I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BISHOP MOROCCO-“White City” (2010).

I’d never heard of Bishop Morocco.  Then they played this song on CBC Radio 3.  “White City” is a fascinating confluence of influences.  It sounds somehow late 80s/early 90s yet the the electronic drum sound is decideldy retro, early 80s.

The guitars are heavuily vibratoed.  As are the vocals.  It’s a surpiringly full sound given the limited instrumentation (it’s pretty much guitars and drums).  And it’s quite gloomy (circa The Cure’s Pornography), and yet once the chorus kicks in (still vibratoed, but now major chords) the song perks up (some).

The CBC site has 4 songs by them, and each one confirms that the early New Order/Cure sound is what they’re shooting for.  The cover of their EP “Last  Year’s Disco Guitars” really seems to encapsulate their sound (more so than their album cover does).  I enjoyed the song but after a few listens, I grew kind of bored by it.

[READ: July 4, 2010] “The Entire Northern Side was Covered with Fire”

Rivka Galchen is a completely new author to me.  This was a weird little story that I enjoyed quite a lot, because even though it seemed to be all over the place, narrative-wise, it was actually quite focused.  The narrator is an author who has a burgeoning fan base: male prisoners, who write letters. But of equal importance is that at the time that she sold her movie, her husband had just left her.  Out of the blue.

Although perhaps not out of the blue.  Because in a very humorous (darkly humorous) bit, we learn that all of her friends knew of her husband’s site: i-can’t-stand-my-wife.blogspot.com.  When she tries to commiserate with her brother and her friend, they both want to talk about this blog.  Her brother even wants to look at it with her, to be there for her, while she reads the truth (even though he doesn’t believe she’s anywhere near as bad as the blog says).   She doesn’t want to talk about the blog; rather, she’d like to talk about the letters that the prisoners are sending her.  And she has to wonder what her responsibility is to them.

And it is these letters, this affirmation, that seems most important to her, right now.  Her Q&A is available here.