 38.

Jaffee is generous with his money, his time and his advice, telling her, “Demand something from the world. Demand the best. Demand it.”

Brooke internalizes the advice and begins to change subtly as she grows into the position and assumes more responsibility. But she also uses Jaffee’s advice as justification for bad choices as she becomes more comfortable in the moneyed world and wants her share.

Alam’s previous novels include 2020’s acclaimed Leave the World Behind (which I loved and awarded a rare A+). That book also explored contemporary themes, including race. Entitlement strives, but never achieves the tension that ripples through Leave the World Behind, making it both a smart cultural critique and an old-fashioned page-turner. Nor does Entitlement convince the reader to care all that much about either Brooke or Asher and what happens to them. Brooke has a narrative arc, to be sure, but at no point in it does she want anyone to love her.

Alam’s voice is fresh and unique, and his cultural observations spot-on. While Entitlement will likely win many accolades and maybe make a short-list or two for a prestigious award, it is, like Brooke’s pre-Asher life, ultimately unsatisfying, even for a cautionary tale. B-

Album Reviews 24/10/17

Michael Des Barres, It’s Only Rock N’ Roll (Rock Ridge Music)

Most old people have heard of this dandy (that’s literally what he is; he inherited the title of Marquis from a 13th-century French ancestor) but are far more familiar with his ex-wife, Pamela, the most famous groupie in rock history. Musically he’s always been something of a non-starter; he was in Silverhead, Detective and a few other bands, and didn’t really make much of a splash before replacing Robert Palmer in Power Station just in time to front the band at the 1985 Live Aid concert. Ladies, he looks nothing like he does on this album cover nowadays, but far better for me to mock his music than that Peter Pan business. We open with “Dyna-Mite” — not the BTS tune but the MUD glam-rocker — and right off the bat I’m thinking Rocky Horror but in serious mode, you know, T. Rex all the way baby. This is supposed to be music from Des Barres’ salad days, but Slade’s “Cum On Feel The Noise” will make 99 percent of the world think of Quiet Riot and he can’t sing it for beans. Alice Cooper’s most boring song ever, “Eighteen,” gets a properly mediocre rendition. Etc. D+

HIM, When Love and Death Embrace The Best of HIM 1997-2003 (BMG Records)

Depending on whom you ask, Finland’s biggest-ever band is (usually) cited as being either Nightwish or Lordi, but this goth-metal act does get its mentions. They’ve been broken up for good since 2017, but it’s just as well I suppose, given that their heyday is celebrated in this comp, and besides, Nightwish has long since taken over their mantle. But what a time it was for these guys, back in the early days, their first one-off American appearance coming by way of none other than skateboarder/Jackass Bam Margera, and the rest is (mostly Finnish) history. Their (very Bauhaus-meets-Marilyn Manson) version of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear The Reaper” is here, as is their po-faced rub of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” and it’s about at that point that most U.S. audiences check either in or out as far as what they’re familiar with insofar as this band’s oeuvre. If you ever wanted to hear Bauhaus on steroids, it’s this, however that strikes your fancy. A

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• This Friday, Oct. 18, is three days before my birthday, so if the gods are willing, there will be decent albums for me to listen to, so that I can bring you readers glad tidings of stuff you should be listening to, marking a double celebration! Now, you and I both know that the chances of that are pretty slim, like, the last time I checked, there weren’t going to be new albums coming out this week from, say, Wire and Skinny Puppy and Acumen Nation and Pet Shop Boys alongside recently discovered recordings of Al Jolson singing all Groucho Marx-like or Benny Goodman wailing on his clarinet like Jimmy Page before there even was a Jimmy Page, so I will roll the dice, check the list, and prepare myself for the usual nauseating stew of new albums from twerkers and nepo babies. Speaking of the latter, I was in a Target store the other day when what to my bloodshot eyes should appear but a brand new glossy magazine, titled Paris (referring to Auto-Tune-dependent singing-fraud Paris Hilton, of course) subtitled something insane like Pop Icon. I couldn’t believe it, because in the old days it used to take all sorts of payola and whatnot to get an artist on the cover of a nice glossy magazine, like Hit Parader, where rock stars were interviewed in careful fawning depth by drunken journalists so the lumpen masses could discover important things like their favorite rock star’s most-hated grade school teacher, or their favorite Skittles color. But let’s face it, local bands, we’ve entered a horrifying “nepotism era” of rock ’n’ roll, folks, so, for anyone out there with rock ’n’ roll dreams, your task is clear: Unless you are Paris Hilton and can pay Megan Thee Stallion to pretend to like you, or you’re Sabrina Carpenter and can demand a record contract or else your aunt, Nancy Cartwright, will immediately stop voicing the part of Bart Simpson on The Simpsons, you have no choice but to put out 50 albums a year like King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard and all those bands do. It’s either that or just give up and finish your degree or become a plumber if you enjoy doing things like eating food and sitting in a heated dwelling without too much survival anxiety. I did not make up these new rules, guys, and the next local musician who yells at me about it on Facebook is going to get publicly ridiculed in this column, promise not threat. But meanwhile, let’s talk about TV-talk-show houseplant Jennifer Hudson and her new album, The Gift Of Love, since no one else will! Yes, it is supposedly a holiday album, but there are other hilariously over-sung covers here, like “Nature Boy” and Aretha’s “Respect.” Hm, that’s odd, no Bad Brains songs.

