I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: CHASTITY BELT-“Black Sail” (2013).

Chastity Belt are notorious for their band photo.  And the fact that their album is called No Regerts (sic).  By rights they should play ugly abrasive punk or something weird and edgy and probably a little scary.

So imagine the surprise when “Black Sail” opens and sounds like a Guster song–simple chords with a very catchy melody (it reminds me of a rawer version of “Architects and Engineers”).

Then the vocals come in and the singer sounds a bit like Jefferson Airplane-era Grace Slick–powerful but kind of slow.  It’s a very compelling mix.

Especially when things change in the chorus–a simple, pretty guitar riff leads us into the simple chorus “black sail, strong wind.”

The difference between the image and the music is so striking that i wonder if I’d have been as taken with the music with out the picture.  Was this a brilliant strategy or just a really bad idea (it has already made a list of unfortunate band photos).  You can decide for yourself, I’m including the picture at the end of the post.

And you can listen to the song on NPR or at their bandcamp site.

[READ: September 12, 2013] “Amaranth”

Amaranth is a 12-year-old girl who goes by the name Merry.  She is out driving with her father one night when he gets a call from his business partner.  Amaranth pretends to be asleep while her father goes to talk to the man.  But rather than a conversation, the partner, Otto, kills her dad.  And Amaranth saw the whole thing happen.

Amaranth is devastated.  But she is even more devastated when Otto starts coming around.  Like a remake of Hamlet, soon Otto and Amaranth’s mother are getting married.

Amaranth wants nothing to do with this; the rest of the story details the ways she rebels against the unpardonable acts.

First she begins starving herself.  She eats just enough to survive but her mother hates how thin she is getting. Eventually they send her to a place for girls with eating disorders.  She returns plumper, but with a new scheme.  This time her rebelliousness gets her put into a special hospital.

When she returns, she is ready for college.  She is given some surprises of her own this time–a new, bigger house and a horse to ride.  There’s also a young Belgian gardener who speaks little English.  He sparks an idea in Amaranth.  She begins by deflowering herself with him (without actually saying anything to him).  Then she starts sleeping with every man she can (her parents don’t know about this).  And she also suggests that she should get an internship at Otto’s hedge fund.  Her parents are thrilled at this.

But she uses this new location to seduce more men and to plot her stepfather’s demise.

The downfall is two-part and plays out pretty much as you’d expect.  The one big surprise for me was why she was so angry at her mother.  Her mother did not know that Otto killed her father (unless she did, but Amaranth wouldn’t know that).  It seemed harsh to hate your mother because you couldn’t bring yourself to admit what happened.

While the story built in tension and excitement and was rather compelling, the detailed destruction of an individual was pretty hard to take.

Oh and here’s that Chastity Belt promo photo: