Tag: 250529

Mood Swing

Faith Ann Band refines sound, adds guitarist

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

In January, with some new songs done, but not enough for a studio album, the Faith Ann Band chose to put out their first live EP instead. Recorded at the Stone Church in Brattleboro, Vermont, it’s a blistering collection, a solid document of a hard-charging quartet hitting its stride, driven by feral frontwoman Faith Ann Mandravelis’s raw energy.

It kicks off with “Route 2,” its lead-in strum giving way to bashing and growling. With provocative lines like, “your breath on my neck is a whole kinda mood” — a studio version released in March ends with heavy metal vocal jousting — it captures the many vibes convincingly struck by the band on the live record.

There’s a proto-metal cover on Live at VT Stone Church: “The Wizard,” from Black Sabbath’s 1970 debut. The show was on Good Friday 2024, and while the song’s selection wasn’t intentional, one audience member noticed. Faith Ann said in a recent phone interview that included bassist Nate Sanel and drummer Nick Johnson, “This guy rushed right up to us right after we played it. He was like, ‘Black Sabbath on a Good Friday in a church — that’s so metal!’”

A show at Manchester’s Shaskeen Pub on Friday, May 30, will give New Hampshire fans a chance to hear where the band is landing these days — a more collaborative creative process that will be displayed on Say Less, the upcoming follow-up to 2022’s In Bloom.

“It’s definitely a different sound … a bit more poppy, more driving, maybe a little more funky,” Nate Sanel said. “With a different band and a different lineup. Faith is still writing the lyrics and the songs, but now there are three different people contributing overall — and we have a different producer on this album, too.”

Faith Ann said her songwriting these days was removed from the take-no-prisoners stance on In Bloom. Lyrically, that LP was an immediate, often visceral response to leaving corporate life and other complications. At the time, she called it a healing journey and talked about stepping out of the shadows from a toxic relationship.

That’s changed.

“I’m trying to be more whimsical,” she said, adding that the group’s new dynamic is a contributing factor. “Although I’m still bringing songs that I’ve thought of, the band is taking up space now; that’s a cool thing. [Also], we’re concentrating more on the performance, getting people dancing and invested into the set.”

The Shaskeen show will feature the newest member of the group, Eric Shea on lead guitar. While not exactly the same as Spinal Tap’s drum chair, the Faith Ann Band has had its fair share of guitarists over the years. “We’ve talked about that a lot,” Faith Ann agreed. Lately, they’ve carried on as a trio, and are looking forward to the extra power Shea will add.

Sharing the stage in Manchester is Andrew North & the Rangers. Faith Ann admired the Concord band’s efforts to support its local scene, like the monthly open mic it hosts at BNH Stage. “You’re getting the passion and the talent … they’re trying to push it,” she said. “When I think about who’s going to put the effort in to bring a crowd, it’s a good choice; and it’s been a while since we’ve played with them.”

Between their leader’s frequent solo gigs and other shows that are set for the coming months, the group is keeping busy. At the end of June they’ll be on the main stage for this year’s Concord Market Days. They’re also booked for Troutstock 2025 in Montague, Mass., July 25-27, and the Barefoot Festival in Greenfield on Aug. 2.

On June 22 they’re leading an all-day Summer Kick-Off at Auburn Pitts, a show Faith Ann organized.

“Some people just want a day of it, and they don’t want to be committing their whole weekend,” she said of the event, which also has Glitter Tooth, The Whole Loaf, Tumbletoads and Jesse Rutstein. “I’m trying to bring more of the day-fest vibes to the Manchester area, because it’s a bumping city.”

Faith Ann Band w/ Andrew North & the Rangers

When: Friday, May 30, 8 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $20 at eventbrite.com

Featured photo. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 25/05/29

Local music news & events

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

• Shedheads: There must be something about the Lakes Region that Zac Brown Band loves. They’ve played the al fresco venue there since it was named after a phone company, and keep coming back, even if they have a show at Fenway Park. Their latest record is No Wake Zone, which includes “Pirates & Parrots,” a duet with Jimmy Buffett’s old bandmate Mac MacAnally. Thursday, May 29, 7 p.m., BankNH Pavilion, 72 Meadowbrook Lane, Gilford, $69 and up at livenation.com.

