For you perverts who like things that I write about things, here's some of the amazing stories about engaging people doing creative things with their unique talents that I wrote about elsewhere this week. Karmin, Active Child, Downeast Cider, hand-select spirits barrels, Bats in the Belry on WMBR and Mother's Day drinking below. 

I reviewed the new Karmin record in the Globe. After I turned in the review I listened to the record like 20 more times, which I almost never do. I still don't know if it's the best thing ever or the grossest thing ever. Music is hard.

Debuting a pop act with a hit cover song has long been a reliable business model, but there’s an inherent problem in that it sets the bar artificially high for its own follow-up originals. “Original” is a loaded word when it comes to Karmin, however. The Berklee College of Music-born cutesy, “swag-pop” duo’s brilliant cover of Chris Brown’s “Look at Me Now” was hugely dynamic, charismatic, and full of life — and a tough act to follow. On its official debut, Karmin sidesteps creative expectations by simply sounding like every other pop act going. With such carefully market-tested hit-making alchemy at work, naturally much of the record is irresistible. Lead single “Brokenhearted” is a gorgeously fun blast of Pink and Katy Perry-ish fluff that will lodge in your brain forever. “Too Many Fish” repackages a raft of Beyoncé tracks in style, sonic palette, and attitude, with its clapping beat and vocal inflections; while “Coming up Strong” sounds like a remix of Avicii’s “Fade Into Darkness” slowed down into a chintzy country-pop ballad with (of course) a Nicki Minaj cameo rap. It’s all quite familiar, down to the coed vocal tones, Auto-tune, piano instrumentation, and mannered flow. Title track “Hello” reaches for a David Guetta ascending trance-synth club energy, and (most horrifying of all) echoes a Nirvana hook. Guaranteed hits all — “originality” never counted for much in the pop game anyway.

I interviewed bro from Active Child in the Phoenix this week.

Since the invention of music, dudes have been harnessing their natural singing talents for one specific purpose: to pick up babes. That sort of thing was frowned upon throughout much of history, however, so they had to disguise their motives by singing for one very special chick in the sky; a chick named God. Now, of course, we can just beam digital signals into space to shorten the lag time, but there was a time when we gathered together in collective voice to sing loudly and clearly enough that it might reverberate throughout the heavens.

That's the glorious tradition that Pat Grossi, a/k/a Active Child, draws upon in his music, a mix of choral vocal arrangements and glitchy beat-making (with vaguely '80s stylistic touches) that somehow lands squarely in the sweet spot of the indie/laptop-fi/James Blake-wave romanticism that's gently lulling the kids into a state of bliss these days.

Brian Feulner for the Boston Globe

Bats in the Belfry is a goth-themed radio show that's been airing on one of the country's best non-commercial radio stations, WMBR, for twenty damn years. That's a long time in case you're not good at math or knowing about things that should seem obvious. I wrote about it in the Globe.

In an age of streaming music through services like Spotify and algorithm-driven sites like Pandora, the radio DJ has become an antiquated holdover of a bygone age. The only problem is, that age was kind of great.

The ability to choose from literally any band you can think of and hear its music in an instant is a welcome advance, but there’s still something to be said for letting someone else take control, a trusted supervisor like Laura Wilson, a.k.a. Mistress Laura, the longtime host of the goth-themed “Bats in the Belfry” show on WMBR-FM (88.1; Mondays from 8-10 p.m.). The program celebrates its 20th anniversary this Saturday at the Magic Room Gallery in Brighton with a lineup of bands drawn from throughout its history.

“Internet radio has certainly changed the landscape a lot,” Wilson says. “But I still believe in the power of live radio, college radio, noncommercial radio. Even though I’m aware people have all sorts of options for getting turned on to new music, I still really believe in the medium of radio, I’ve been a real champion for that. There’s nothing like having a live human being on the radio bringing you music and all the current happenings.”

Erin Baldassari/Metro

It's Mother's Day. Get her a drink and let her relax for one damn second instead of whatever else it is you normally do for her. Nothing, I'm guessing, if you're an ungrateful shit like me. I picked out a few places to get the job did in Boston in the Metro.

In a highly scientific poll I just conducted, 8 out of 10 mothers said all they wanted for Mother’s Day was to get away from their wiener kids for an hour. The other two were passed out from exhaustion. OK, so maybe the poll isn’t that scientific, but taking mom out for brunch is such a boring tradition. Wouldn’t she rather relax with a cocktail than a plate of warm eggs? It’s possible I don’t fully understand the concept of motherhood.

Everywhere you turn you’ll find Mother’s Day deals this weekend, but for the MILTDWs (moms I’d like to drink with) here are a few special cocktail options.

Lots of bars are hand-picking their own barrels of specific spirits to serve to you! That's right, they did it all for you.  Wait, why would they do that? I explain in Stuff this week.

The ever-broadening field of spirits on the market is hard enough to keep straight (especially once you’ve tried a few in a row). And a handful of Boston bars have been adding yet another layer of specialization to their repertoires with the introduction of hand-selected barrel spirits — carefully chosen offerings that are exclusive to a given watering hole.

“It’s really unique to taste bourbons and tequilas barrel by barrel,” says Kara Kukull, assistant director of bar operations at Legal Sea Foods. Last month, Legal introduced its third bar-specific offering, a blend of five- and 10-year rums from Demerara Distillers in Guyana. It joins previous menu options, an Eagle Rare 10-year bourbon and Corazón añejo tequila.

“You really do see how the barrels vary, imparting different flavors and profiles to the resulting spirit,” explains Kukull. By tasting her way through a distillery’s offerings, she gets to pull the best barrels it has to offer — or those that most closely match her restaurants’ drinking demographic.

Cider is gross right? Not when it's done right. The new Downeast Cider, made in Maine, is quite good in fact. I asked the dude who makes it how he pulled that off in the Globe. 

Q: People seem to understand the basics of brewing beer now. How is the cider process different? 

A: It's actually more like the wine-making process. We're technically a winery. The apples are ground up, pressed out, and you have the juice, which has a certain sugar level which determines the final alcohol after fermentation. You put the yeast in, it eats up the sugar, and that produces the alcohol. After that we've added a few steps to the process, which we're trying to keep secret for now, but using an ale yeast is a big part of it. We add tannins, I'm not sure anyone else does. Cider is typically fermented with Champagne or white wine yeast. Yeasts are normally responsible for a lot of the flavors in the beverage, and an ale yeast will give off different flavors. Fermentation takes about 7 to 9 days, the whole production cycle takes about 16.

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