I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PETER, BJORN & JOHN-Living Thing (2009).

After the raging (relative) success of Writer’s Block, with their crazily catchy whistling song, “Young Folks”, PB&J could have gone in any direction.

And I was quite surprised when the opening song of this follow up (actually, there’s an instrumental disc in between) opened with single note and drum sounds and virtually a capella vocals.  But unlike a typical a capella song, the thudding notes were kind of dissonant and unpleasant.  And there wasn’t much more to the song than that.

Even the second song starts out starkly.  A single piano note plays a simple riff.  The verse kicks in with some simple electronic drums (and again minimal accompaniment).  And this sparseness is the main musical theme on the disc.

And I have to say it took almost a half a dozen listen before I really enjoyed what they were doing.  They are eschewing the pop structure that won them popularity and they’re shifting their melodies to the vocal lines rather than the instruments (I guess).  It’s a risky proposition, but it pays off.

Take “Nothing to Worry About.”   It opens with what sounds like a distorted children’s choir singing the chorus at full volume.  But then it settles down into, again, a simple drum and vocals song with just a hint of instrumentation.  (Did they get all their music out on the instrumental?  I don’t know I’ve not heard it).  Even the title track is sparse guitar noises and clicked drums.  But, man, is it catchy (it reminds me in a weird way of Paul Simon).

And then, continuing my contention that the best and catchiest songs always have curses in them, “Lay It Down” with the chorus, “Hey, shut the fuck up boy, you’re starting to piss me off” will stick in your head for days.

The end of the disc (the last three songs) are considerably mellower.  They’re less catchy, but they use the starkness very well.

Initially I really didn’t like this album.  It had none of the immediacy of the previous disc.  But I found myself really enjoying it.  I wouldn’t want all of their albums to sound like this, but it was an enjoyable twist on a good formula.

[READ: October 7, 2010] Garden State

I mentioned the other day that I just found out about this book when looking up information about Rick Moody.  I was so excited to read a book set in Haledon (two towns from where I grew up) that I checked it out and begin it immediately (it’s only 200 pages, so that helped too).  But I have to say I was really disappointed with the book (even if it did win the Editor’s Book Award).

My first gripe is about the supposed setting in New Jersey.  I have no problem with fictionalizing an area.  Writers do it all the time.  But Moody fictionalizes the area in two ways to suit his thesis, and as a lover of New Jersey and a former resident of the region, I found the lack of reality to be very upsetting.

The first minor, and I have to say really weird thing is that despite the real towns included (Haledon, Paterson, Paramus) he makes up towns nearby–Fleece, Tyre– and he makes up a river–The Dern River.  He also plays around with the names of the highways that run through the state, constantly referring to the non-existent Garden State Thruway.  Now, again, there’s no problem with making things up, but nobody in the story ever goes to Fleece or Tyre, the Dern River doesn’t come into play aside from being a river that people refer to (it’s not a renamed Passaic river, because that’s included in the story, too).  So, why make up random town names?  Why say that you drive from Haledon to the edge of Paterson near Boonton, when that is not geographically correct (or relevant to the story)?  It just seems like he didn’t have access to a map.

And it’s not like The Garden State Parkway is going to sue if you call the actual highway the GSP instead of the Thruway (which he claims runs up the western side of the state).  Hey, I’m nitpicking, but these changes to reality don’t impact the story in any way, so I don’t know why he would mess with things seemingly arbitrarily.  If, for instance, someone lived or worked in Fleece, I’d be fine with him making up a town just create fiction.  If the Dern River was on fire and impacted everyone’s lives, then, yes.  But why just throw in geographical anomalies?

The second fiction is the added doom and gloom that he throws into the local towns.  This story is about restless youth doing drugs, going to rehab and generally being down and out.  Great.  But is it necessary to fabricate a nuclear reactor in Paterson?  Or a coffee factory that uses radioactive materials to decaffeinate their coffee (Krakatoa was a good name, though) which pollute the Passaic River?  Again these details don’t radically impact the story except to set up a scene of darkness and gloom (one character works at the abandoned Krakatoa plant, so I’m okay with that, but it’s such a weird over-the-top addition that it’s unsettling.  And, having lived in the area, there’s enough reality-based things that could be added without having to make the place radioactive as well.  (The real river was polluted with dioxin from an Agent Orange factory…isn’t that enough?)  Of course, that pollution was in the 60s and the novel is set in 1991 or thereabouts.

Okay, so now it just sounds like I’m mad that Moody is trashing New Jersey.  But that’s not the case.  I grew up in suburban NJ.  I spent many, many a night bored to tears.  I am also not going to say that the industrial seaboard of New Jersey is a beautiful or enchanting place.  I’m just saying, if you’re going to talk about despair in New Jersey, you don’t need to add crazy fictions.  Of course, if you want to add crazy fictions, then make them relevant to the story or set the story in the not too distant dystopian fictional future or something.

But no, as far as I can tell, the story is set in the early 90’s (people still have answering machines and they listen to heavy metal, so we know it’s not the 70s or 80s).  The protagonists are a group of unlikable kids: nihilistic, addicted, futureless.  It’s a sort of Bright Lights Big City without the Bright Lights or the Big City.  And without the enchantment of the city (New York is not far, but when you can’t drive, it’s a drag), a group of suburban wastrels do drugs, drink a lot, have sex with each other and hope hope hope that their bands will get back together.

About midway through the book, a character who made only occasional appearances earlier suddenly comes to the forefront of the story.  He spends the bulk of the novel in a self-induced near-catatonic state.  He barely leaves the house, heck, he barely gets dressed.  His mother looks after him while he thinks of killing himself in the bathtub.  And yet somehow he ends up being the person that everyone wants to hang out with at the end?

I absolutely would not have finished this book if it wasn’t so short.  It’s not that I have anything against nihilistic fiction.  But this nihilism was so self-contained, and so in medias res that I actually never cared about any of them. And the book kinda felt like Peanuts; there were virtually no adult characters, and the ones that were there were just formless noises.

Overall, the book feels like a period piece.  And I wonder if I would have appreciated it more if I read it in 1992.

The only positives I can say about the book are: one, I certainly had an emotional reaction to the book.  Two: somewhere in the last ten pages, the book turns away from the utter nihilism for a brief respite of thoughtfulness and concern for humanity.  The writing changed, the characters looked outward (briefly) and I actually grew interested in what was going to happen.  Of course, the ending drifts away from that and we dive underwater yet again.

The strange thing is, The Ice Storm is also about self-centered unlikable people, but that one felt so much more alive.