• Jamtastic: Named after a late ’90s song by ska punk band Catch 22, Supernothing has a percolating rock reggae sound that’s perfect for the board shorts and sandals of the coming season. Last week, the Concord band dropped a new single called “Summer Soul,” a smooth wave-y jam with an infectious chorus featuring Kurdistan-born singer-songwriter B. Positive. Friday, May 30, 6:30 p.m., Henniker Brewing Co., 129 Centervale Road, Henniker. More at supernothing603.com.

• Brotherly: Given that Liam and Noel Gallagher doing an American tour is unlikely, the Oasis tribute SuperSonic will have to suffice. After all, a lot of English pounds have already been wagered on the two fractious siblings brawling before their English reunion run gets to Wembley. So enjoy “Wonderwall,” “Champagne Supernova” and “Don’t Look Back In Anger” here instead. Saturday, May 31, 7:30 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $35 at palacetheatre.org.

• Bobness: Her 2017 album Songs of Bob Dylan showed Joan Osborne to be a solid interpreter of his catalog. This year, she revisited it with Dylanology Live, supported by Amy Helm, Robert Randolph and Jackie Greene on “Masters of War,” “Buckets of Rain” and other songs. For an area show, Cindy Cashdollar, Nicki Bluhm and Gail Ann Dorsey will perform with her. Sunday, June 1, 7 p.m., Chubb Theatre at CCANH, 44 S. Main St., Concord, $53 and up at ccahn.com.

• Folkified: On songs like “Tom’s Diner,” “Frank and Eva” and the poignant ode to 9/11 “Anniversary,” Suzanne Vega is a vital chronicler and erudite ambassador to her New York City home. She’ll play those songs, along with her timeless hit “Luka,” and others that reveal what one critic called her “clinically poetic eye” during a show at a venue she helped open back in 2023. Wednesday, June 4, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $54 and up at etix.com.

Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning (PG-13)

Tom Cruise does awesome stunts with biplanes but you gotta wait through like two hours of movie to get to that in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, a movie that is allegedly the finale of this Mission: Impossible series.

In a movie with a smattering of Little Bads, the Big Bad here is the Entity — an AI that “eats truth” and is causing havoc all over the world, which is such an eyeroll of a “yeah, I’ve got that on my phone” thing but this one is attempting to hack into all the world’s nuclear weapons systems and control them so that it, the Entity, can destroy all life on Earth and … something. Throughout the movie I remained murky on the something, the explanation for how nuclear apocalypse benefits the Entity. But whatever the reason, it really wants this. And it has even convinced a few human people that nuclear apocalypse is a cool idea, so occasionally we get an Entity-puppet-person throwing a wrench in some Team Impossible Mission plan.

Nuclear apocalypse, that’s The Entity’s goal. The movie’s goal is to connect many of the various Ethan Hunt (Cruise) missions (i.e. the previous movies) as all sharing a part in the rise of The Entity. So we get a lot of flashbacks here to accompany talk about how this thing he stole in a previous movie provided some building block to the Entity in another movie or how this guy from the first movie is related to this thing now. The good news is that you don’t really have to care about any of this to enjoy the best parts of Final Reckoning. The bad news is that we all this discussion is a slog to get through and I wish we could have just replaced the movie’s first 40 minutes with one of those Star Wars crawls.

The meat of this deal is our familiar team — Ethan, Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), requisite girl Grace (Haley Atwell), villain turned ally Paris (Pom Klementieff) and extra person American good guy Theo (Greg Tarzan Davis) — performing a series of tasks to attempt to stop the Entity before the Entity can blow up the world. President Angela Bassett (her name is Erika; Wikipedia says the character has been in three of these movies) is getting competing advice to either do a preemptive bombing on all the nuclear powers (which wouldn’t seem to solve a single problem but sure) or just unplug her weapons so the Entity can’t control them. (The movie doesn’t, as far as I can remember, address the “just unplug the weapons” element but it did stop me for a moment. Ethan and the team have to travel the world, cheating death multiple times, but also nations could just unplug their weapons? I get that the Entity has sown mistrust and nations of the world have stopped communicating with each other but I mean come on.)

Anyway, our heroes perform a bunch of tasks — and stunts — to stop the Entity, President Angela Bassett and assorted “Madame President, we can’t trust this one rogue agent” types are hanging out in a room with maps and countdown clocks, and then, throughout, assorted troublemakers show up to give the tasks an extra challenge. One of recurring regulars of this sort is Gabriel (Esai Morales), who was in the last movie.

