Classic children's song about a lark / THU 7-25-24 / Slogan in the 2016 Republican presidential primary / Hit the ball well, in baseball slang / English town known for its mineral springs / Singer who coaches on "The Voice," familiarly / First actor to portray a Bond villain (Le Chiffre, 1954) / Willa Cather novel set in 1880s Nebraska / Major fantasy sports platform / Spanish region with a namesake wine

 

"Alouette" (pronounced [alwɛt]) is a popular Quebecois children's song, commonly thought to be about plucking the feathers from a lark. Although it is in French, it is well known among speakers of other languages; in this respect, it is similar to "Frère Jacques". Many US Marines and other Allied soldiers learnt the song while serving in France during World War I and took it home with them, passing it on to their children and grandchildren. [...] "Alouette" has become a symbol of French Canada for the world, an unofficial national song. Today, the song is used to teach French and English-speaking children in Canada, and others learning French around the world, the names of body parts. Singers will point to or touch the part of their body that corresponds to the word being sung in the song. (wikipedia)

This one mostly worked for me, though the nature of the theme made it Awfully easy. All the rebus squares come at the ends of their Across answers and all those squares are "BANG!"s. Once you pick up the gimmick (which was not terribly hard), you aren't likely to be tortured by the potentially destructive presence of hidden rebus squares. You know they're out there, and you know they're "BANG!"s, so if a corner isn't coming together as easily as it should, you just have to ask yourself, "could a 'BANG!' go somewhere in here," and voila! Actually, I never really had to ask. The "BANG!"s seemed to announce themselves, loudly, as you might expect (they're "BANG!"s, after all, not whimpers). I had CHIPS AHOY and then extra square—checked the cross on that square and could see clearly that the answer was SHEBANG. And that was that. Well, at that point, I didn't know the theme concept—I didn't know why we were doing "BANG!"s—but like 20 seconds later the revealer showed up, and that cracked it. "BANG!"s ahoy! There's something slightly monotonous about the theme, and the revealer was kind of anticlimactic (it explained, but it didn't surprise) ... and yet whatever slightly tired feelings I was having about the theme were all blown away by one glorious, bygone slogan; a mere syllable that sent my jaded heart soaring. That slogan, that syllable, that short burst of low-key energy that is perhaps the only amusing memory I have of the 2016 presidential race? Why, it's JEB!, of course. JEB! I laughed for real. The guts you gotta have to bring that one back. The confidence that anyone will remember! I am surprised by how much I loved remembering the delightful quaintness and completely ineffectual "enthusiasm" of that slogan. Man ... good times. Dude had no idea what hit him. Then the election happened and we were all JEB! Oof. See, I don't like remembering the whole 2016 SHEBANG. I prefer remembering *just* the plucky, go-get-'em slogan. The three letters least likely to precede an exclamation point. J-E-B! The little engine that couldn't, god bless him.

Oh, look at that, the puzzle is 16 wide. Didn't even notice. I guess your options were: go with GO OUT... and a narrow 14 or go with GOES OUT... and expand to 16. Wise choice. Give yourself room. 

I was a little disappointed in patches with the short fill, which ran a little olden, especially olden-namey: ALEC ESTEE IVOR LORNA, 20th-century stalwarts all. There was also APERS and ITTY and ATSEA and AGAR and ODED and other hardcore repeaters of various levels of irksomeness. But the theme was strong enough to carry the day, and some of the longer answers had real pizzazz. I do enjoy a MOCHA LATTE and I especially enjoy PETER LORRE (30D: First actor to portray a Bond villain (Le Chiffre, 1954)) whose name I was happy to see in full today (Have you seen M, you should see M ... also The Maltese Falcon ... but I digress). I had no idea (or forgot) that "ALOUETTE" was about a lark. I think it was the name of a cheese when I was growing up, so the whole "plucking" thing didn't quite make sense in French class, at first. Yeah, here we go: a cheese spread, actually: