Tag: 250508

Nu-metal night

House Lights celebrate new release at Shaskeen

It’s been two years since post-hardcore alt metal band House Lights released their debut album, What It Means To Feel. The Manchester alt-metal band has a new EP, The Past is Ours to Leave, and will celebrate its release with a three-city tour that kicks off at Shaskeen Pub on May 9.

The new disc shows strong musical growth and offers the group’s first collaboration. Rapper Animatronic, The Abolisher contributed words and vocals to “Heavenfall,” a song with a strong Linkin Park feel. House Lights singer and lyricist Sam Beachard first gave the song to the band’s composer Matt Laramie, who thought the rapper could provide something extra.

“That was a really fun collab,” Beachard said in a recent phone interview. “It’s such a dynamic and unique track for us, where it’s something we haven’t really explored before, getting into more of the nu-metal and adding rap into the music style. What he did on it was really cool, and really special.”

At Laramie’s urging, Beachard sent the song’s chorus to Animatronic. “He wrote around it; his verses were a million times better than what I came up with; they fit the song perfectly. He understood the emotion, the feel of the song. He knocked it out of the park.” The rapper will join the band to perform the track at the Shaskeen show.

Along with Manchester, the mini-tour stops in Lowell and Worcester.

“We wanted to do a weekend tour … an experience none of us really have yet,” Beachard said. “We’ve got the EP release coming up, so what better reason to do it than for that? Make a whole weekend out of it … maximize the promotion and the scale of what we’re trying to do.”

The new EP has a unifying theme of an addictive relationship and its consequences. This is a band that dropped a cover of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” a while back, a punked-up rager that made a few wonder what might have been if she chose an edgier artistic path. So it’s not a stretch, really.

“Butterfly-inducing love has devolved into a harmful cycle of gaslighting and psychological abuse,” Beachard explained. “The victim is aware of every betrayal and malicious act, but has dealt with it for so long as a tradeoff for how the good times make them feel, that they can no longer extricate themselves from this negative environment.”

This mood is best represented on the driving “Forget You,” which traces a path from “seventeen, when everything was bare and bittersweet” to “walking hand in hand together with knives behind our backs.” The song is carried by a jagged rhythm of switching melodic vocals and growling metallic screaming, and it’s a gem.

It’s also not autobiographical, Beachard said. “A lot of the songs I write are about things within my own brain. Oftentimes you get into this mode where you live a version of yourself. Sometimes your mind can kind of wander on you and explore. You start to think about what the other versions would be like and how would my life be different.”

Beachard books most of his band’s gigs, but the Shaskeen show is under the auspices of Aaron Shelton’s Kinetic City Events. Outside of House Lights shows, he’s been working with the organization more. “Aaron’s got a lot of opportunities coming his way, a lot of people reaching out for him to help them get a solid program going; but he’s only one guy.”

He’s worked on similar efforts since House Lights formed.

“I want to be part of whoever and wherever people are helping other bands get opportunities in the scene,” he said. “There are a lot of incredible musicians right now, and all they need is opportunity, people to get eyes on them, and people that are looking out for them as well.”

House Lights Release Show w/ Sleepspirit, Moments Of and Empty Halls
When: Friday, May 8, 8 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $15 at the door, 21+

Featured photo. House Lights. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 25/05/08

Local music news & events

• Two covers: Paying tribute to two classic rock bands in one show, Foreigners Journey appears in Nashua. The double doppelgänger group is led by American Idol finalist Rudy Cardenas, who switches between Lou Gramm doing “Urgent” and “Hot Blooded” and Steve Perry singing “Lights” and “Don’t Stop Believing.” Idol alum Constantine Maroulis sings lead occasionally. Thursday, May 8, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 211 Main St., Nashua, $39 and up at etix.com.

• Barn back: New England roots supergroup Barnstar! is touring behind new LP Furious Kindness. Founded in 2011 by Zachariah Hickman, who plays bass, it includes guitarist Mark Erelli, Charlie Rose on banjo, Taylor Armerding on mandolin, and fiddle player Jake Armerding, with everyone singing. Friday, May 9, 7 p.m., The Word Barn, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter, $38 at thewordbarn.com.

