Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

Books

Like a cross between Philip K. Dick and a “Shouts and Murmurs” in the New Yorker, Charles Baxter’s new novel, Blood Test: A Comedy (Pantheon, 224 pages) strolls through dystopian paranoia with genial humor, an occasional barbed observation, a reliance on cultural clichés, and little depth.

That is largely due to the story’s protagonist and first-person narrator Brock Hobson. In a decreasingly amusing standing joke, no one can get his name right, indicative perhaps of his generic dullness. He’s a church-going, middle-aged guy with a habit of correcting grammatical errors (a more successful standing joke). He sells insurance in Kingsboro, Ohio, a town that differs from those described by Sinclair Lewis a century ago only in that “a third of the town has a drinking problem and another third is on meth and/or Oxy.”

Also, Brock, despite his straitlaced mien, has a gay son and a sexually active daughter with a near live-in boyfriend. He’s estranged from his wife who lives with Burt, a gun nut, parasite, racist, and homophobe, who belongs to a cult called R/Q Dynamics, which is like QAnon by way of Scientology. “Did I mention the hat?” says Brock. “You can imagine the hat.”

Brock hates Burt, but he is only passively aggressive, like with the grammar. Until a mysterious company called Generomics offers to predict his future behavior. After a blood test and a questionnaire (“Who is really in charge? Why are manholes circular?”), they tell him he is a latent criminal. Sure enough, when he visits the local Famous Discount, he shoplifts a pair of garden shears.

“Does my crime spree begin here?” he asks. Yes and no. Those (like me) hoping for a descent into Jim Thompson or even Falling Down (1993)–like madness will be disappointed. Instead, Baxter maintains a narrative full of jokes, digressions, repetitions, and frustrations, with occasional glances at big ideas like free will, good and evil, and the decline of America.

–Peter Keough

Barly Baruti and Thierry Bellefroid’s Chaos in Kinshasa (Catalyst Press, 101 pages) is eye-catching and entertaining. The graphic novel is set in Zaire, among other places, in the days leading up to the heavyweight championship fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974. The bout was advertised in Zaire as “Combat du Siècle.” It was staged in the early hours of the morning so that TV viewers back in the US could witness in prime time the alleged “Fight of the Century.”

The book’s art is colorful, if unnecessarily busy. Also, its storytelling sometimes comes off as muddled, in part because writer Thierry Bellefroid takes on too much. The fight is at the center, of course. Muhammad Ali lured Foreman into exhausting himself and then surprised Foreman with his own resilience. But Bellefroid also takes on the corrupt machinations, at home and abroad, of President Mobutu Sese Seko KuKu Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, Zaire’s self-proclaimed “Citizen Founding President.” Mobutu’s entanglements with various agents, some official and some not, representing half a dozen nations would overwhelm professional historians, let alone the talents of a graphic novelist. On top of that, Bellefroid has included the adventures of a drug-dealing hood from New York who wins a ticket to the fight. Kinshasa turns out to be a fine alternative to being murdered at home by the men from whom he has stolen cocaine.

As a kind of afterward, the author provides some historical context for the stories he’s included. This section of the book will be useful to folks too young to have been familiar with Muhammad Ali in his prime as a boxer, or as a militant opponent of the war in Vietnam, or even in his later years, when Ali took on a warm glow as an ambassador of peace. The author unconvincingly suggests that Muhammad Ali might have had a career in politics. That would seem unlikely, though, given the rise of Donald Trump, who knows?

— Bill Littlefield

Science writer Josh L. Davis leads LGBTQ+ tours at the Natural History Museum in London. His charming and informative presentations have become popular on YouTube and they have inspired A Little Queer Natural History (University of Chicago Press, 128 page), a beautifully illustrated book celebrating the “non-heteronormative biology and behaviors that exist in the natural world.”

Gorgeous photographs accompany stories of hermaphroditic fish, lesbian gulls, and male swan couples raising chicks, as well as spotted hyenas in female-centric colonies. Davis provides evidence of the prevalence of homosexual activity among gorillas, giraffes, and sheep. Same-sex coupling in penguin colonies is documented along with instances of male dolphins pairing off for life. Studies prove that environmental factors determine the gender of turtles, bearded dragon lizards, crocodiles, and the common pill woodlouse.

Adaptability is essential for survival. Readers learn that tiny moss mites have been asexually reproducing for 400 million years. Caribbean mangrove killifish produce both sperm and eggs, fertilizing them by “selfing” with itself. Elusive eels are unsexed until midlife. Frogs and toads are gender fluid. The author expands his thesis with research that demonstrates ”85% of all flowering plants … are hermaphroditic” and fungi reproduce “asexually, sexually, or parasexually.”

Davis’s colorful encyclopedia takes on “scientific” literature dating back to Aristotle, critiquing it for for its biases and “moral language” regarding the diversity of sexual expression. By looking so closely at the queering of the natural world, the author underlines and celebrates an expansive view of erotic behavior. Rooted in empiricism, with no anthropomorphizing or didacticism allowed, A Little Queer Natural History is a valuable counterweight against the homophobia bred by today’s culture wars.

