SOUNDTRACK: The Believer June 2006 Music Issue Compilation CD: Famous Shovels in Twain (2006).
The “theme” behind this year’s CD was live recordings. So all of the songs are live (whether in front of an audience or just live to disc). Like the previous discs, I had only heard a few of the artists on this disc. But unlike previous discs, there is quite a lot of diversity on this one.
In fact, the diversity takes them far afield: Neung Phak is a band from Thailand. They play a fun and crazy call and response rock song (which I assume is sung is Thai). Juana Molina sings in Spanish. And Mamadou Diabate is an astonishing 
soloist on the kora, a 21 stringed instrument (see picture at right). Mixing things up even more are Stephen O’Malley with an electronic manipulation type song and Blood on the Wall with the heaviest track thus far on a Believer compilation.
The rest of the disc consists of solid performances by Calexico (you can hear a train pass by the studio), Jim White, with a charming song sung on the front porch of Flannery O’Connor’s house. Well, maybe the song isn’t charming (although it is catchy), but his attitude towards his guests (captured on tape) certainly is.
Destroyer play one of my favorite songs, “Rubies” in what sounds like a drunken revelry. El Perro del Mar plays an astonishingly upbeat song and, what is probably the real selling point, Feist plays a demo of “Mushaboom.” The demo isn’t really that different from the official version, but you can hear that her voice sounds great in this raw form.
This is definitely the most adventurous disc that The Believer has released. But it’s nice to see they haven’t gone too far away from releasing great alt rock.
You can see the track listing here.
[READ: December 10, 2009] “Breaking Fast”
This very short story was quite enjoyable, but then, as it drew to a close, it confused me.
The basic premise here is that an exceedingly thin woman is in a diner and she is eating a ton of food. There’s a man next to her watching, amazed at what she can pack away. There’s also a waitress who everyone (including the main character) knows is shooting daggers at her from behind her smile.
What I liked about the story was that the narration flitted around to the various characters: we watch the man trying to get the nerve to talk to the woman. We see the waitress’ point of view. And we find out why the woman is here in the first place. But in the end, the narration changes from third to first person, and I simply can’t figure out how or why.
Aside from that little quirk (which may have been the “cool twist” of the story, even if I didn’t really like it) the story was an interesting character study. Sometimes stories don’t have to be profound to be enjoyable.
It’s available here.
I Just Read About That... 
I have a theory to the narrative shift at the end of the short story. Apparently, throughout the story we are told things by an omniscient narrator, but the first-person narration change finally reveals that the narrator is actually the man who was beside the woman. This idea is supported by the stream of consciousness or interior monologue style with which some ideas have been conveyed (i.e.: “He’s got so much pent-up conversation in him now that he wouldn’t be able to give someone the time without making a production out of it oh the time, well let’s see here, according to my watch it’s, anyway, it may not be right, there’s a tower on the state capitol building back there (…))” This can only happen because the omniscient and the first-person narrator is the SAME narrator. Now, doesn’t it make sense?
Also, there is one particular sentence about watching people and reading their lives in their faces that can be taken as evidence to prove this: “It’s easy to watch them, eating alone, lost in their thoughts, their whole lives drawn on their faces, at least it seems that way if you have long enough to watch a person.” This is what HE has been doing. The narrator, who is also the character who wouldn’t dare talk to the woman, has been watching the woman and has “read” what’s “drawn” in her face because he has time to watch her and he has made up the story he thinks he is reading– therefore the narrative shift at the end to a first-person narrator and that confusing conclusion: “(…) she’ll go back toward her hotel and I also will not speak a word to her, she who has helped me so much this morning, in her hunger, in her loneliness”. Of course she has helped him: he has written something out of simply watching her.