I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RADIOHEAD-Amnesiac (2001).

It’s with Amnesiac that I basically stop remembering any titles to Radiohead songs.  This album came out quickly after Kid A and was talked of as being something of a return to form after the experimentation of Kid A.  However, it is more of the same kind of Kid A experimentation.

But as with Kid A, just when you think there’s no hooks to grab onto, you get the compelling line from “Packt like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box”: “I’m a reasonable man, get of my case.”

With “Pyramid Song” the disc shows signs of more conventional songwriting (a piano opens the track!).  There’s some wild electronica over the top of the piano, but it’s still a piano-based song.  Of course, just when you think things are fairly standard, you get the oddly titled “Pulk/Pull Revoloving Doors” a stuttering electronic track with distorted vocals that just sort of meanders.  Of course, the more you focus, the more you get out of it (especially with headphones).

There’s some great guitar work on “I Might Be Wrong” but the highlight of the disc has top be “Knives Out,” the most conventional song on the disc and an absolute knock out.  “Morning Bell” reprises itself from Kid A in a slightly more twisted way  It’s rather less satisfying than Kid A‘s version.  And the rest of the album, including the very cool and creepy “Like Spinning Plates” contains more of that electronic bizarreness from Kid A.  The disc ends with the cool clarinet of “Life in a Glass House”

To my mind, Amnesiac is a far more experimental disc than Kid A, and while I enjoy it and I like it in theory, I don’t find it as satisfying to listen to.   And indeed on the In Rainbows show, they didn’t play anything from it.

[READ: December 30, 2010] “Corrie”

Chalk up another great story for Alice Munro.

This one is very simple.  A not-so-young anymore woman, set to inherit a lot of money must take care of her ailing father.  He desperately wants to see her married, but she is simply not interested.

As the story opens, she is having dinner with her father and a church architect named Mr Ritchie.  Mr Ritchie is married, but he seems grateful to Corrie’s father for the work, so he lingers around, working on the church and also helping Corrie as her father worsens.

When her father dies, they begin an affair.

The affair is unknown to anyone except for her servant Sadie Wolfe.  Sadie doesn’t know that he is married, just that he and Corrie are intimate.  But eventually, Sadie leaves her employment and Mr Ritchie comes around more frequently.

Then one night Mr Ritchie informs Corrie that Sadie Wolfe was working a banquet that he attended with his wife.  She quickly learned that the woman he was with was his wife and took him aside to blackmail him.  She would expect cash payment twice a year to keep silent.

When Mr Ritchie tells Corrie this, she is shocked.  But since she loves the arrangement she has with Mr Ritchie, she agrees to give over the money (insisting that Mr Ritchie, a poor man, could never afford to do so).  And so the story continues.

Despite the intrigue, the story is thoughtfully paced.  Corrie is a sensible girl, not prone to excitement and the story displays that tone as well.  So, when the story reaches the conclusion and it upends everything we thought we knew about these two, it is astonishing.  I had to read the ending twice, I was so surprised.

Munro’s genius is such that she can totally pull the rug out from under you even when you are simply comfortably reading a story of questionable morals. Fantastic.