We have here maybe a solid 50 minutes of fun action sequences, including an interesting sequence where Ethan has to fight his way through a sunken submarine that is on a shelf in the ocean, slowly rolling toward an abyss. And we also get the set piece finale with the airplanes, cross-cut of course with a scene of the Team trying to work out various computer-y, wire-y, bomb things. These scenes deliver the feeling of “wheeee!” that I look for in my Missions: Impossible. Tom Cruise with his “my family gets more death benefits if I die in the line of duty” energy doing absolutely crazy stunts that you can tell are, to some degree, not just green screen, is why I buy the ticket.

Unfortunately, this movie is two hours and 49 minutes long and we spend a whole lot of time in the other kinds of scenes, most of which don’t add any of the energy and lightness that is this movie’s hallmark when it’s really humming. There are very assembled-with-duct-tape story elements trying to draw in barely remembered characters or events from earlier in the series. As awesome as Angela Bassett is, there is probably too much time spent with her and her cabinet and their ultimately irrelevant discussions. There are some lesser action scenes that feel like a box of puzzle pieces are just being thrown at you — Hand! Knife! Tom Cruise’s face way too close up!

The Mission Impossible series is one of those franchises when the best movies pare back the story and let the artistry of the stunts shine. The Final Reckoning too often tries to steal its best elements’ spotlight. B- In theaters.

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (Berkley, 432 pages)

Cracking open a new Emily Henry novel is like settling into a beach chair, soaking up the warmth of the sun as you sink your feet into the cool sand and savor the moment of calm, unbothered bliss. And then it’s better than that, knowing you’ll be in this state of bliss for as long as the story lasts, rather than for a few minutes before the sun gets too hot and you start sweating and wishing you’d brought an umbrella.

That’s the experience I’ve had with all of Henry’s novels, and Great Big Beautiful Life was no exception — at first. That initial feeling of euphoria was real; as always, Henry’s engaging writing drew me right in and I was totally on board with the story, of two writers vying for a job to write the biography of a reclusive heiress who disappeared years ago following a series of tragedies and a lifetime of public scrutiny.

I love the premise. I’m a fan of the novel’s protagonist, Alice, a serial optimist, and her rival/love interest, Hayden, a serial pessimist. I even liked Margaret Ives, the mysterious octogenarian heiress.

So I was all in, at first, for Henry’s departure from her typical rom-com. But then the sun got too hot, so to speak. Because just as Alice and Hayden’s romance starts to heat up, Margaret’s telling of her “juicy” life story takes over and the focus shifts to her extensive family history.

And I do mean extensive. Even Alice notes some frustration when Margaret starts her story several generations back, rather than diving into the more recent past.

I already don’t love the story-within-a-story framework, because I almost always like one story more and feel antsy when I’m reading the “other” story, waiting to get back to the good stuff. In this case, I was by far more interested in Alice and Hayden. I loved their interactions and wanted more of them, to watch their relationship develop more explicitly.

Margaret’s family’s decades of secrets and deceptions? I really wanted to care, but it all felt so convoluted. I kept forgetting who was related to whom and in what way. And the element of mystery that permeates the Ives’ family history, that presumably the general public cares enough about to read a Margaret Ives biography, isn’t all that exciting.

I was hoping when we got to Margaret’s hyped-up romance with another briefly famous person, Cosmo, there would be similar vibes to Alice and Hayden’s story. But even that fell flat for me.

I truly believe that the cover of Great Big Beautiful Life is a disservice to what the novel actually is: more “women’s fiction” than rom-com. Every time I picked the book up, I could not align the cover image with the words inside — but only if I was on a Margaret chapter. The Alice/Hayden plot fit the cover perfectly. It’s like Henry wanted to try something more serious but also didn’t want to let go of the genre she does best, ultimately creating a disjointed reading experience.

All that being said, Emily Henry’s writing is so lovely, and I appreciate her attempt to step out of her comfort zone. I can’t help wondering, if Henry had written a book solely about the Ives family — and marketed it accurately, as women’s fiction rather than a rom-com — whether I would have been more invested, knowing that I’d be reading a historical family saga.

Likewise, I think Alice and Hayden’s story has more to offer, both their relationship and their individual stories. Alice as a character is refreshing in that she is so positive in a way that could be annoying but somehow is not. Hayden is the grumpy male character that’s been written plenty of times before, but there’s something about him that seems sincere from the beginning and more real than the average grump-turned-lover rom-com character. They also both have intriguing pasts that could have used more fleshing out.

