I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: XERXES-“Collision Blonde” (3 tracks) (2104).

Xerxes has a very cool early 80s gothy sound–a sort of Joy Division/early Cure vibe.  Their twist is that their singer is a kind of screamy punk (like early 80s hardcore bands). I admit I’m old and I don’t love the screamy vocals  as much as I used to (but as a throwback, it’s pretty cool). And yet, I find the juxtaposition of that sort of mopey goth music coupled with an aggressive punk singing style.

You can hear the title track to their forthcoming release, “Collision Blonde’ on NPR at Viking’s Choice.  This song is a bit longer than the other two.  It has more ringing guitars and really brings out those Cure influences.  The longer song allows them a little more freedom to explore, too.

There are two songs on their Soundcloud page.  Chestnut Street” has a much faster tempo, but it keeps that great ringing guitar sound.  It also offers some interesting tempo changes and a great bass section.  I also love the bass sound in “Exit 123.”  It’s got a great buzzy guitar attached to it as well.

This band also fills in that oft-lacking “X” category on your iPod.

[READ: June 13, 2014] “The Largesse of the Sea Maiden”

This is a story in several parts (with titles for each section) but which all work together to tell a complete story.

It opens very strangely with a dinner party in which an amputee tries to get a woman to kiss his stump.  She can’t bring herself to do it, although several days after the party they begin dating.  But the story is not about them, it’s about the host of the party and his wife, Elaine.   For in the next scene, we see them at a party at a wealthy man’s house.  When the narrator tells the wealthy man who his beautiful expensive painting shouldn’t be over the fireplace, (it might get warped from the heat), he threatens to burn it–rumor has it he has threatened this before.  And yet what if no one stops him this time?

The narrator works as an ad man.  It’s likely we’ve seen his ad–it was quite famous and won an award.  Well he is getting the award now, even though the ad ran many years ago.  He is traveling to New York for the award. But he is stressed about the whole thing, so he goes to the doctor where the entire staff is dressed for Halloween.

The confusions in the story are quite interesting,  Like in the section called “farewell” in which his ex-wife calls to say that she is dying and she forgives him.  But when he hangs up, he isn’t sure if it was Virginia (Ginny) or his second ex-wife Jenny.  I like that their given names are very different but their nicknames are so similar (and he’s unsure what he heard).

The story also skips around a lot, like in “widow” he talks about his friend who interviewed a man about to be executed.  The man said that his wife was the only good thing that happened to him in the years since he was in prison.  Then the interviewer meets the wife and she says that everything she told the prisoner about herself was a lie. Another story about a widow was when his friend Tony found a cell phone ringing on the street.  The woman who was calling said her husband had been hit by a car there and dropped the phone. She has been ringing the phone ever since and he is the first person to answer it.

More death comes from the artist Tony Fido (the Tony above who was earlier quoted as saying The only painter I admire is God.  He’s my biggest influence).  Tony committed suicide and they are attending the funeral .  At the funeral the narrator is given Tony’s mother’s cookbook, hand-written recipes from over the decades.

All of this is capped off by his award ceremony.  He spends much of the ceremony in the bathroom.  The end of the story is just a sort of denouement about his life.

I enjoyed the segments but I don’t really get a lot out of the story as whole–the scenes don’t add up to much (which may be the point?).