I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SLOAN-Commonwealth [Diamond Side–Jay Ferguson] (2014).

 For Sloan’s 11th album, the four members of the band each wrote the songs of a side.  I originally thought that they recorded all of the music alone, but that seems to be wrong–and would hardly be a Sloan album).  In conjunction with the album, each guy was given a suit of cards (and an actual deck was made as well).  While this doesn’t necessarily mean the album is very different from their others (it still sounds very Sloan), it seems to have given the guys a bit more room to experiment.

I’ve always had trouble telling whose songs are whose in Sloan, primarily because they all write such different songs all the time.  But also because their voices aren’t radically distinct.  According to Wikipedia, Ferguson’s more famous songs are: “I Hate My Generation” from the album Twice Removed, “The Lines You Amend” from One Chord to Another, “Who Taught You to Live Like That?” from the album Never Hear the End of It, and “Witch’s Wand” from Parallel Play.

Jay Ferguson has the more falsetto’s/delicate voice of the bunch.  He writes five songs that all works as kind of a suite.

“We’ve Come This Far,” opens the disc as a minute and a half piano intro.  It blends right into “You’ve Got a Lot on Your Mind” one of several super catchy songs on this record. The verses are gentle with an acoustic guitar playing along with Ferguson’s singing.  It’s a simple song with a great sing along chorus (and even a long Yeah- h- h ).   “Three Sisters” also starts with a piano (and reminds me of Twin Peaks theme in tone).  It is slower than the other songs, which suits Ferguson’s voice very well.  I enjoyed this lyrics which plays to the album art: “I Played a diamond where her heart should land. She recognized the tune but not the band.”  The mellow song has a cool buzzy guitar solo laid over the top.

And It jumps right into the much faster “Cleopatra” which is a simple (and again catchy) track with a boppy “talk to ya later” bridge. The piano and guitar solos are quiet affairs which play against the type of song and really showcase the Ferguson’s songwriting skills.  “Neither Here Not There” opens with, in sequence: a gentle organ, a quiet electric guitar riff and then a 12 string guitar  (not bad for 20 seconds). The song is barely 2 minutes long and is pretty ballad.

It’s a really pretty song cycle and shows of the kinds of songs that Sloan has been doing so well for so many years.

[READ: October 11, 2014] “Ultrasound”

The Walrus’ summer reading issue presents three stories and two poems in which: “The Walrus presents fresh takes on old crimes.”  Each story is about a crime of some kind, but seemed from an unexpected way.  I rather enjoyed the way the writers played around with the crime genre to make them something very different.  This story is about rape.

I’ve mentioned before that I feel kind of hit or miss about Stephen Marche’s short stories.  But I loved this one.

I was a little concerned at first because of the very cold and distant way it began: “On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 representing “of no interest to me” and 10 representing “of maximum interest to me,” the rapes in my neighbourhood rated a 2.3.”

It’s a cold way to open a story.  But the narrator is not finished with his detached tone.  Indeed, he looks at everything in this detached way–on scales of 1-10 or in percentages.  He shares the same outlook as the protagonist of American Psycho, but this story is not about a psycho, just about a person who is exceedingly rational.

And it is a love story too (sort of).  We learn that he dated Catherine Anne Doran and he rates his time with her at 9.3 out of 10.  But by the end of the story something changed.  It wasn’t how he felt about her, it as something intangible.  Thus we learn the problem with the narrator: “Despite this high level of personal significance, the measurable changes our relationship produced were negligible. The numbers were the same, but everything changed. This is what I fail to understand.”

He met Doran when she came into the ultrasound clinic where he worked as a technician.  He performed her ultrasound, but she left no impression on him.  Later, a coworker said that Doran she posted about her experience on her blog and quoted some things that he said (very technical things) under the heading “Things I Heard at My Ultrasound Appointment That I Didnt Want to Hear.”  He forgot about that post in three to seven minutes.

The story jumps forward a bit to the narrator going to visit his father–the cold interaction with his Christian father is very funny (if you like that sort of thing).  His father says that he will not talk religion with him if he goes to church 4 times a year.  And since “discussions of metaphysics, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 representing “of no interest to me” and 10 representing “of the greatest possible interest to me,” rank a 1.0” he uses those church dates as leverage.

But this one church date, he sees that Catherine Ann Doran (he always gives her fill name) attends the same church.  They hit it off in person and quickly (very quickly) begin dating (and more).

It is that specter of rapes hanging over the city that brings the story to a head–the narrator witnesses a rape in progress.  He may actually have caused it to end early.  And he does report the crime, but not in a timely fashion and he offers no help to the victim (he believed that she would not want any help from a stranger). This doesn’t play well with Catherine (or the police, despite his unfailing help in the case).

The whole incident reshapes his clinical world.

This story was an interesting look at a person who is unattached to the world.  It is dark, as a crime story should be, but also quite provocative.