I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: KING TUFF-“Black Moon Spell” and “Eyes of the Muse” (2014).

I first heard King Tuff on WXPN.  A few weeks later I heard two of his songs on NPR Music.  I’m including both of these because they’re from the same album and yet they are so very different.

“Black Moon Spell” has a stupid, great, heavy riff–it’s all distortion and garage rock.  And when the first verse starts, Tuff’s voice sounds very 60’s–whispered and trippy.  It’s a great contrast to the rocking riff that repeats in the chorus.  The second verse and the chorus sound pretty much the same, but they are so catchy it’s hard not to rock out to it all.  There’s a cool guitar solo and, perhaps most unexpected, female backing vocals as the chorus repeats in the outro.

It has a real classic rock sensibility but with modern elements.

“Eyes of the Muse” is also full of classic rock sensibilities but in a very different way.  This song is anything but heavy–it has jangly chords, and a pretty guitar riff.  The vocals are also higher pitched with a very sixties folky style.  And when the Boston-style guitars burst forth about half way through, you’d swear you’d heard it all before, and yet it is still different enough to be really enjoyable.

Ty Segall plays drums of “Black Moon Spell” and I can compare this record to him or to Mikal Cronin–simple familiar elements done in a novel and exciting way.  I’d definitely like to hear more from this record.

[READ: November 17, 2014] “The Second Doctor Service”

I didn’t think I’d read anything by Mason before, but I had.  I didn’t really like his previous story in Harper’s,(which was sort of a parody of Herodotus).  This one was written in an old style as well (although not a parody this time–if indeed the first one was supposed to be one).

Anyhow, this one opens like an old story (with county names given in this format: K— and S—).  At first I thought we didn’t really need a story pretending to be old like this, but Mason really mastered the style.  Not to mention a story with this content works much better as an old one (before “modern” science).

Essentially, the author is writing a letter to the Journal, in response to Dr Slayer’s study “On the So-called Cumberland Were-wolf.”  He has not encountered a were-wolf but he hopes that anyone reading the Journal might be familiar with his own unusual plight.  Essentially the authors says that on several occasions, he has a smell of chestnuts and then woken up several hours later with no recollection of what happened.  The first time he was riding a horse when it happened, and he believed he blacked out when he was suddenly much further along the route than he expected to be.  He assumes he passed out and the horse just kept going.

But the second time, he was at a party with his wife and many of his friends.  When he “came to” he expected to be scolded for blacking out, but his wife actually seemed to enjoy the way he behaved while he was “unconscious.”  Indeed, other said he seemed to be even more himself–really on his game, scathingly funny and a bit more charming.

This starts happening more and more frequently.  And he soon becomes jealous of his other self. He believes his other self is more charming and that his wife actually prefers the other self to his actual self.  He begins plotting ways to do away with his other self–but what would that do to his real self?

This is an interesting psychological thriller.  It surely has familiar elements, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable to read.