I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: FOALS-Live on KEXP, May 30, 2008 (2008).

I really like Foals’ debut album, Antidotes and this short concert is all about that album.  They play four songs from the record and a fifth intro-type song called “XXXXX.”  The band sounds great, playing their complex rhythms perfectly.

“The French Open,” “Heavy Water” “Red Socks Pugie,” and “Electric Bloom” all sound remarkably similar to the record (not exactly, but amazingly close given the technical nature of the record).  The one distinguishing feature of this show is that the backing vocals are a little more prominent.  This actually gives the songs a slightly more ghostly sound.  Of course the angular math-rock of the album is still present in all of these cool songs.  The band is not very talkative, which is fine, since the music is what matters.

It’s interesting that the band says they prefer recording and creating to playing live.  They sound great live but you can definitely hear the joy they had in creating the record. The live session is here.  

[READ: November 21, 2012] “Demeter”

Here’s another wonderful story from Maile Meloy.  In continuing with her excellent streak of simple stories about families (especially mothers and daughters), we have “Demeter” (I never know how to say that name).

This story differs from many of her other stories for a reason I can’t quite put my finger on.  It feels lighter somehow, although it’s not exactly a happy story.  Perhaps it’s that it seems so concerned with the weather and the elements, rather than the routines of the characters?  Whatever the case, the story is very much about the characters, specifically Demeter, a middle-aged mother of a thirteen year old daughter.

When Demeter and her husband divorced, she decided that the best custody arrangement would be that each parent received custody of Perry Mason (their nickname for their daughter because of her hard stare as a baby) for six months at a time.  On this particular day, Demeter is dropping off Perry Mason at her father’s for the next half a year.

The drop off is harder than she imagined it would be, so she decides to go to the town pool for a swim (it’s mid August).  The lifeguard on duty is the daughter of a couple that Demeter and her husbands were very close with.  So close in fact that the four (and the lifeguard as a baby) vacationed together a lot.  But when the lifeguard’s father drowned on one of those vacations (she was only four years old), it changed things.  Including making Demeter’s husband realize just how much he wanted a child (and thus, Perry Mason).

Demeter is moved by seeing the lifeguard again after all these years, bring up all kinds of emotions.  And although she embarrasses herself a little bit, the swim seems to make everything a little better.  Until the lightning storm means everyone out of the pool.  The surprise weather at the end of the story makes for an almost supernatural ending, one that adds buoyancy to a potentially dark story.

I loved it.  I assume a short story collection will be coming soon, too.