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Archive for June, 2016

Lara Vapnyar–“Waiting for the Miracle” (New Yorker, April 25, 2016)

Posted in Culture Shock, Drinking, History, Julia Holter, Lara Vapnyar, Laurie Anderson, Marriage (Happy), New Yorker, Regina Spektor, Russia, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on June 10, 2016| Leave a Comment »

425 SOUNDTRACK: JULIA HOLTER-Tiny Desk Concert #524 (April 22, 2016).

Jjuliahulia Holter also has a theatrical style although her touchstone would be someone more like Regina Spektor (I found a similar style in their delivery).

“Sea Calls me Home” has a cabaret style in her delivery and songs structure.  She plays piano with a small band of upright bass, violin and drum.  I really like the sound (and solo) of the violin later on in the song.

“In the Green Wild” has a very jazzy feel with the upright bass playing a jazz line and the drums playing a jazzy rushed sound.  The violin plays some random high almost dissonant notes that work very well.  For the beginning, Julia doesn’t play piano, she sing-speaks kind of like Laurie Anderson—including the unusual intonation and emphases.  The rest of the band sings backing vocals that are higher and ethereal.  About half way in, she begins playing piano and the song settles sown a bit. The way she sings is unusual and a little unsettling—she looks up at the ceiling more or less the whole time.  Her piano notes are simple and I like the way she plays without looking at the keys.

After that song she speaks briefly.  Her personality is pretty nonexistent–she doesn’t smile or even seem to look at anyone. She sounds rather bored as she says okay we’ll play another song.  Thanks for listening.  That turned me off of her music a bit.

The final song, “Betsy on the Roof,” is the longest, about six minutes long.  It sounds similar to the first one–theatrical and somewhat operatic.  There’s a story in the song, but my favorite part is the middle where she sings a scale up to the roof and then the band rocks out.  The end of the song is fascinating as she sings her nice melody and plays atonal tones on the piano.  I enjoyed t he theatricality of this music a lot, but I would have preferred not to see her performance.

[READ: June 10, 2016] “Waiting for the Miracle”

This is the story of Vadik and his arrival in New York from Moscow.  It was a snowy day as he landed at J.F.K.  Despite the snow blanketing the skyline, it was still exciting. as he descended.  He had just received his work Visa authorizing his stay in the U.S. for three years.  He was staring work in Avenel, NJ.

His friend Sergey, who lives in Staten Island, came to pick him up.  All that Vadik wanted to do was explore the city–walk aimlessly and see what happened, but Sergey wanted to take him to his house.  And Sergey’s wife Vica wanted to see him too–in their past Vadik and Vica had been an item although and Sergey stole her away.  Vica made dinner for him and so he agreed to go to the Island.

On the way to the house, the most improbable thing is that Sergey is listening to a Leonard Cohen CD and singing along.  (Vadik likes Sergey and admits that he is still handsome, but his voice is terrible and has always been terrible.  And it’s especially bad especially for Leonard Cohen.  I say this is improbable because Cohen’s music appears later in the story  too. (more…)

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Colin Barrett–“The Ways” (New Yorker, April 18, 2016)

Posted in Babies, Benjamin Clementine, Books about writers, Colin Barrett, Drugs, New Yorker, Poetry, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on June 9, 2016| Leave a Comment »

418SOUNDTRACK: BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE-Tiny Desk Concert #523 (April 18, 2016).

benjI have literally never seen or heard anyone like Benjamin Clementine.  He sits very tall with the piano keys quite low for him.  And he has such an effortless almost careless way of playing and yet his notes are precise and perfect.  He also faces away from the piano and sings more or less to the audience–as if his voice and hands were two different creatures.  And what a voice!

As the first song, “Condolence,” opens he plays the melody with his left hand, leaving his right hand on his lap as he sings with an intense operatic style.  But not operatic exactly, it’s more like a theatrical voice—like he is performing a dramatic recitation. But also singing these intense, powerful notes (with a vibrato that almost seems comical but is definitely not).  He sprinkles in some high piano notes almost as an afterthought, the way he casually places his hands on the keys.  And all this time, he is sitting on a stool and more or less facing the audience.  The song is five minutes long.  It doesn’t exactly seem to have a chorus–there are lyrical parts that are repeated, but it feels less like a conventional song and more like a story set to music.

