I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: METZ-“Wet Blanket” (Live at SXSW, March 20, 2013).

It’s amazing how much different two bands can sound (comparing Haim from yesterday to Metz from today).  Obviously, they play very different styles of music, but Metz is just three guys and they are loud and bass heavy and raucous. Whereas Haim, with their four members, have practically no low end at all.  It’s an amazing look at how different bands can be while playing basically the same instruments.

Anyhow, Metz are a noise rock trio from Canada.  I’d never heard of them before this song.  There’s a lot of noise as the song opens, but once the groove starts, it’s fast and heavy with pounding drums and a persistent, fast bass.  The band, who are dressed nicely (the singer guitarist has a button down shirt open over his T-shirt), are really abrasive and punky.  And the singer/screamer is a wild man–climbing on the bass drum to wail his solo, feedbacking the guitar from the amps and not even playing the guitar as he screams into the microphone (but there is noise, so I wonder if he has an echo effect on).  At one point someone in the audience even holds the microphone closer to him while he screams as he seems to be having trouble with it.

It’s an intense set and I’d like to hear more from them.  Their debut came out last year (on Sub Pop).

You can watch this song here.

[READ: March 26, 2013] “Teaching”

Another story from Doyle, this one is a dark story about being an old and near-retirement teacher (Doyle was himself a teacher).

The story opens with a girl saying that he, the teacher, knew her mother.  This has been happening more and more now that the students he taught when he was young have had children who are now as old as they were.  The girl says her mom fancied him and he makes a poor joke wondering if the girl can believe it, but he’s just made uncomfortable by the exchange.

In fact, he mostly just seems to want to try to get through the day.  It’s only September and he has a whole school year ahead of him.  He never drinks at school, that is a rule he will always abide by, but that doesn’t mean he won’t drink after school.   Which he does.  Although to describe him as an alcoholic (which I guess he is) kind of takes something away from the thrust of the story.  The alcohol is a part of who he is but it doesn’t impact the story, exactly.

At least not like what happened to him when he was younger.  We get to this infraction (at the hand of the very Christian Brothers for whom he has been teaching all these years) after he thinks about how the students no longer confide in him.  He’s grateful for that, ultimately, but it still makes him feel out of touch when the other teachers talk about the stories that they have been told, about the abuse and the like.  He’s seen some of the kids with marks and bruises, but none of them would talk to him about it.  He’s just not cool.  Anymore.

But this little moment to himself, a free period between English classes gives him a chance to get lost in a reverie.  And he promises to be a better teacher, like in his younger days, when he could channel Robin Williams.  And he tells himself that he will.  Next period.

This was definitely a dark story (Doyle does dark very well, especially for a genuinely funny writer), but it’s not overly bleak.

You can read it here.