— John R. Killacky

Dino Enrique Piacentini’s compelling debut novel, Invasion of the Daffodils (Astrophil Press, 263 pages) is an intergenerational tale of Mexican American families living on an island off the coast of California during the early ’50s. Self-consciously drawing on florid prose and macabre surrealism, the fable-like narrative centers on the trials and tribulations of a teenage boy, Chico Flores, who stumbles upon a crate filled with daffodil bulbs.

He and his brother sell off the stash of plants throughout the island. Before long, the shoots begin splintering rocks, porches, pipes, buildings, docks, even the church. The destruction disrupts the tourist economy, threatening the livelihood of the Italian business owners and bankers. What’s more, pollen from the flowers burns the skins of white inhabitants but the Mexican families find the daffodils fragrant, harvesting them for contraband — further deepening racial fissures.

The chaos generated by the mysterious bulbs serves as a backdrop for the drama of a young boy who is grappling with his gay sexuality. The teen’s domestic life is another challenge: he is living with his senile grandmother, ailing father, double amputee war veteran brother, who is dealing with PTSD, and a sister who works three jobs to support the family.

Not only is Chico blamed for unleashing horrific flowers, but his stumbling schoolboy desire adds to his isolation from others. Eventually, innuendo about his behavior escalates into violence. Still, despite grinding poverty, racism, and homophobia, Piacentini’s characters are convincingly resilient and tenacious. Miraculously, they maintain hope in the future. The marauding wildflowers fade and wither away, but the lives on the island have been changed forever.

Piacentini teaches creative writing at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop and the University of Denver, and this novel, a colorful variation on magic realism, is an immersive read.

— John R. Killacky

The Talnikov Family (Columbia University Press, 167 pages) is an odd but provocative novella, a tragicomic vision of dysfunctional family life in 1820s St Petersburg by a fascinating literary figure, Avdotya Panaeva (1820-1893), a Russian novelist, memoirist, and contributor to the progressive literary journal The Contemporary. As translator Fiona Bell writes in her informative introduction, there is considerable subversion in this chronicle of domestic misbehavior, which was initially circulated secretly. One can see why, given the story’s presentation of sado-machochistic internecine machinery: loveless, hypocritical men and women mistreat each other and their children with fierce determination.

Starvation, beatings, whippings, untreated illnesses, psychological warping — Natasha and her siblings must withstand that and more, particularly the misdeeds of a nasty governess and a violent uncle who becomes obsessed, to the point of madness, with card-playing. Dad abuses his frightened-to-death children, but he adores his pet birds. Mom could care less about her kids (at times she can’t even remember how many she’s got) — unless the children can be used to help her score points in polite society. We are far from the relative niceties of Turgenev and Tolstoy as we see, amid all the hysteria, alcohol, and tears, how psyches young and old are hammered into perversely trivial shapes.

Thankfully, narrator Natasha defends herself against the hurly-burly with satiric humor, a survival mechanism that includes an eye for grotesque characterization (the grandfather who only reads one book, an almanac he quotes from with zany regularity) and spot-on comic imagery. On occasion, Natasha and company manage to strike back against their tormentors, as when they prepare a trap for the governess: “To attract our prey, we joined hands, formed a circle, and started spinning and jumping like mad, shouting, whistling, and screeching frantically. Our hair was flying — nearly undressed, we looked like dancing savages preparing for a sacrifice.” To Panaeva’s credit, there is never any doubt about who the real savages are and what is being sacrificed.

So, despite the novel’s tacked-on sentimental ending, in which Natasha is plopped into a gooey love match, no alert reader will be reassured in the least. “Everyone’s character is best discerned in their home environment,” points out Panaeva, and Bell aptly comments that “for many people, in the nineteenth century and today, nowhere on earth is more dangerous than the home.”

— Bill Marx

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Jazz

Charlie Parker started his career in big bands, which was common for ’30s musicians. He served a short stint with the Jay McShann orchestra in 1938, then returned in 1940, which is where the jazz world first took notice of his playing and where the oldest material in Charlie Parker in Kansas City (Verve) comes from.

The McShann sessions recorded in 1941 were rehearsal tapes made in preparation for an upcoming session for Decca Records. The tracks include “Margie” and “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You.” There’s some surface noise, but the sound isn’t bad. In “Sentimental…” Parker is given a 36-bar solo and the playing is lovely. Here we already have the singular tone that demarcated the modern alto saxophone from the sound proffered by Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter. One also hears the beginnings of the harmonic and rhythmic probing that permanently altered jazz playing.

The second session, from 1944, features Parker with Kansas City pals Efferge Ware on guitar and “Little” Phil Phillips on drums. We hear Bird favorites, such as “Cherokee” and “Body and Soul.” If this were another alto player we would leave it as an example of great playing. For Bird, it shows that his playing is moving toward the level of genius it would eventually attain. The sound quality is OK.

The big news in Charlie Parker in Kansas City is the session recorded in 1951. Parker is at the height of his power, performing with an unknown bassist and drummer. It was recorded at a house party, so the atmosphere is convivial.

