I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: DANIEL LANOIS-Tiny Desk Concert #415 (January 13, 2015).

I don’t really know very much about Daniel Lanois. I know he’s a great producer.  I know that he’s worked with Brian Eno on an umber of projects. I even know that he has at least one album out of his own.  But other than that he’s an enigma to me.

And he remains so here.

He and his bassist Jim Wilson and drummer Brian Blade, play three instrumentals that are more or less improvised.

Lanois stands with his back to the audience, facing the other two guys. And aside from some closeups of his gear, the only interesting thing visually that happens is that the drummer knocks over an LP during a song and picks it up.

Lanois’ gear is totally perplexing to me—there’s knobs and buttons but no keyboards, so I don’t know where the sounds are coming from.  The bassist keeps a steady rhythm while Lanois turns and spins and slides things. Musically it’s not all that interesting—it’s sort of mellow background electronica.

The best part of the whole deal is the drummer. He plays some amazing fills and runs on that snare and hi hat.  It’s amazing the complexity he is able to achieve with just a bass, snare and hi hat. He also smiles a lot which is nice to see from these rather dour men.

Lanois doesn’t say a thing during the set, not even when it’s over.  You can see it here.

[READ: February 10, 2015] Sisters

I really enjoyed Smile, although I found out about Smile when Sisters came out.  So this is a sequel to Smile (although Raina still has her braces on during the book, so I guess it’s more of a concurrent story).

As the story opens, Raina (age 14) and her family (her mom and dad. her baby brother (6) and, grr, her sister (age 9)) are visiting relatives in Colorado.  Their dad has some work to attend to so he will be flying in a few days later, but everyone else is going to hop in the van and drive from Colorado to California and then back–so that’s basically two weeks in the car and one week in California.  Ugh.

The only saving grace is that their van has three rows of seats so each girl has a seat to herself while their brother rides shotgun.

Before they head out, we see that Raina and her sister Amara are on each other’s nerves constantly–with Raina ultimately shouting “Why did I ever ask for a sister?!”  Then we see flashback of Raina as a young girl desperately wanting a sister to play with.  And when Amara finally came–Raina was in love–until she realized that the baby would be sharing room with her.  There’s a joke about Amara meaning “immortal” in Sanskrit and “love” in Latin and her father muttering “it also means bitter one.”  And it turns out that Amara is a pretty cranky kid–especially where Raina is concerned.

The trip is not terrible, but it’s not great either–the kids get bored, Raina’s ever-present Walkman runs out of batteries and they nearly hydroplane during a storm.

But the trip is interspersed with various flashbacks.  Like the one about the pets that they had–how quickly their fish died and how their iguana (which they assumed was indestructible) was apparently eaten by crickets.  And then we learn about “the incident” that involves Raina and snakes.

The arrival of baby Will is another trying moment for Raina–because another baby moves into their room.

But nothing is as trying as when their father is laid off.  Things are exhausting for the family as he sits around watching baseball.  There is talk of their mom going back to work, but they all agree that their father would kill them when it came to food preparation.

When they finally arrive in Colorado, the kids are super excited to have someone else to play with.  But they quickly learn that their relatives have…well…grown up.  Cousins Josh and Jeremy decide to call her Penelope instead of Raina, and they think that Calvin and Hobbes and Foxtrot aren’t “real comics.”  Worse yet, her closest cousin Lindsay is now in high school and has changed quite a lot, leaving Raina quite lonely.

We do eventually learn about “the incident” and its connection to snakes (Amara wants one as a pet even though Raina is deathly afraid of them).  And its resolution is fantastic.

It takes a disaster (and questionable parental judgment) to bring Raina and Amara a little closer and while the end is more or less happy there’s so many unanswered questions hanging over their heads!

I’m so curious as to what happens with her parents, and I’m really curious to know if Amara also has a career in the arts (it is made very clear in the book that they are both artistic.  I would have liked a line about Amara’s future at the and (or maybe that’s the next book?). But even without that I really enjoyed the book and I know I’ll be reading her other book (unrelated to this saga) Drama one of these days.