Great Big Beautiful Life is two mostly good stories that just don’t mesh well. But it’s still worth the read. Henry’s writing is a warm hug, no matter what she’s writing about, so as long as you’re not expecting straight-up rom-com vibes, this is a few hours well spent. B —Meghan Siegler

Album Reviews 25/05/29

Smut, Tomorrow Comes Crashing (Bayonet Records)

From Cincinnati, Ohio, comes this pleasingly melodic but quite loud post-Riot grrrl outfit combining fat, shreddy guitars and top-drawer female singing toward an effort to concoct something that’s like an alternative-universe epic metal, if you will. The focus track, “Syd Sweeney,” could indeed be a fourth-wave feminist treatise for all I could tell from the barely discernible lyrics in its Blair Witch Project-like video, but the main riff has a noise part that’s really neat. Opening tune “Godhead” has a little shoegaze feel to it, but its urgency and decidedly non-androgynous attitude isn’t native to that genre; “Dead Air” is an even more complicated genre-mix, given its gauzy guitars and overly reverbed vocals giving way to pure grunge. This is all a major departure from their previous dream-pop approach; it’s more like a cross between Garbage and a grown-up Avril Lavigne, would be the shorthand. It’s pretty great really. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Ryan Truesdell, Shades of Sound: Gil Evans Project Live at Jazz Standard, Vol. 2 (Outside in Music)

Truesdell, a winner of multiple Grammys, has a deep fascination with the work of Canadian-American pianist-composer Gil Evans; this is his second dive into the extensive catalog of Evans, who died in 1988 after having an influential hand in the evolution of free jazz, fusion and other associated sounds. Suffice it to say that if you like horns you’ll love this; some of New York’s finest jazz musicians are here, including trombonist Ryan Keberle, who’s been featured on this page, and sax player Donny McCaslin (ditto), both of whose frenetic ramblings are held in check by drummer Lewis Nash. Aside from “The Ballad Of The Sad Young Men,” there’s honestly not much space for the listener to relax here, not that anyone would want that in a vital jazz release; wildly talented singer Wendy Gilles is the frosting on the cake, elaborately decorating such things as the Big Band-evoking “Laughing At Life.” You don’t want to miss this, seriously. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Like a big stupid iceberg that’s about to harsh my mellow, here comes Friday, May 30, with all its new albums, I’m dinging the warning bell as hard as I can but you people just keep shopping, oblivious to the danger, sad-face emoji! This Friday sees the biggest haul of albums in quite a while, where on Earth were all these people around Christmastime when I was sucking wind trying to fill this space and all I had to talk about were nonsense albums. Boy, you should see this huge pile of new albums, everyone on Earth is trying to get a jump on the summertime makeout-music market, it’s overloaded with new stuff I have no interest in whatsoever, but wait, my stomach might be able to handle this new album from Garbage, titled Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, my wife likes them anyway, let me see what’s even going on here, get your Doritos and let’s do this, folks. This album is reported to be “thematically more optimistic and less socio-political” than their previous ones, which is actually a nice break; personally I couldn’t care less what some rock star thinks about Trump or whatnot, everyone has their minds made up about these things one way or another depending on their lamestream media of choice, let me go listen to the record’s opening track, “There’s No Future In Optimism.” Yikes, it sounds like Madonna for the first few bars, and then comes the familiar asphalt-burning post-punk vibe Garbage fans have known and loved since the Sphinx was being built, I’m sure they’ll approve. They’ll be at the Roadrunner in Boston on Sept. 18, start saving your DoorDash tips now, because tickets start at $100, yes, you read that right, can you believe how out of control tickets prices have gotten? I was just watching an old interview with Kurt Cobain where he was shocked that Madonna was charging $50 (this was back during the Grover Cleveland administration) and Nirvana was only charging $17. Crazy, isn’t it? And it’s bad, too, because according to a recent internet story that made the rounds for a day or so, regularly going to concerts adds years to your life, not that I believe it. Do you?

• Oh no, this can’t be happening, someone with more money than brain cells decided to do a documentary about Pavement, the band I literally detest most in the world; I never bought the line that they were “the slacker version of the Rolling Stones for the 1990s,” I just thought they were awful. But hey, that might not be you, and so there’s nothing I can do but report that the documentary, Pavements, has a soundtrack, performed by that awful band, and it comes out Friday. Spoiler, all the sample tuneage sounds like your drunk uncle playing bad chords on his Flying V guitar through a second-hand Peavey amp and making up random songs about existentialism or women who didn’t want anything to do with him when he was 15, are those guys really relevant anymore? (Reminder: Dr. David Thorpe totally agrees with me.)