When the song is over and he speaks.  He seems so shy and quiet, “Hello America.”  He has a very thick British accent (but now lives in France).

For “Gone” his hands seem to dwarf the piano.  The melody is simple and pretty and then he begins singing with just one word, a low “I” held for five seconds with vibrato.  After that, the lyrics are more or less spoken with his thick middle class accent.  He sings the middle section (with the higher piano notes) and seems to be singing in an upper class accent.  After hitting a long note, he speaks a few lines before singing the last word: “gone” with some beautiful piano notes to accompany.

“Adios” is a much more frenetic musically, but it also feels theatrical.  It is 7 minutes long.

After an intense first section about regrets and bad decisions, there is a spoken section in which he talks of angels and then he switches to a high tenor voice singing an operatic section (like the angels).  As the angelic section ends, he says, “I don’t understand them but as always, they come, they sing to me and they leave eventually.”  The intro music is so catchy and the angelic part so unexpected.  The song is unique.  Definitely not for everyone, but really impressive.

[READ: June 6, 2016] “Anhedonia, Here I Come”

This is the second or third story of Barrett’s that I’ve read.  And like previous stories it took me a while to realize it was set in Ireland.  This is of course my own bias as if I lived in Ireland I’d probably assume it was set there.  But I didn’t.

And frankly the location is irrelevant because this story is about a poet and his attempts at coping with the un-understanding world.

Bobby Tallis is a skinny twenty-something.  He lives in an old housing estate that is populated mostly by old people.  He had nothing to do with them.  Really all he does is walk six miles every day so he can buy weed from a schoolgirl (see, this could be anywhere). (more…)

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Sarah Shun-Lein Bynum–“The Burglar” (New Yorker, April 11, 2016)

Posted in Books about writers, Film & TV, Grace Slick, Jimi Hendrix, King's X, New Yorker, PJ Harvey, Racism, Sarah Shun-lein Bynum, Seratones, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence on June 8, 2016| Leave a Comment »

41116 SOUNDTRACK: SERATONES-Tiny Desk Concert #522 (April 15, 2016).

seraThis Seratones show totally rocked!  And it was a nice change of pace from the slower bands who have been on the Tiny Desk lately.

The lead singer and guitarist is A.J. Haynes.  She plays guitar with a pick on her thumb and has a very clean guitar sound.  Her voice is really lovely—powerful and strong and covering multiple styles from Grace Slick to PJ Harvey.  The blurb says

Haynes grew up singing in the Brownsville Baptist Church, learning to sing out to and hit that back wall without a microphone.

And that’s apparent from the ease she has at singing.  The rest of her band is really great too.  Continuing the blurb:

bassist Adam Davis heard a lot of American rock’s greatest guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, as well as the amazing voice of Janis Joplin. The rest of the band is rounded out by the drumming of Jesse Gabriel, who is spare but there with a sharp backbeat, while guitarist Connor Davis rocks with lyrical grit.

Although I had to laugh because Haynes seems to be having so much fun while her bandmates are rather stonefaced.

They play three songs and they are all great.  “Don’t Need It” rocks out like nobody’s business.  Haynes is a charismatic (and adorable) lead singer with a big afro and a great smile.  “Get Gone” has a much more bluesy sound.  I like the way she delivers the line: “Suns coming out like you knew it would.”  After each verse she gives a big high-pitched “ooh oooh.” And then comes back with a growly low voice.  I love that she’s alternately belting out notes and then singing falsetto.

“Chandelier” has a great funky groove.  When the song sorta stops and just the drums kick in she gives a delightful giggle.

I was really delighted with this band whom I’d never heard of before and I definitely want to check out their recently released debut album.

[READ: April 11, 2016] “The Burglar”

I enjoyed the way that this story was structured.  One paragraph at a time with a dot in between them.  This allowed for a strange juxtaposition of time, with some things happening simultaneously and others possibly out of sequence.

