I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SURFER BLOOD-Astro Coast (2009).

Surfer Blood is a confusing band.  Their music sounds like a whole bunch of different late-80’s alterna-rock bands that I love.  But their vocalist (and the music of the verses) doesn’t really fit that style–I’m not sure what those sound like) and some of it is drenched in a kind of Beach Boys-reverb that befits the Surfer part of their name.

It’s a fascinating amalgam of styles that works very well and which is chock full of catchy choruses.  “Floating Vibes” opens with a big loud guitar note, that quickly morphs into a catchy verse line.  Conversely, “Swim” opens with a strange shouty kind of introduction and then morphs into a crazily catchy chorus (also shouted).

“Harmonix” opens with a “rock n roll” 50s style riff, then jumps to cool guitar harmonics and then turns into a song that sounds unmistakably late 80s to me (although maybe it sounds like a song my friend Garry wrote back in the late 80s).

“Neighbor Riffs” is a rocking 2 minute instrumental, which is followed by “Twin Peaks,” a song that sounds unmistakably late 80s but I can’t decide why (it’s also great because it’s about, you know, Twin Peaks).  I’m confused by the next pair of songs: “Fast Jabroni” and “Slow Jabroni” as they do not seem related and the Fast song is much better.  In fact the combination of “Slow Jabroni” and the next song, “Anchorage” really drag the disc as those two songs are over 12 minutes in total (whereas most of the songs are in the 3-4 minute range).   Neither of the songs is bad (in fact “Anchorage” is pretty cool), they just both last too long.

As I try to process who this band sounds like, I’m going to let Carrie Brownstein provide the best description of them:

Sometimes an album comes from people who you can tell love some of the same music as you. And when they interpret the bands you both love, when they run it through their own brains and hearts and hands and amps, instead of sounding like a watered-down version of the progenitors, it sounds fresh and heartfelt and energized. That’s Surfer Blood for me.

And me too.

[READ: May 16, 2011] “We Come in Peace”

This is one of my favorite short stories that I’ve read in a long time.  It appeals to me for a number of reasons (I love the conceit of angels tinkering with humans), but it’s also very well written and thoroughly engaging.  I think the only disappointment about it is that it’s a short story and not a novel (although the intro to the story says that this is merely an excerpt from the short story which appears in full length in Gartner’s new collection of short stories, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives).

I feared that the story would be daunting at first because it includes a dramatis personae (which can be intimidating for a short story).  But the dramatis personae just tells us which angels are matched to which humans.  For yes, this is a story about five angels who are sent to earth to learn about the five senses.   Amusingly, this is spurred on because humans have discovered the extra taste sensation known as umami.

So, the five angels are sent to a Canadian suburb to inhabit the bodies of 5 students: Bashaar, an athlete and dancer who is beset by local radical muslims to get him to join; Stephan a good student (ie., dork) who is turned cool by his angel, much to his family’s dismay; Leo, a nice dude; Jason, the school bully, who is inhabited by a happy angel; and Jessica, an anorexic girl who suddenly eats, develops a nice body and becomes romantically involved with 16-year-old Cullen.  Each of the angels subsumes the personality of the kids (whose families are, needless to say, freaked out by the changes).

The story is told as a past event with an (obviously) omniscient angel telling the story.  And he relates the story as a cautionary tale, which adds much wonderful detail to the proceedings.  It also includes an unexpected twist in the guise of “three wise men”, Gary, Lubbock and Sweeney, homeless men who live in the woods.  Some of the angels befriend them because they believe the men to be more pure than the others.  The results are mixed at best.

What is so wonderful about the story is that although the angels took over the personalities of the kids, after being on earth for a little while, the ways of humanity begin to infiltrate the minds of the angels.  It makes for excellent conflict and more than a little sadness.  I want more!

The only thing I don’t like is the title, which seems if not misleading exactly, then sort of off the point.

I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by Zsuzsi Gartner (including her name), and I will definitely look for her book.