The first three tracks, called Bird Song #1, #2, and #3, are a blues, rhythm changes, and “Lady Be Good.” After that, they play Bird favorites, “Cherokee,” and “Body and Soul” among them. Bassist and drummer are competent and the sound quality is good. Parker here is a fountain of invention — arguably the most accomplished and innovative improviser in jazz history.

Six of the tracks on Charlie Parker in Kansas City have been available before, but the eight others are a treat. If you’re not already a Parker aficionado, these recordings, which give you valuable snapshots of three phases of Parker’s development, will bait the hook.

— Steve Provizer

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Popular Music

On its new album Absolute Elsewhere, the band Blood Incantation takes full advantage of science fiction’s proposition to create worlds and realities from scratch.

And it’s not just the sci-fi tropes of cosmic travel and dispatches from space prophets that make this one of the year’s must-hear heavy records; it’s Blood Incantation’s genre-shattering approach to creating this wondrous audio landscape.

Each of Blood Incantation’s records, starting with 2016’s Starspawn, has been a break from the norm — too brutal sounding by progressive rock standards and more psychedelic than is typically found in the dark recesses of death metal. But running through it all are the Colorado quartet’s fierce, technically dazzling musical chops.

Absolute Elsewhere embraces the avant garde in every way, starting with the album’s title, which references a ’70s English prog-rock project. Blood Incantation made the record in the same Berlin recording studio used by Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, and other experimental musicians. Tangerine Dream’s Thorsten Quaeschning plays synthesizer on one track, while Swedish prog musician Nicklas Malmqvist contributes a variety of keyboard parts throughout the album, adding to its rich texture.

“Absolute Elsewhere” is divided into two parts, “The Stargate” and “The Message.” Each movement consists of three “tablets.” There are broad dynamic shifts within the tablets themselves but, over the course of about 45 minutes, Blood Incantation constructs a cohesive, cinematic sonic experience.

Drummer Isaac Faulk is outstanding, transitioning with ease from metallic blast beats that evoke stifling menace to the multifaceted rhythms that conjure the cosmos. Bandmates Paul Riedl and Morris Kolontyrsky on guitars and Jeff Barrett on bass explore classic prog-rock themes: a section on “The Message” sounds like a mélange of Pink Floyd motifs.

Blood Incantation will be playing at the Brighton Music Hall in Boston on November 27.

–Scott McLennan

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Classical Music

I recently received a CD of Italian lute music from 1620, and I keep returning to it, whether to listen closely or as quiet, thoughtful background to other activities. It contains six suites from the first lute book by Michelangelo Galilei (1575-1631), whose elder brother was the renowned Galileo Galilei. (To order, click here.) Their father Vincenzo was himself a lutenist/composer and theorist who played an important role in the Florentine Camerata, the group whose activities included some of the earliest attempts at creating “drama through music” (now better known as opera).

For several years Michelangelo was in the service of the Radziwill family in Poland. There (according to the informative booklet essay) he enjoyed “a high salary plus lodging, two servants, and a carriage with four horses.” Eventually he moved to Munich, where he served Duke Maximilian I of Bavarian for the rest of his life.

Michelangelo’s lute book is the first by any composer to group pieces in suites rather than by genre (e.g., toccatas, preludes, and dances). Five of the six suites heard here begin with a toccata, after each of which we hear a set of dances, including several corrente movements (analogous to what in French suites are called courante: dance with quick “running” steps).

Whereas some earlier recordings interpret these pieces in the spirit of fantasias, shifting the pace frequently, lutenist Richard Kolb (whose Barbara Strozzi recording I praised here) emphasizes the underlying dance rhythms and allow one to sense the melodic flow even when he adds embellishments to a repeated statement. Kolb uses vibrato subtly, touchingly, and the splendid recording quality allows the listener to enjoy the gorgeous sounds of a single lute resounding in an appropriate-sized hall (a historic 1885 fieldstone and wood church in Tannersville, New York).

A balm for ear and soul.

— Ralph P. Locke

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Film

Before watching Prime Video’s new four-part rock doc The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, directed by Mike Downie, my personal definition of the Hip went something like this: “Canadian band that only Canadians are into. I’m vaguely aware of them, but only because I used to live in Buffalo, NY, which is, of course, close to Canada.”

Since viewing the documentary, my take on the group has changed. It is now: “Canadian band Americans should be obsessed with, but we aren’t because we’re stupid. Wrote “Grace, Too” and “Ahead by a Century,” the two best songs of the ’90s and I’ll shiv anyone who disagrees with me.”

I’m sure I’ll eventually come to my senses and allow that the Tragically Hip didn’t actually produce both the first and second greatest song of the ’90s. Even if they had, it would be wrong to limit the band’s brilliance to two songs, or to confine them to a single decade. All told, the Hip released 13 studio albums (nine of which topped the Canadian charts) in a career that spanned the 1980s to the 2010s, ending with singer Gord Downie’s untimely death from brain cancer in 2017. I just wish I didn’t require this documentary, released nearly 10 years after the Hip ceased to exist, to finally be introduced to the power of the group’s music and the genius of Downie’s lyrics. Better late than never, I suppose, but man, I’m such a stupid American.

— Adam Ellsworth