There are several characters in the story.  There is a the burglar (known primarily as “he”); there is the wife who is waiting for exterminators to come to the house–she’s out and hopes to get home before they do).  There is the husband, who is off at work.  His job is fascinating, he’s writing his first script for a TV pilot.  The producers of the show want it to be edgy and different.  The character he is working on (the only person named in the story) is Emmet Byron Diggs, who is falsely accused of killing his wife.  Emmet is black, but the producers don’t want him to think about that as he develops the character.

The story rotates through these characters.  We see the scriptwriter and the producers talking about the show: a time travel show in which Emmet is going to start killing people.

The burglar encounters a dog in the house and tries to figure out how to deal with it.

The wife is racing to get home.

And Emmett is also walking down a street checking out the twenty-first century world he’s in.

Okay so the burglar is in the woman’s house.  But she hears him upstairs and assumes he is the exterminator.

And then the burglar hears her and tries to figure out what he’s going to do.  He calls out, “Just the cleaning crew.”  he berates himself for saying such a weird thing and she thinks its weird that the exterminator would call himself the cleaning crew.

And that’s when the phone rings and it’s the exterminators calling to say they’ll be late.

How does this real-life scenario play out at home while her husband is trying to create a similarly fictionalized setting on the page?

The stories even began to overlap somewhat with action in both stories taking place in a kitchen.  By the end of the story it’s not entirely clear what’s even happening, at least to me.  And yet despite or because of this confusion, I really loved the story.  It was intense and strangely funny at the same time.

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Kevin Canty–“God’s Work” (New Yorker, April 4, 2016)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Kevin Canty, Melanie, New Yorker, Palehound, PWR BTTM, Religion, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on June 7, 2016| Leave a Comment »

4416SOUNDTRACK: PALEHOUND-Tiny Desk Concert #521 (April 11, 2016).

palehoundPalehound sounds like they would be kind of a scruffy roots rock band.  But they are about as far from that as you can get.  Rather, Palehound are the embodiment of alt indie rock–a literate confessional songwriter playing spare grungy music behind her emotionally wrenching vocals.

Back in February, Palehound played a showcase for NPR (you can see it here).  In the live setting, the band was noisy and rocking and singer/guitarist Ellen Kempner’s distortion was turned way up.  She doesn’t shred, but she makes a giant noise.  She is backed by a bassist and a drummer–spare but effective.  And her voice is comfortably uncomfortable meaning her angry lyrics and intentionally less than pretty singing works perfectly for the music she writes.

But for this Tiny Desk, she strips away a lot of the noise and lays bare both her sound and her voice.  As the blurb says, these three spare, nervy renditions of songs from 2015’s Dry Food are, naturally, a bit rawer and more exposed… But, with the aid of drummer Jesse Weiss and bassist Davood Khoshtinat, Kempner uses that intimacy to her advantage.

The first song, “Pet Carrot” opens with a simple guitar riff and Kempner’s delicate  voice singing “my best friend is a parrot and I say things that he won’t mind” (this part reminds me a bit of the melody from “Brand New Key” from Melanie.  When the band kicks in (bass and drums) they ground the song.  Her guitar style isn’t flashy at all but it works really well with her understated vocals.

She switches guitars (“the old switcheroo”) and Bob says they admired this guitar.  She says they were on tour with PWR BTMM who are so glittery so she bought whale stickers and bejeweled the guitar.  Bob says that PWR BTTM will be here in Feb (so not only did Palehound’s show air two months later but it was put out after PWR BTTM’s).

For “Dry Food,” her vocals are much deeper and even more delicate.  Her guitar playing is great—picking the high notes with her fingers and playing bass notes with her thumb.  The drum is simple–keeping the beat–while the bass adds a low end.  Again, the lyrics are great: “You made beauty a monster to me so I’m kissing the ugly things I see.”

The final song, “Dixie,” is just her singing and playing guitar.  It’s a simple ballad, but not a happy one.  I like the way she repeats the last line of each verse–like a poem.  The song feels like a dream and confessional at the same time:  “People that I’ll never meet have been showing up naked in my dreams and I try to close my eyes but I really want to see their breasts like eyes are staring back at me, their breasts like eyes are staring back at me.”  I love the slow chord she plays at the end of each verse too—a punctuation after each thought.  And then this line: “The hair that’s in my shower drain has been clogging up my home.  And I try to scoop it up but I wretch until I’m stuck just stare and gag into a Dixie cup, just stare and gag into a Dixie cup.”