• Side man: Enjoy a special afternoon concert from Eliot Lewis, a multi-instrumentalist who’s worked with a wide range of stars, including Daryl Hall & John Oates — he’s the only musician to appear on every episode of Live at Daryl’s House. “Eliot is a musician who can do it all,” Hall said of Lewis, who’s a whiz on guitar, piano, bass and drums. His latest LP is Sonic Soldier. Saturday, May 10, 1 p.m., Axel’s Throw House, 4 Bud Way, Unit 2, Nashua, $30 at axelsthrowhouse.com.

• Mama jazz: Promising a slate of songs beloved by her own mom, Sharon Jones performs a Mother’s Day brunch with support from piano player Tim Ray, John Schultz on bass and drummer Les Harris Jr. Portsmouth native Jones started singing professionally out of high school, and then moved west. She was popular in the clubs there before returning to be a local fixture. Sunday, May 11, 12 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $33 and up at palacetheatre.org.

• Horn time: A gathering of virtuosos from around the world, Rodney Marsalis Philadelphia Big Brass brings brass to the next generation of music lovers. Recently the band, led by a New Orleans music royalty, went to the Cayman Islands for a retreat that included many other talented brass musicians. Ensembles from Pinkerton Academy will also perform at this show. Wednesday, May 13, 8 p.m., Stockbridge Theatre, 44 N. Main St., Derry, $30 at stockbridgetheatre.com.

Thunderbolts* (PG-13)

A scrappy band of Marvel secondary characters come together in Thunderbolts*, a movie that pretty nicely sells you on the idea of a future of the MCU.

Yelena (Florence Pugh), a former Red Room Black Widow who was the little sister to big sister Natasha “Scarlett Johansson” Black Widow and is still mourning her loss, is sick of working as a covert assassin-type. She finds the work empty and wants something more “public facing,” she tells her boss Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).

And, look, I haven’t done all the homework on Valentina — all the The Falcon and the Winter Soldier business. But to sum up: she is the CIA director (as she was in Wakanda Forever) and she just generally represents all the most cynical elements of both the government and the biotech weapons world. In the latter capacity, she was behind an attempt to create supersoldiers. She also employs several deadly semi-super-assassins, including Yelena, to clean up any inconvenient messes including those made in the attempt to make supersoldiers. Which is why we see Yelena as she parachutes into a lab, kills a bunch of people and blows it up. And perhaps because Valentina is being investigated by Congress, including first-term Congressman Bucky “Winter Soldier” Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Yelena thinks Valentina is on the level when she tells her one last wetworks job and then you can change careers.

That one last job involves following Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) into an extra-fortified vault. Only Ghost was also given one last job, which was to follow Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) into the vault. And Taskmaster was sent after John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the aggro-one-time Captain America, who was in turn offered a clean slate if he took out Yelena. One of them is dispatched before they figure out that Valentina sent them to take each other out and has locked them in an incinerator to take care of the bodies. But Valentina didn’t factor in Bob (Lewis Pullman), the regular-looking dude in scrubs who shows up. Nor did it occur to her that these malcontents with their trauma-filled backgrounds might be able to work together. And she didn’t realize that the limo driver overhearing her conversation about killing Yelena was the Red Guardian (David Harbour), Yelena’s sometimes father figure.

Thunderbolts* has a Bad Guy and a Worse Guy, which is how a cynical Valentina explains the power dynamics of the world to her young assistant (a fun, underused Geraldine Viswanathan). But I think the Big Bad of this movie — in the way that, say, colonialism is the true Big Bad in Black Panther — is despair. As several people in the movie say, the Avengers are gone and are not coming to save the day. The regular humans that are left are like Valentina — power-mad, self-dealing and seemingly actively trying to make the world a worse place. And those that oppose her but can’t seem to make a dent in the ability of her and those like her to stay in power. The Thunderbolts, as they sort of sarcastically call themselves, are all dealing with varying levels of mental exhaustion — the things from their past that they have to carry are too heavy and the road ahead looks similarly hard. What’s the point of any of it, what can you do except, as Yelena suggests, just try to push all that down and maybe drink. But, of course infinite denial is not a great plan — not for regular people and definitely not for those given super serum.