• Also on Friday, garage rock revivalist Ty Segall releases his 17th album, Possession, featuring the title track, a palatable-enough ’70s-pop-rock thing that sounds like Joe Walsh if he could sing, doing understated boogie/whatnot.

• Lastly we have former pop diva of the month Miley Cyrus, with her new one, Something Beautiful. This is said to be a “visual album showcasing her love for fashion,” which I took to mean, you know, the videos would be visually interesting, but the video for the title track isn’t, it’s just Miley made up like a Hunger Games judge, singing torch-style, like she wants to be Amy Winehouse this month (fat chance), but at least she’s not trying to be Black Sabbath again, am I right gang? —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Image: Malphas, Tales from the Olden Realm (self-released/Bandcamp) & Ches Smith, Clone Row (self-released)

Amanda’s Savory Cheesecake

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

“Why don’t you ever make anything for me?” Amanda asked.

“How about some cookies?”

“No,” she said with a frown. “I’m keto.”

“Some muffins? I could make them out of almond flour?”

“Will they have sugar in them?”

“So, what would you like?”

“You know me,” she repeated with a bright smile. “I’ll like anything you make.”

Amanda’s Savory Cheesecake

Crust
Two 8-ounce bags of roasted, salted pecans
3 Tablespoons butter, melted
1 egg white

Cheesecake filling

Three 8-ounce blocks of cream cheese
½ cup (113 g) sour cream
3 Tablespoons corn starch
1 teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons capers, drained
1/3 cup (20 g) chopped chives (well, snipped actually; chives prefer to be cut with scissors)
½ 14-ounce can of artichoke hearts – four or five hearts
2 Tablespoons balsamic vinaigrette
Preheat oven to 350°F.

Grease a 9-inch springform baking pan, and line the bottom with parchment paper. Welcome the lined pan to the team, and set it aside to prepare for its upcoming mission.

Chop pecans in a blender, then transfer them to a mixing bowl. Mix the chopped pecans with the melted butter and the egg white, then transfer the mixture to the springform pan, and press it down with the bottom of a measuring cup or a coffee mug. Bake it for 20 minutes, then set it aside to cool for a few minutes, while you make the cheesecake filling. Reduce the oven temperature to 250°F.

Drain the canned artichoke hearts, then squeeze them by hand — hard, like they owe you money. They will break apart, which is what you want. Put the broken-spirited artichoke hearts into a small bowl, and add the balsamic vinaigrette. Leve the two to marinate for 15 or 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, use an electric mixer to beat the cream cheese, corn starch, sour cream and salt together until they are light and fluffy. Put the corn starch in first to avoid poof-ing. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber or silicone spatula, then beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Add the capers, chives and now thoroughly inebriated artichoke hearts to the cream cheese mixture and stir them in by hand.

Transfer the mixture to the springform pan, on top of the pecan crust. Smooth it out with the silicone spatula or the back of a large, wet spoon.

Place the cheesecake on the middle rack of your oven. (You remembered to turn the temperature down, didn’t you?) Bake it for 45 minutes, then turn the oven off, but leave the cheesecake in it for another hour. Do not open the door.

After the oven and the cheesecake have calmed down together, take the cheesecake out and leave it on the counter to continue pulling itself together. Yes, 250°F is what we would call a “gentle” heat, but it can still be traumatic to a cheesecake.

Serve at room temperature, in modest-sized slices. While it’s not a sweet dish, it is very rich, and one slice per guest will be perfect. A glass of prosecco or a cup of oolong tea will be a perfect accompaniment.

Amanda’s verdict?

“This is like the best dip I’ve ever had. But it’s a CHEESECAKE!.”

Nomad Bakery

Cheryl Holbert’s bread is available weekly at Benedikt Dairy (97 Shirley Hill Road, Goffstown, 801-7056, benediktdairy.com), on the menu at The Grind Cafe (5 W. Broadway, Derry, 260-2411, facebook.com/thegrindnh), on selected dates at the Derry Homegrown Farm & Artisan Market (1 W. Broadway, Derry, 479-5918, derryhomegrown.org) on Wednesdays, June through September. She also accepts commissions through her Facebook page, facebook.com/NomadBakery.

Featured photo: Amanda’s Savory Cheesecake. Photo by John Fladd.

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