With her full band there’s a lot more dissonance both in her guitar sound and the chords she plays (and she talks about new merch–Nail Polish called Nailhound by Palehound).  This band is really something.

[READ: January 23, 2013] “God’s Work”

This is a story of faith and questions.

Sanders is a college aged boy (I think–it says sophomore, and they live near a college, so I assume he is in college).  His mother is a devout woman who goes door to door with pamphlets inviting people to Fellowship.  They aren’t Mormon–in fact I can’t decide what their religion is.  They don’t believe in hell, just a void, but she says that, of course, you would rather have God’s eternal love than nothingness.

Sanders loves his mother and his faith is certain.  But he is a teen-aged boy with urges and an imagination.  And being around college-aged girls (while he must wear a heavy black suit) is unsettling.

Most people simply shut their doors in his mother’s face (which does not deter her) but every once in a while people invite her in.  Sometimes for good reason and other times to give them a hard time. (more…)

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Ian McEwan–“My Purple Scented Novel” (New Yorker, March 28, 2016)

Posted in Books about writers, Fraud, Humiliation, Ian McEwan, Marriage (Happy), New Yorker, Sex, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on June 6, 2016| Leave a Comment »

328SOUNDTRACK: MOTHERS-Tiny Desk Concert #520 (April 8, 2016).

mothersMothers is an unusual band.  There are four members (which isn’t that unusual) but their music has a number of elements that makes them hard to classify.  Their songs are slow and somewhat meandering, with a lot of ethereal qualities. There’s no drums and the bass is spare.

On “Too Small For Eyes,” lead singer and guitarist Kristine Leschper sings in a very high, delicate voice and she plays vibratoed guitar lines high on the neck of her guitar (she even holds the guitar very high on her body).  There’s another guitarist who plays similarly high notes and a keyboardist who is playing single notes that sound almost like a steel drum—in the most nontropical way ever.  The music is pretty and feel  like it could float away at any second.  But Leschper’s voice veers towards the harsh from time to time which comes as a surprise.  And as the song nears the end (it’s unclear just how long this song is going to be since there’s no conventional structure—the song could go for 20 minutes longer), the guitars start playing a slightly more dissonant sound.

“Burden Of Proof” is similarly slow with washes of spooky keyboards growing louder.  If they didn’t pause between songs I would have thought it was the same song.  The second guitarist is on the floor playing with effects pedals.

As the song ends, the music continues as the bass player thumbs some notes to keep the sound going.  The second guitarist and keyboardist switch places.  When I first listened to the show without watching I thought they only played two songs.

The third song sounds a little different from the other two (it is a newer song not on their debut album).  The guitar line is a little deeper.  Like the first song, this one turns a little unsettling in the middle with notes that don’t quite seem t go with the music.  It feels like things are slightly awry as they play.  The song returns to normal and then as it reaches the end there is that slightly seasick-sounding wave of keyboards that bring the song to its conclusion.

The blurb says that, kind of like with Ane Brun, the band chose to play their most mellow songs for this show.  In some ways that makes sense, but it also lost me as an audience member because I felt like their music was too samey.

[READ: April 6, 2016] “My Purple Scented Novel”

I’ve enjoyed just about everything I’ve read from McEwan, but this is by far my favorite story from him.

It is about two writers–Jocelyn Tarbet and the narrator, Parker Sparrow.  Forty years ago, they went to school together and were the best of friends.  They took holidays together, made love to each others’ girlfriends and even tried a homosexual relationship.  That last attempt didn’t work–they were repelled by each other’s penises.

But that was fine, because they were each successful in their own way.  Parker had his story published first.  But soon after Jocelyn had his story published.  And things were great.