This is kind of weird territory for a superhero movie, especially one tasked with getting us all excited about Marvel movies again, but it works. It’s grittier (without being bleak), looser and smarter than some of those Eternals/Quantumania movies of late that just feel like dreary attempts at replaying the hits. And Thunderbolts*, while given some MCU business to do, does not suffer in the way that, say, Captain America: Brave New World does from the MCU of it all blotting out this specific movie’s story and characters. Its “we’re the ones we’re waiting for” message isn’t bombastic, it’s more just hopeful and determined. The movie delivers genuine emotion — particularly in the relationship between Yelena and the Red Guardian (David Harbour is having the Most Fun throughout this movie) — and some genuine laughs as well as occasional action scenes that have real stakes. I don’t love the reason for the * in the movie’s title or the movie’s final moments that address it, but I had a pretty good time otherwise. B In theaters. There are two post credits scenes, one fun and one setting up future stuff.

How to Be Well, by Amy Larocca

How to Be Well, by Amy Larocca (Knopf, 291 pages)

At some undefined point between Helen Gurley Brown and Gwyneth Paltrow, women stopped the pursuit of beauty and replaced it with the pursuit of “wellness.” Wellness is an ill-defined concept, a mixture of good health (mental and physical), good vibes and excellent self-esteem, with the goal of becoming The Best Version of You, as the parlance goes. It is a $5.5 trillion dollar industry according to the Global Wellness Institute, encompassing far more than the pursuit of beauty ever did. (Have you checked the price of collagen peptides lately?)

It is also poorly regulated, and as such, women are subject to a barrage of dubious claims about procedures and products that are said to make them ever more well, while in fact the only certainty is that they will be ever more broke.

Journalist Amy Larocca takes one for the team in How to Be Well, venturing into the wellness space with a skeptical eye and a snarky voice. It’s not a spoiler to say that she was not especially impressed with what she found, given that the subtitle of the book is “Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time.” In other words, if you already have the sense that the colonics industry — which amounts to recreational irrigation of your colon — may be oversold as a life-changing procedure, if you’ve ever gone to Paltrow’s Goop website for a chuckle, you will love this book. If you are a devotee of all things Goop, it will only make you mad.

Larocca begins with a brief history of how wellness evolved. In 1979, she wrote, Dan Rather, on the TV show 60 Minutes, said “Wellness. That’s a word you don’t hear every day.” He was reporting on the Wellness Resource Center in California, and during the segment, asked clients if the idea wasn’t something akin to a “middle-class cult.” It seems prescient now, given the range of strange offerings in the genre, but it’s mostly mainstream. The wellness aisle at your drugstore, Larocca writes, may contain everything from mouthwash to lip gloss to nasal spray. Wellness also encompasses incense, apple-cider vinegar and goat yoga. “It’s a brew that has the potential to drive you nuts,” she writes.

She takes us from the Harvard-educated Dr. Andrew Weil to Dr. Frank Lipman, wellness guru to the stars, and Dr. Mark Hyman, a popular podcaster and proponent of “functional medicine,” which focuses on the root causes of illness and disease. (Lipman and Hyman, Larocca writes, “share a commitment to fascia rolling, morning sun exposure and a cold rinse at the end of a hot shower.”) She also introduces us to Robin Berzin, the founder of Parsley Health, a booming functional medicine practice with holistic doctors that sells memberships for $225 a month or $99 a month if you’re in-network. Parsley is a medical practice that presents as a spa; as with an airport lounge, members who live near a physical location in New York and Los Angeles can hang out there, even if they don’t have an appointment. The average American talks to a primary-care physician 19 minutes a year, Larocca writes, while Parsley members talk to a physician 200 minutes a year. Similar practices are rising up all over the country — but be careful, as wonderful as they may seem, Larocca notes that some of the physicians aren’t board-certified, which has long been the standard of care.

That’s only one aspect of wellness, however, which Larocca says “is every bit as much about looking better as it is about feeling better.” The essence is in the word “glow.”

“The term is so prevalent that it sometimes feels as if a simple replace-all function has been applied to the entire beauty marketing machine: Alexa, find ‘skinny’ and replace all with ‘strong’; find ‘beauty’ and replace all with ‘glow.’” Glowing can be achieved with exercise, with dry brushing (a kind of exfoliation), with supplements and gummies, with bone broth. There is, essentially, Larocca says, a “Glow Cinematic Universe.”

The author describes herself as a “secular atheist,” which sets her apart from the majority of Americans and also adds a certain acidic overlay when she is talking about things like prayer and meditation as part of wellness routines and fitness classes as “spiritual centers.” She believes that “the gospel of wellness” is replacing religious life, and that might be a good conclusion for anyone who, like the author, admits that “I don’t know many people with organized religious lives” which can also be interpreted as “I don’t know many people who aren’t like me.” By the time we get to her chapter that is simply titled “Cult,” the reader might get the sense that she’s not just talking about crystals and sound baths (meditation in which people are “bathed” in sound waves), but about any person who professes any kind of spiritual belief.

