I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: EAST OF THE WALL-“False Build” (2011).

Viking picked this song back in September of 2011 as his song of the week (or however often he posted then).  I’d never heard of East of the Wall, despite their New Jersey pedigree.  (I know I don’t know every band from New jersey, but usually by the time a band has three records out I’ve at least heard of them).

This song is just over five minutes long and the vocals don’t come in until about three an a half minutes.  By the time the vocals come in, we’ve had three or four different stylistic changes.  And, by  the time the vocals have been with us for a minute it’s possible that there are four vocalists in the band.

It opens with some clean guitars playing an open (but slightly off) chord progression.  Over that comes a slightly distorted guitar and a bass playing mostly the same notes but just enough to be notably different.  Then add some drums so the song is builds very nicely.  The solo gets more and more complicated and when the drums rumble in for a climactic progression…the songs shifts into a kind of loud heavy rock/almost funk.  A new more angular solo plays over the funk riffs and it all works wonderfully.  Then the song becomes a rapid fire snare drum metal song and that’s where the vocals kick in.  I assume this is all one vocalist but who knows.  For the sake of argument I’ll pretend they are all different.

The first vocalist is a screamer–hard to understand but fitting in perfectly with the now heavy riffs.  He doesn’t say much before the second vocalist comes in.  This section of the music is mellow and kind of prog rocky and the vocalist fist perfectly–actually crooning along with the melody.  Until vocalist three comes in with a kind of cookie monster vocal which is interspersed with a different cookie monster vocalist.  By the quarter to 5 moment the first vocalist comes back, and there’s more screaming until the song ends.  It’s chaotic and cool and keeps you on the edge of your seat.  I wonder what they’re singing about.

Wow.  If I’m this exhausted writing about it, imagine how they must feel playing it.  I’m going to have to check out more from them.

[READ: June 28, 2012] “Another Life”

This story is disconcerting in that the first paragraph is a page and a half long.  And it works very well stylistically.  The whole first paragraph concerns a man (the husband) as he returns from a party for father-in-law.  He’d rather not have gone to at all, but since he is also sick and on medication, he takes the opportunity to leave early.  He arrives back at the hotel and sits down to read Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.  (Holy crap!).  He can’t focus on the book so he decides to go down to the hotel bar (with the book) just to mix things up.

There are a few people in the room, but he sits alone at the bar.  The bartender (whose name is later revealed to be April P) is very nice and chats as she serves him.  She sees his book and asks what he’s reading.  He’s a bit embarrassed, because she’s never heard of Rousseau.  But she says that she reads everything and her favorite is Emily Dickinson.  He is thrown by her choice of authors and by the fact that he can’t think of anything clever to say about Dickinson.  He fumbles a bit.  She remains nice but is clearly unimpressed.

Then his wife calls his cell phone wondering where the hell he is.  He tells her that he’s in the bar and she comes down to see him.  In the meantime a guy (the sleazebag) sits down and starts talking to the bartender all familiar-like.   When the husband’s wife arrives she sits between the men and the sleazebag starts talking to her about the Celtics (it’s set in Massachusetts).  The husband marvels at how easily the sleazebag can chat with a strange woman and how effortlessly confident he comes across.  When the bartender gives the sleazebag the brush off, he leaves.

And then his wife remembers that she forgot something at the party.  She says she’ll be back shortly.  Then April says it’s last call.

The husband leaves but then thinks again about his wife, the sleazebag and April.  He rushes back in and asks April if she’s have a drink with him.  She says yes and they go to a different bar.  And from there things really take off.

There’s so many undercurrents and omens in the story (his heart is mentioned more than once, as is he debauched past, we also learn about the bartender and her relation to the sleazebag) that everything feels like a portent.  And yet, just as it ends in an unexpected way, none of the portents are played out before the story ends.  I gather we are to imagine what happens after the story ends properly.  Because for the last few paragraphs, the focus of the story changes completely.  It ends in a kind of gimmicky way, but it is very effective in this story.  By not telling us anyone’s name (except April P), we really don’t get too attached to them and the ending seems to rewrite the story.  I wouldn’t want every story to be like this, but I enjoyed this one.