I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: YUCK-Live at SXSW 2011 (2011).

Yuck has been on my radar for a little while.  I’ve heard very good things about them but hadn’t heard them until this concert.

They play a kind of distortion fueled alt-rock circa late 90s shoegazing style (and everyone laughs about this because the members are all like 20 years old).  Comparisons abound (Dinosaur Jr. My Bloody Valentine) but the one that I hear that no one else seems to is Placebo (for attitude of vocal style more than anything else).  But yes, what the band does with feedback is certainly enjoyable.

This is a great introduction to the band.  They sound fantastic live.  Although I admit that my impression is that this is a band that would sound great on a studio recording (think MBV).  And this show makes me want to go and get their debut album.

They play 8 songs here which vary from fast rockers to ballads to the 8 minute feedback epic “Rubber.”  Perhaps the most interesting thing about the band, though, is the singer’s speaking voice.  He seems so out of his element talking to the huge (and appreciative) Texas crowd, that you have to wonder if they’ve ever played live before (except that his voice sounds great while singing and the band is totally confident).  It’s just funny to hear him awkwardly addressing the crowd (with a meekness that rivals Droopy Dog):  “Our name is Yuck and this song is called “Suck” and those words rhyme with each other”.  Yikes.  But really it comes across as charming more than anything else and since the band sounds great it doesn’t hurt the crowd’s appreciation.

I’m looking forward to hearing their album.  You can listen, watch (!) and download their set from NPR.

[READ: March 28, 2011] “Franklin’s Library”

This was the second story in The Walrus’ 2006 Summer Reading Issue.  It was a lengthy and rather complicated story.  There were really two stories, although in the end, she tied them together okay.

The story opens with a look at a young sailor.  The sailor has agreed to join the Erebus on its first expedition to the frozen north.  The title of the story comes from the ship’s library.  The sailor is young and more than a little afraid, but he is comforted by the scope of the ship’s library: leather-bound volumes in the hundreds.  The library looks to be the only place where one can have a little peace and quiet (aside from your bunk which is barely larger than you).

The story lists many of the volumes that are found in the library and then it suddenly shifts to some information about Charles Dickens (a popular author at the time who chose to write about the story we are currently reading).

Then the story jumps to another location and seemingly another story (I had to confirm that it was the same story).  We’re in an apartment in Spain, the very apartment where Keats died.  And there is Keats himself, dying.  There is an anecdote about Keats’ painter friend creating a system where whenever a candle went out, it would immediately light another candle, thereby preventing Keats from ever waking in darkness.

Humphries ties these two disparate stories together via the candles, although I felt that the story lost something in the last few paragraphs.  She switches voice from a third person to “we” and it felt like the story tried too hard to make everyone complicit in the “truth.”  It was an unnatural shift and broke the story for me.

I’m also not entirely sure that the link, while valid, was all that effective.  The two stories were interesting in and of themselves, but I didn’t like thing they melded together.  I would have rather read them as two separate stories.