• Joe Jonas was the Jonas who was with the girl from Game of Thrones, and they divorced, so apparently his lawyers advised him to make a new album, which is on the way as we speak, titled Music For People Who Believe In Love! But does he, after divorcing Sansa Stark (she actually smiles a lot now)? Who knows, but the title of this album’s first song is “Work It Out,” and it starts with 12-string noodling before descending into a Justin Timberlake romp-along with high-pitched singing. Ack.

• The (it’s threatened) “final album” from noise-rockers Japandroids, Fate & Alcohol, is a bummer, because I wish they weren’t disbanding. “D&T” is a totally cool punk-speed rocker that would make Frank Black jealous. Don’t quit, fellas!

• Finally it’s Kylie Minogue, being impossibly cougar-sexy again, with her new album, Tension II! “Lights Camera Action,” the single, is a euro-trance tune that’s pretty great when she isn’t trying to sing like Ariana Grande, stop that this instant.

Mutiny of Clowns

  • ¾ ounce black rum – regular strength black rum; we’ll get to the overproof stuff in a couple of minutes
  • ¾ ounce Cynar – this is one of those low-octane, bitter Italian liqueurs that old men drink out of tiny glasses outside cafes in little alpine villages; as with most of these old-man liqueurs, it’s made with more than a dozen secret herbs, but because the label on the bottle has a giant picture of an artichoke on it, it’s a pretty good guess what one of them is
  • ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
  • ½ ounce ginger syrup (see below)
  • ¼ ounce simple syrup
  • An orange slice – preferably one just big enough to cover the top of a rocks glass without falling into it.
  • A slug of overproof (151) rum

This is a presentation cocktail. It is like the trick of pulling the tablecloth out from under the dishes, but with flaming alcohol.

Start by making some ginger syrup. There are two ways of going about this:

(1) Add sugar to fresh squeezed ginger juice and simmer it briefly, until the sugar dissolves entirely into saturation, then cool it and store it in your refrigerator. This will be a powerful, spicy, slightly bitter syrup that will knock you back on your heels. The problem is that you will need a good vegetable juicer, which not everyone has lying around. If you do, you’ll need to juice about a pound of fresh ginger, and your kitchen will smell overwhelmingly of ginger for half an hour or so. Not that that is a bad thing.

(2) Alternatively, you can shred a large hand (that’s what the big clumps of ginger root you get at the grocery store are called) on a box grater. Bring it to a boil with a cup or so of sugar and an equal amount of water. Stir it well, to make certain that everything has gotten thoroughly mixed together, then take it off the heat, cover it, and leave it all day, or overnight. Strain it through a fine-mesh strainer, then squeeze the remaining ginger pulp in a tea towel, to get the last of the ginger juice out of it. Bottle and refrigerate it. This will be a gentler, more civilized ginger syrup that will work just as well but won’t carry as much street cred as the more serious stuff.

Now, assuming that you’ve gone to the liquor store, and made your syrups, and sliced an orange, all you need to do is find a rocks glass and make sure you have matches or a lighter on hand.

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add all the ingredients, except the overproof rum and the orange slice, to the shaker, and shake vigorously for a full minute. Strain it into the rocks glass with no ice. Cover the glass with the orange slice, and pour a slug of 151 onto it.

Quickly but without panic, light the orange on fire. There will be a delicate blue flame and the smell of grilling citrus.

Turn the lights down but not completely out, and take half a dozen pictures of your flaming drink. When you’re done, turn the lights back up and blow on the orange to put it out. Stuff the orange slice into your drink, and top it off with two or three ice cubes. Swirl it around a few times to chill everything back down, then drink it in silence.

In spite of this drink’s dramatic presentation and name, it is surprisingly delicate, a balance of sweet syrups and rum and the bitterness from the Cynar. The ginger is not overwhelming but is definitely there, adding to the depth of flavor.

This is a drink that demands confidence to make, but once you have, it murmurs encouragement to you and reminds you of how competent and good-looking you are.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!