I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BECK-Morning Phase (2014).

The release of Beck’s latest album is what got me investigating Beck’s back catalog–just to see how Beck arrived at this mellow chillout place.

I read a lot about this album when it came out and, even hearing Beck discuss it, I feared it would be a little too slow and mopey for my tastes.  It is slow, but it’s not really mopey.  It’s quite pretty, in fact.  And as I’ve come to learn by going through Beck’s back catalog, he likes to experiment in all sorts of ways, but at his core, he is just a really good songwriter.

So it opens with 40 seconds of strings that act as  nice introduction to the tone of the album, but don’t prepare you for the pretty acoustic song “Morning.”  Lyrically it’s pretty dark, although with his falsetto, it’s kind of hard to realize that.  The melody and vocal line are really lovely (especially the weird echo they put on his voice).  And it has a surprisingly big sounding chorus–redemption even in sadness.  “Heart is a Drum” has piano and an acoustic guitar with swelling strings–once again, the chorus is big and (relatively) fun.  “Say Goodbye” is a sad song, and yet it is still catchy (which is nice), with a simple acoustic guitar.   “Blue Moon” has a wonderfully catchy verse structure and it picks up the tempo somewhat with beautiful swells of music.  And the chorus is dynamite too–it is a worthy single.

“Unforgiven” slows things down even more, making one of the moodiest Beck songs.  And then comes “Wave,” perhaps Beck’s darkest and moodiest song–just waves of strings with no drums and Beck’s longing voice over the top.  “Don’t Let It Go” has some very nice singing from Beck.  His voice has always been good, but he sounds like his voice is maturing somewhat here.

“Blackbird Chain” is the prettiest melody on the record, and it feels especially light after the downcast last few songs.  It has a great chorus and really strong verse melodies. My only gripe is the very brief string accompaniment in the middle of the song which feels like overkill–the piano solo is nice, bit the strings are too much.  But they’re very brief and don’t ruin the song.  “Phase” is a 1 minute instrumental that leads into “Turn Away.”  “Turn” has Beck’s layered vocals and a wonderful easy guitar sound.  The whole song has a sixties acoustic vibe, an again, the melody is great.  “Country Down” has a, yes, country feel (including harmonica solo ala Neil Young), and Beck’s lower, more powerful voice.  It’s a strange turn on this album, but it keeps with the mellow vibe.  The disc ends with “Waking Light” a slow, building song with more great vocals and a wonderful chorus, that makes good use of loud and soft.  It’s a very strong ending to an album.

Unlike other Beck albums this one is definitely a “have to be in the mood” for it.  There’s no pop singles, no dancey hits.  It’s all very mellow.  But it’s very pretty.

[READ: April 2, 2014] The People of Paper

An excerpt from this book was published in McSweeney’s #12.   Here’s what I thought of the excerpt:

This is an excerpt from Plascencia’s novel of the same name, a novel that I own but have not read yet.  And wow is this crazy.  There is, indeed a person made of paper and there are people made of meat, and there are different narrators.  Federico de la Fe is a grown man who wets the bed–as the story begins he and his wife (who tolerates the wet spot) are going to the water’s edge to fill it with new straw.  His wife has gotten used to it (ew), but once their young daughter is potty trained and her husband isn’t, she gets quite cross.  It is only after his wife has died that he learns of a cure–sticking his hand in the fire.  See, crazy–and we haven’t even gotten to the lady of paper yet.  I’m assuming that actually reading the full novel will bring some clarity to this story.

I included this as an introduction because this story is very very unusual, even after reading the whole thing.

In addition to the story being unusual (and, as it turns out, completely metafictional), even the physical product is unusual.

The story is broken into several styles, which are distinguished at the front of each chapter by either three lines, three dots or one dot.  In the three lines chapters, each page is broken into 3 columns–each column is about a character.  In the three dots section, the chapter is formatted normally, but different characters are written about.  And in the one dot section, the small chapter is about one person (you can read more about this in the interviews below).

As I try to talk about this book, I find that it is quite hard to summarize.  There is a plot, but nothing really happens in the plot, exactly.

At any rate, Federico de la Fe is the man mentioned above whose wife left him because he wet the bed (that proves to not be the actual reason we find out, although he never learns that).  In his grief, he decides to fight a war against Saturn (the planet) whom he believes is spying on him.  Saturn has a point of view in this book as well.  But Saturn seems to be disinterested in Federico.  Until the war begins.

Federico enlists the help of the EMF (El Monte Flores).  In reality, the EMF is a gang named after Juan Flores an outlaw and folk hero.  In the book’s version, they are named for El Monte Flores–the flower pickers of El Monte, California (east of Los Angeles) where the book is mostly set.  (Federico and his family begin in Mexico but come across the border to El Monte).  The EMF are a gang with a brutal initiation policy for accepting new members.  But EMF’s entire use in this battle is to line everyone in El Monte’s houses with lead so that Saturn will be unable to see them.  Of course, that much lead is no good for anyone, and it proves to be a bad plan.

By the time part two comes around, we learn a completely unexpected thing–Saturn is the nickname of Salvador Plascencia, author of The People of Paper.  He is writing a  book because a woman left him.  And soon, one of the members of EMF approaches him (but Sal doesn’t recognize him) to find out more about this mysterious Saturn.  Is this book an attack on omniscient narrators?

That’s but one plot in the book.

Another is about the actual people of paper–animals and humans that were created by an origamist who is so talented, his creations come to life.  He started with animals and eventually created a woman.  We meet the woman on a bus and then learn that she has a rather full life, and a healthy sex life (despite the paper cuts her lovers receive and wear s a badge of honor).

She received her name, Merced del Papel, from Little Merced.  Little Merced is the daughter of Federico (and of his lost love, Merced).  Little Merced loves her father and tries to help him however she can.  She also tries to learn how to block out her thoughts from Saturn without using lead.  She learns this from Baby Nostradamus who teaches her how to put black circles over her thoughts (which actually obscure the text).  Little Merced eventually dies, but with Apolonio, a curandero (folk doctor) in town, there may yet be hope for her.

That kind of textual manipulation is very fun.  We get big blocks of black, we get text that is sideways.  There’s even a couple of points where the paper is cut to remove the name of a character.

There’s also mechanical turtles (who speak in nothing but binary).  There’s a lengthy section about Rita Hayworth (whose real name was Margarita Carmen Cansino).  Hayworth has disenfranchised her Latino fanbase in El Monte because she once slept with a lettuce picker but would never deign to do that again.  There’s even addresses to or about the reader (who may also try to get paper cuts by sexually engaging the book).

And I have not even mentioned the chapters about lucha libre star Santos and his wrestling partner Satoru “Tiger Mask” Sayama.  It turns out that Santos has a very big secret to hide under his mask.

So, it sounds completely far out.  And yet, Plascencia is a very good writer and he manages to keep these threads together very nicely. And each section is easily digested (small, bites sized chunks, after all).  It’s just when you try to piece it all together that the difficulty arises.  Plascencia has studied contemporary surrealists and is amazing at playing around with conventions.  In one of the interviews below he describes conventional novels as housecats but says that within each novel is a saber-toothed cat looking to get out.

I really enjoyed this book quite a lot. Yes it was weird and experimented with a lot of different things, but it was utterly engaging and often quite funny.  Plascencia hasn’t done very much since this book, but I hope he gets another book written soon.

I’m including these two interviews because I found them fascinating and I found Plascencia fascinating, too.  After reading this, I wanted to know more about him.  So here’s an interview with Nashville Review and an interview with BookSlut.