The only wellness practice she seems to respect throughout her journey is simple meditation — closing her eyes and repeating a mantra silently, twice a day, 20 minutes at a time. “… it was great to be so totally, completely still,” she writes. She also practices the 4-7-8 breathing technique to calm herself: breathe in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, breathe out for 8 seconds. “There are technical reasons why it works: stress is all sympathetic nervous system; slow breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nerves, calming it all down. It’s simple, logical, direct. For me, it works.”

Summarizing her conclusions at the end, Larocca worries that we are replacing one set of disordered behaviors and practices with another set of disordered behaviors and practices. We don’t know the long-term effects of household chemicals on our health, but we also don’t know the long-term effects of the vitamins and supplements we are being sold today, she writes. What she knows to be true is mostly the stuff we already know: “Drink enough water. Sleep as much as you can. Eat big leafy greens instead of things you can’t pronounce.” And so on. But she also acknowledges, “What is most relevant to my health is my socioeconomic status.”

“What no one wants to say is this: what you really need is to be lucky, and what is often meant by ‘lucky’ is rich.” In other words, wellness might not be the cult of the middle class as Dan Rather once postulated, but the cult of the upper class. B —Jennifer Graham

Album Reviews 25/05/08

Michael Younker, “So What!” (self-released)

Ack, if you ever need to count your blessings, you can start by being thankful that you aren’t the public relations person who was ordered to tell all us rock journos that this guy is trying to sound like ’70s arena-metal band Thin Lizzy. This advance single from the NYC-by-way-of-Detroit rocker’s upcoming EP sounds nothing like Thin Lizzy at all, but the cool part is that Younker admits he has no idea what Thin Lizzy sounds like to begin with. Now, local bands take note, that’s the kind of sloppiness I like to see, and it always guarantees extra style points, which in this case would have led to an A grade if the song were better than Younker’s single from last year, “Sweet Things,” which sounds like Gang Of Four after listening to wayyy too much ’80s-era Dickies-punk. This one, on the other hand, is awesome, yes, but it’s nevertheless disposable after an ’80s post-punk fashion, like a dangerously drunk Ace Frehley trying a little too hard. What am I even saying? Well, he’s done better, that’s what. B+

This Is It, Message (Libra Records)

The greatest trick a jazz band can pull off is making an improvisational record not sound improvisational, that is to say, not a mass of (more or less) unrehearsed, anything-goes, self-indulgent musical statements. Now, given that this trio’s focus artist, 60-year-old pianist Satoko Fujii, is accompanied here by her life partner (trumpeter Natsuki Tamura) and a world-class percussionist (Takashi Itani), as well as that this record is their third as a group, it’s safe to say that a lot of things that may not sound all that free-jazz-ish came about thanks to scribbled Post-Its the band peeked at during these recording sessions. To interested musicians who don’t know free jazz collaborations from a bunch of toddlers pounding Fisher-Price pianos at the day care center, this is a great intro. There’s mindless-sounding bonk-bonk-bonking here and there, yes, but not much of it at all, and that stuff comes off as preparatory rather than dogmatic; one thing this threesome is great at is settling into extended stretches of peaceful, curiosity-filled expressionism. It’s a very special album. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

NOTE: Local (NH) bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter/Bluesky (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

• Here it is, I’m predicting that this year May 9 will fall on a Friday, and furthermore that there will be albums released that day, because it is a Friday! Whoa, this calendar thing on my computer here verifies it, look at all these albums, I’m definitely a psychic who should have my own reality show and an ultimate Karen haircut! I love that all these new albums will be coming out for your entertainment, I can’t wait to tell you guys all about them, so maybe we should start with, let’s see — WAIT, STOP, go read some other part of this newspaper, nothing to see here, especially not the new album from royally canceled hayloft-indie band Arcade Fire, how did this even get on the list! OK wait, don’t get mad, let me go read these guys’ Wikipedia and see if they got rid of Viagra Magoo or whatever his name is — OK, it says Win Butler (aka “DJ Windows 98,” remember the stunt he pulled at SXSW 2015?) is still with these Cursive-wannabes, probably because it was his stupid band in the first place, even though people accused him of sexual misconduct in a 2022 report by Pitchfork. Anyway, whatever, do we really need to go through with this, all right, fine, the new album is called Pink Elephant, and like many albums it has a title track. By the way, the “pink elephant” concept, according to one of the band’s stans on YouTube (in other words a bot or Butler himself in disguise), “suggests that when an individual intentionally tries to avoid thinking a certain thought or feeling a certain emotion, a paradoxical effect is produced: The attempted avoidance not only fails in its object [sic] but in fact causes the thought or emotion to occur more frequently.” I’ll leave the funny punchlines to you reader-people, but as far as the song goes, he sings like Neil Young on it, and the song is slow and boring and indie. Obviously that’s what all the Fire fans wanted to hear on this comeback album, Neil Young doing a feat on an extra-dreary Interpol song, let’s move on when your stomachs are all settled, that’d be great.

• As you know, Blake Shelton is famous for looking like the guy who played Dr. Bones McCoy on the last few Star Trek movies drunk-marrying random rock star ladies making distressingly commercial country-pop songs, so I assume that his new album, For Recreational Use Only, will not consist of covers of devil-metal songs, just trust my psychic abilities. Ah, here we are, the single is called “Let Him In Anyway,” Ugh, it’s like an indie-infused pop-country ballad you’d hear at Applebee’s, like he’s been listening to a lot of Snow Patrol or something, and yup, there it is, he’s singing in a forced southern accent, which, as we discussed the other week, is really dumb and fake.

• San Francisco-based slacker-indie band Counting Crows is of course responsible for “Mr. Jones,” one of the worst songs in human history, but their two other semi-hits are OK. The band’s new LP, Butter Miracle The Complete Sweets, is their first since 2014’s Somewhere Under Wonderland; it opens with the tune “Tall Grass,” a goofy, droopy weird-beard ballad with ’70s instruments like flutes. It’s worthless.

• Speaking of droopy and ’70s-sounding, we’ll wrap up the week with Los Angeles art-popper Deradoorian’s new album, Ready For Heaven, and its goofy, maudlin single, “Set Me Free,” which is like a sexytime montage song for a really bad B-movie from 1971, like Werewolves On Wheels, have you ever seen it, good, I’d hoped not

Featured Image: Michael Younker, “So What!” and This Is It, Message

Pink and Fruity

Every cocktail sends a message.

A draft beer from a major brewery sends one message. Garnishing it with an orange wedge sends a slightly different one. Dropping a shot of whiskey into it for a Boiler Maker sends another one entirely.

Then there are the flamboyant cocktails, the ones that send out very different vibes than a Boiler Maker — though if you could find a cowboy bar that served both, it would be a super-precious discovery. I love the idea of an older guy with a weather-beaten face, calloused hands, and a thousand-yard stare delicately sipping a pink margarita.

So, for the open-minded cowboy in your life:

Pink Margarita

  • 2 ounces Tanteo jalapeño-infused blanco tequila
  • 1 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
  • ¾ ounce amaretto
  • ¼ ounce grenadine
  • Brightly colored confectioner’s luster dust

Wet a finger in water or lemon juice, and dampen the outer surface of a cocktail glass.

Outside, or over a sink, spritz the damp outer surface of the glass with luster dust. Much like glitter from a child’s art project, luster dust has a half-life of about six months, and if you do your spritzing just standing casually at your kitchen counter, you will still be finding sparkly surprises at the holidays.

Combine the tequila, lemon juice, amaretto and grenadine over ice in a cocktail shaker. Ask your digital assistant to play “Freedom! ‘90” by George Michael. Cap the shaker, then shake until your hands get uncomfortably cold and you hear the ice starting to crack.

Strain into your lustery cocktail glass.

Even though it’s actually made from almonds, amaretto has a deeply satisfying, deeply fruity flavor. Tequila goes very well with fruit, of course, and just as well with almonds as it turns out. Grenadine is also fruity and fits in with this theme, but it is mostly here to provide color. It is deep red, but in such a small amount it gives the proceedings a gently pink color — not a flamingo chewing bubble gum shade of pink — just gently and reassuringly pink. The flavor of jalapeño in the background gives this drink a bit of a spine, and keeps it from being a three-swallow cocktail.

We all have some pink in us.

Featured photo: Pink and Fruity. Photo by John Fladd.

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