I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: JARVIS COCKER-Further Complications (2009).

I really enjoyed Pulp’s Different Class album when it came out.  In fact, I liked it so much I made sure to get This is Hardcore and even the one before the got big, His n Hers.  I felt like the earlier stuff was just okay.  So either they hit their stride or they got lucky just before they broke up.

Going back now, I don’t like those discs as much as I did then (maybe it was burnout), but I retained a fondness for Jarvis Cocker and his zany exploits. And yet, I wasn’t really all that interested in his solo output.

But there were several excellent reviews of this disc and I figured I’d check it out.  And it was totally worth it.  This disc is a fascinating collection of seemingly every musical style that Cocker has ever heard.  Each song is laden with his (often caustic) wit and clever word play.  And it rocks really hard.  It was produced by Steve Albini (!).

Musically, there’s not a terrible amount of originality, but that almost seems the point.  Cocker is trying on differnt styles, writing archetypical or over-the-top verses for these songs.  “”Further Complications.”” opens the disc in what could be described as a Pulp-style rocker (But, and this is consistent throughout the disc, with much harder guitars).  “Angela” is a dopey hard rocker ala the Stooges, while “Pilchard” is a fantastic near-instrumental with great breaks and stops.

The disc slows down on “Leftovers” which reminds me of a Nick Cave type ballad (although it is much funnier).  “I Never Said I Was Deep” is, as the title suggests, a wonderfully self deprecating ballad.  Funny and catchy with the delightful chorus, “I never said I was deep, but I am profoundly shallow.”

“Homewrecker!” is another great rocker (this one horn-filled).  And “Fuckingsong” is a noise-filled, riff-fired rocker that seems totally out of character for Jarvis and yet works perfectly.

The last two songs take up a lot of time on the disc.  “Slush” is another delicate ballad that kind of overstays its welcome at 6 and a half minutes (lop off a minute or so and it would be very tidy).  But despite being too long, the song itself is really great.

And the final song “You’re in My Eyes (Discosong)” is, indeed a very disco-y tune.  It fits in thematically with the rest of the disc somehow (probably because of how seedy it sounds).  And it works very well as a disc track.  But it also suffers from disco excess, in that at nearly 9 minutes it is too long by half.  Especially since the last three minutes are (my personal pet peeve) just a repeat and fade/final note to the end.  It ‘s the kind of thing that makes me not want to hit play immediately again because it really bugs me when a great album like this slowly fades away for three minutes.  But then I remember that the rest of the disc is pretty fantastic, and I give it another whirl.

Good for you Jarvis, welcome back.

[READ: October 3, 2009] Automatic World

This is one of the first books I’ve read in a long time really just didn’t click for me.  I picked up this book because of this fantastic review at The Walrus.  The book wasn’t (and still isn’t) available in the States (although you can get a used copy from Amazon for $10), so I ordered in from amazon.ca.  And the fact that I actually ordered it from Canada (and paid the shipping) is the major reason why I read through to the end.

But here’s the thing.  Sections of the book are fantastic and totally gripping.  But other sections are nebulous and confounding.  And you get the real sense that the four (or more) stories are related, they really aren’t (as far as I can see).  Now, I am fully willing to admit that I simply didn’t get this book.  I’ve just come off reading (and putting a ton of effort into) Infinite Jest.  I deliberately didn’t read Automatic World at the same time as IJ because I knew it was supposed to be a difficult read.  So, it’s entirely possible that I was simply burnt out to really appreciate what was going on here.

When I just re-read the review at the Walrus, it once again really made me want to read the book (the review suggests that the book lets you know that the four stories are not connected, but I don’t think it does).

But let’s see what the book is about.

Each chapter opens with a name.

The Train is the first.  And the train is very important because the central event of the book is a train crash.  The train seems to have fallen behind schedule by three minutes (and three minutes is the one thing that is consistent through the book) and as a result crashes into another train on the line.  The cause of the crash is investigated thoroughly in the chapters.

I is second.  And I admit that “I” was a really challenging read.  I is recovering from a brain injury and is trying to remember, well, his life.  The focus of his memory is on causation, how one thing follows another, which he simply cannot comprehend.

Cal comes  third.  I liked the Cal story quite a bit.  The Cal story is also strangely set up.  Cal tracks down a news reporter who wrote a story about his father, Merle.  The story concerned Merle’s suicide, and how Cal was too late to help him.  (I’m unclear why the reporter would have even known about this story, and why it would have been reported on).  It turns out that Cal had saved his father on seven previous suicide attempts.  And Cal relates this story (because the reporter didn’t include all of this information in the article) to the reporter.  But he tells it to her through the voice intercom at her apartment’s front door.  (At some point, the landlord even brings him a chair).  This section was fascinating and gripping and I found myself caring far more about Cal than “I”.

Dory gets the next section.  I found the Dory story very confusing.  I think I lost track of the characters right from the start and then I was never able to get them back.  Dory has been writing a letter for decades.  She is constantly revising and removing pages from it.  We see parts of it and then learn that those parts have now been excised.

I got confused by this section because there are mothers and daughters and possibly fictional characters involved in this section.  In the most memorable part, Dory (or is it Ruby?) and her friend Eff go exploring a ghost town.  (And again, I couldn’t determine if the ghost town (called Zane) was meant to be real or imaginary).  Portions of the Dory section I found to be very vivid and yet I can’t call it up clearly even just a few days later.

Merrick is the final new section, although Merrick is not the narrator.  Merrick is an inventor.  He creates beautiful toys and other automata; lifelike miniatures that resemble the real world.  In fact, he has one that apparently recreates the train accident that is describes in the book. But the main thrust of the Merrick section is the new apprentice whom Merrick has hired to work for him.

Even though I enjoyed the Cal portion, I enjoyed the Merrick section even more.  The narrator is writing down his thoughts on the back of Merrick’s blueprints.  The narrator lost his legs in an accident and yet Merrick expects him to work just as hard, nonetheless.  After a year of working there (most of which was not too bad for the narrator), Merrick begins working on functional legs and feet for the narrator.  But this comes at the expense of all of Merrick’s work, home and sanity.

Some time passes and the narrator finds himself at a train station.  While there, he meets Rose.  Rose is connected with Dory.  I thought that Rose was Dory’s mother, but that doesn’t seem to jibe with the timeline, so perhaps she’s her daughter?  Anyhow, we finally have a connection between two of the stories.  Huzzah!

And yet then we return to Cal, and I simply cannot figure out the connection here.  The tenuous connection is that Cal was three minutes late from saving his father this last time.

The book concludes with I once more.  I’m inclined to think that I was the man working for Merrick, because he seems to be literally falling apart.  And yet, I didn’t find a direct correlation between the two.  Again, this I section is very visceral in parts and yet because the narrator has no connection to causation, the whole story sort of unravels itself.

And then we’re back to The Train.  The train portions sort of tie things together, but again, not really.  And, they’re written in the second person, just to confuse things even further.

I feel like I’ve given away a lot of the story, and yet, I also feel that I missed so much that I barely gave away anything.  The things I’ve mentioned here were my favorite parts of the book, when the writing was crisp and sharp and really came into focus for me.  But there was so much where I felt like I was reading pages and pages and not getting anything.

I’m willing to accept that this was my fault, that I wasn’t concentrating hard enough to follow the threads.  But I also suspect that the book was intentionally difficult.  And normally I like that.  But I found myself very frustrated by a lot of this book, especially because I really really wanted to like it.

But, hey, if you figured out a lot of stuff that I missed, please pass it on.