Until Jocelyn wrote a TV play and made a fortune.  (more…)

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Wilco (Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, June 4, 2016)

Posted in Doug Sahm, Happy Birthday, Loose Fur, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Nels Cline, Philadelphia, PA, Richard Thompson, Wilco on June 5, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 4, 2016] Wilco

2016-06-04 20.49.02After Richard Thompson’s half set, I walked a round the grounds a bit and grew to really appreciate the venue.  I also got a  pretzel which was pretty good.

Then Wilco came out and they were even more amazing than I anticipated.  They played for 2 and a half hours–33 songs–two encores.  It was awesome.

When I walked through the gates someone handed me a Wilco baseball card.   How cool!  Turns out that this is a Mann Center tradition during the summer, so I stand to get a few more.

I have to complain about the audience for a moment though.  I sat on an aisle seat and I had to stand up to let people past me not less than 20 times.  Between people coming late (and I can’t complain about that as I was late to the opener), but then going back to get drinks or whatever half a dozen times–and different people each time.  This was made more irritating by the people in front of me who were doing the same thing.  The girl in front of me got there just as the band went on and then left for three songs, came back with a beer for her partner and then left for two more songs.  WTF?  The amount of traffic was infuriating–it was really hard to get into a constant groove.

But the band overcame that (and clearly when I see them again I need to get in a closer section where the real fans are). (more…)

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Richard Thompson (Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, June 4, 2016) [WILCO]

Posted in Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, Richard Thompson, Wilco on June 4, 2016| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 4, 2016] Richard Thompson

2016-06-04 20.01.12I was so excited for this double bill of Wilco and Richard Thompson.  I had never seen Wilco but for the last few years I have really gotten into them.  And of course, I’ve seen Richard Thompson a bunch of times–but not as an opening act–how would he truncate his set?  And then a whole bunch of things conspired to make me miss almost his entire set.  (Details after the set list).

So I got to the Mann Center–a lovely venue–just as Richard was finishing “Walking on a Wire.”  Since his set could be anything, I hoped it was the first or second song.  But it turned out to be the sixth!

So I was able to hear him play three songs.  “Persuasion” sounded fantastic.  “One Door Opens” is a really catchy song that he played back in February and it was fun to hear again.  And “I Misunderstood” is one of my favorite songs of his, so that was great to hear.  And just as I settled in for more, he thanked us and welcomed Wilco.

Someone that I walked past said they couldn’t believe they only gave him 40 minutes, and I rather agree–although I can’t believe he didn’t start twenty minutes late or something.

After seeing him a few months ago from row J, I was pretty excited to see him from Row H, until I realized that it was in the second section back.  Not Row H, but essentially Row HH.  Nevertheless, the view was great and the sound was really amazing.

Here’s a clip from Persuasion and here’s a clip from I Misunderstood.

I hate missing any part of a show, so that all put me in a pretty foul mood.  And now that I see he opened with “When the Spell is Broken,” a song I don’t think I’ve ever heard him play, and certainly not solo acoustic I’m even more bummed.

On the plus side, Wilco totally cheered me up.  Especially when they invited Richard out to play on “California Stars.”

June 4, 2016
 February 9, 2016
 February 17, 2012
When the Spell is Broken  [this space left blank by accident]
 She Twists the Knife Again
The Ghost of You Walks The Sun Never Shines on the Poor Easy There Steady Now?
Valerie The Ghost of You Walks Good Things Happen to Bad People
Dry My Tears and Move On Valerie Johnny’s Far Away
1952 Vincent Black Lightning Josephine Valerie
Walking on a Wire Johnny’s Far Away Oops I Did It Again
Persuasion Beatnik Walking Stumble On
One Door Opens 1952 Vincent Black Lightning 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
 I Misunderstood Dry My Tears and Move On Sunset Song
I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight Saving The Good Stuff For You
Genesis Hall Pharaoh
Good Things Happen to Bad People Who Knows Where the Time Goes
Woods of Darney Hamlet (Dog Eat Dog in Denmark)
Read About Love My Enemy
Persuasion Shoot Out the Lights
Fergus Laing If Love Whispers Your Name
Wall of Death Crawl Back
I Misunderstood Hot for the Smarts
encore encore
Beeswing Walking on a Wire
encore 2 Down Where the Drunkards Roll
Down Where the Drunkards Roll Persuasion
One Door Opens Feel So Good
Shoot Out the Lights Beeswing
encore 2
Sydney Wells
Dimming of the Day

The FUBAR situation:

  • The weekend of June 4 later proved to be a weekend that Sarah was going to camping with the Girl Scouts.  In other words she wouldn’t be able to go with me.
  • I could not sell this ticket because of a miscommunication with someone who wanted it and the inability of several other who wanted to go to change their plans.  So I had to eat the cost (although I guess it was nice having an empty seat next to me)
  • The weekend also later proved to be a weekend that Clark was supposed to go on a camping trip.  I was going to go for Friday night and leave Saturday.  The troop discouraged that saying that kids tend to freak if you leave mid-trip.  Rather than going on the camping trip, Clark chose to bail on the whole thing and I felt guilty about it all weekend. [On the plus side we had a lot of fun Saturday on our own].
  • I thought the show was at 8 but it was really 7:30.
  • I had planned plenty of time to arrive early for 8, but 7:30 would have been about 15 minutes early.
  • However, I was bringing Clark to a friend’s house and we wound up leaving about 15 minutes after I initially wanted to leave.
  • En route, a road that i normally take was closed and the detour had my ETA on the GPS go from 42 minutes to 55.
  • I wound up in a location I’ve never been before and in my haste/trying to figure out how to get to where I needed to go (no detour signs at that end of the road) I committed a driving infraction evidently right in front of a policeman.
  • He pulled me over which added easily 15 minutes to the total time.  [MORAL: although I wasn’t speeding, it never pays to speed because if you get caught it will certainly nullify any time you would have saved].
  • The only positive of the night was that the policeman took pity on me and kept my record clean, giving me a fine for something else (thank you)–although I don’t know how much the fine is yet…
  • By the time I got close to the venue, the traffic was terrible.  The Mann Center is a great venue but there’s only one way in and a bottleneck is inevitable.

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Annie Proulx–“A Resolute Man” (New Yorker, March 21, 2016)

Posted in Annie Proulx, Death, LGBTQ, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, PWR BTTM, Romance, Sex, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence on June 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »

march 21 SOUNDTRACK: PWR BTTM-Tiny Desk Concert #519 (April 4, 2016).

pwrbttmPWR BTTM are the most fun Tiny Desk concert to come along in a long time.  They are a two person—drums and guitar only–queercore band.  The two guys are Ben Hopkins and Liv Bruce.  They are punky and brash and a lot of fun.

Ben plays guitar for the first three songs and they switch off lead vocals.

“Ugly Cherries” opens with an excellent, complex guitar riff played on a very distorted acoustic guitar.  I love that that complicated riff runs through the song and ends with an awesome harmonic’d note.  It’s two minutes of pop punk fun.  And the opening lyrics sets the tone for the song (and the band):  “My girl gets scared, can’t take him anywhere.”

Between songs Ben and Liv are full of jokes and chatter.  Liv says “This is my favorite show that we’ve ever done…its cool to be someone’s lunch break.”

For “Dairy Queen,” Ben switches guitars.  He has an electric guitar this time and Liv sings lead.  Interestingly, this guitar is less distorted than the acoustic.  This is a funny song with the refrain of “right now I’m in the shower.”  There are lots of ideas about things they could do if he wasn’t in the shower like “We can go to Disneyworld and fuck shit up,” At the end of the song Liv moans that he had planned to change Disneyworld to NPR because it is the same syllables, but he forgot.

“Nu 1” returns Ben to lead vocals.  It is a slower song with a simpler guitar riff.  Although once the chorus comes in it’s loud and brash with backing vocals from Liv.  The opening line “God damn everyone’s dumb” is pretty great.  The end of the song has a guitar riff that is similar to the first song, but played in a very different style.

For the final song “C U Around” they switch places with Liv moving to guitar and lead vocals.  As Ben heads to the drums Bob comments on his nail polish and Ben looks over and says “Bob… up here” pointing to his eyes.  While everyone is laughing and Liv is tuning, Ben says

When I was 15 and didn’t think a queer person could ever be in a band….  I  never thought I’d get to throw shade at Bob Boilen.  This is my biggest dream come true.

Then Ben asks how is Liv doing up there and Liv shouts “Guitars are hard!” His guitar playing is very different–more strumming than Ben’s manic style.  The song is slow with a plucked guitar riff and I like the way near the end he starts strumming really hard and gets a cool fuzzed out bass guitar tone while retaining the regular sound of the guitar’s high end.

As you can see from the photo, PWR BTTM dress outlandishly.  Ben is in a bright red dress with sparkly nail polish and really garish facial makeup (with his beard showing through) and swim goggles on his forehead.  Liv is a bit more subdued although when he steps to the front mic you can see that his lipstick is really quite striking.  A few months back Bob said they put on his favorite live show.  If I loved the fifteen minutes of this one I can only imagine how great a 90 minute extravaganza of PWR BTTM would be like.

[READ: March 25, 2016] “A Resolute Man”

Since I’ve read a few pieces by Proulx recently I felt like I knew her M.O.: bad things happen to people who seem innocent, but might not be–usually by strangely named people.  And all set a long time ago.

This one is not far from that description, although it does change things somewhat.  And I enjoyed it a lot more.

I found the beginning to be a little slow going (but that may be because I was anticipating a long slog).  We learn about Captain James Duke.  And this time I marveled at Proulx’s descriptive sentences; “Duke, at fifty, was complicated, dark-haired, and somewhat handsome”.  That’s a lot of things in a few words.  We learn about Duke’s history and then we learn that he has inherited a parcel of land in Boston (he currently lives in England). (more…)

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Ann Beattie-“For the Best” (New Yorker, March 14, 2016)

Posted in Ane Brun, Ann Beattie, Hillary Clinton, Interiors, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert, Woody Allen on June 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »

314SOUNDTRACK: ANE BRUN-Tiny Desk Concert #518 (April 1, 2016).

aneAne Brun is a Norwegian singer who is currently based in Sweden.  She plays piano and guitar and has a pretty voice which reaches high notes but maintains a kind of rough rasp.  She says she had a terrible cold and this is her first day of singing.  She doesn’t trust her voice yet and she thanks everyone for being so quiet.

The three songs she sings are slow (a little too slow for my tastes).  The blurb says that these are the three slower songs on the album, so maybe I’d like them a bit more amid the other songs  This is not to say the songs are bad, just a little too mellow.

Having said that, the melody and vocal lines of “Still Waters’ are beautiful.  This is the one song she plays on the piano and it does sound rather different from the other two.

For “All We Want is Love” (which she describes as the ultimate love song, kind of), she plays a pretty, picked melody on the acoustic guitar.  But its clear that her voice is the main instrument here–and she hits some lovely notes in the repeated refrain of “All we want is love.”

“Signing Off” is the last track on the album.  It is a slow guitar song. The melody isn’t as immediate as the previous song, but her voice really does carry the tune nicely.  I wonder if her voice normally sounds like this or if the cold impacted her singing.

[READ: March 14, 2016] “For the Best”

I wasn’t that inspired by the previous story of Beattie’s that I read.  And I didn’t really love this one either.  I found it very slow going.

The story is about a man named Gerald, an older divorced man, who gets invited to a party.  His ex-wife, whom he has not seen in some thirty years will also be invited.

But the way this was revealed was kind of circuitous, I thought.

the Clavells weren’t the sort to play pranks, so the printed invitation to their annual Christmas party arrived after what Gerald and Charlotte’s son, Timothy, would call a “heads-up,” sent by e-mail, letting them know that both were invited to the event, at the Clavells’ apartment, on West Fifty-sixth Street. Gerald hadn’t seen Charlotte since their divorce, thirty-one years before, and this was the first time he’d seen her e-mail address. Whether she was on any social media he wouldn’t know, as he was not.

I enjoyed some of the oddly phrased ways the story was revealed (like that last sentence), but it took me a few tries to puzzle out if Gerald was the recipient or the sender oft he invite.  It’s a long first sentence, I guess.

I also enjoyed this follow-up sentence: “It was a rather jaunty message from the Clavells, who were not jaunty people.”  But I think that reading so much of the story like this is exhausting. (more…)

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O. Henry–“Confessions of a Humorist” (1917)

Posted in Black 47, Books about writers, Eddie Campbell, Funny (ha ha), Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, O. Henry, Regrets, Short Story, Silver Mt. Zion, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra on June 1, 2016| Leave a Comment »

henrySOUNDTRACK: THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA-Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything [CST099] (2014).

99Aside from the dance remix single of “Hang on to Each Other,” this is the latest Silver Mt. Zion record to be released.  For those keeping score, GYBE has released an album more recently than SMtZ.  This album is full of punk piss and vinegar (as if the title didn’t give it away).  It’s mostly represented by a heavily fuzzed out guitar that runs underneath nearly all of the songs.

The album begins with a child saying, “We live on the island of Montreal … and we make a lot of noise … because we love each other.”

This first song is called “Fuck Off Get Free (For the Island of Montreal)” and the music starts with scratching noisy guitars and everyone else playing a simple ascending and descending riff.  The vocals kick in right away and it feels like the whole group is singing along too–everyone is involved in this noisy song.  It works great.  Even when the song shifts to a more singable part it retains the intensity of the pacing.  Around 4 minutes we get a return to the chanted vocals that lead into a kind of hurricane of a solo section.  And when they come out of that the chorus sings the chanted title.  The biggest change comes at 6 and a half minutes when the whole song shifts and a slower, heavier and deeper guitar chord (unlike any they have played before–it feels unearthly) drives the remainder of the song.  As I’ve noted in other songs, I love when the choir sings by itself (the female singers in this case singing “pull me under”), and they all sound much more “professional” than the kind of loose choir they were a few albums ago.  This choir sings to the end of the song as the instruments all drop off leaving only voices.  It’s pretty fantastic.

“Austerity Blues” is 14 minutes long and opens with a flat sounding scratched acoustic guitar and sing along vocals.  While the scratching  guitar is going on a cool bass line begins.  Things quiet down which leads to a noisy one-note distorted guitar that adds a layer of noise to the melody line.  The song shifts to a louder section with scratchy violins and big pounding drums (David Payant has really added a lot to these songs with his powerful drumming).  Around 6 minutes in, a distorted echoing guitar plays a kind of Middle Eastern-sounding guitar solo.  When the solo settles down a new faster section begins–lots of drums and group singing.  By ten minutes, the song feels like it’s fading out as the music gets quieter.  But a new set of vocals resume more quietly this time, and they sing their melodies quietly until the end.

“Take Away These Early Grave Blues” opens with a girl with a very thick British accent wondering why “people think like that” as a noisy violin kicks in with a see-saw riff and shouted vocals.  This song sounds like a pretty standard SMtZ song with the big exception being the really noisy drums that dominate the track (Payant again).  At around 2 minutes, the music drops away leaving just a buzzy bass introducing a noisy drum and guitar solo.  When the vocals resume the music becomes a fast pounding drum fill and more distorted violins and guitars.  The song is intense and while only about 7 minutes long, it really packs a lot in.  It ends with a fast riff (that’s almost an Irish jig) followed by crashing drums and chanting lyrics: “Love each other that’s all.”

“Little Ones Run” is only two and half minutes long.  That’s unusual in itself for the band.  But even more unusual is that the song is like a lullaby.  It’s a quiet piano melody and lyrics sung by the female members of the band.  It hearkens back to their first albums which were all piano, but this is a much updated version of that early sound.

“What We Loved Was Not Enough” opens with quiet violins and deep bass notes.  The relative quiet is shattered by Efrim singing (this is the first instance on this album where his polarizing voice stands out–on the rest of the album it’s pretty well mixed in with everything else.  But I think he’s won us over by this time and we can accept it, especially since the musical melody is so pretty.  There’s also a lovely violin solo that runs through the middle of the song.  In fact, the whole song would be really quite pretty except for the distortion that permeates it–a noisy guitar underpins the whole thing.  But at 6 minutes, everything drops out except for the pretty violin and the vocals,  “And the day has come when we no longer feel.”  That refrain is picked up by the beautiful choir voices (they really sound great).  As they repeat this section, Efrim sings a harsh lead vocal (he sounds a bit like Larry Kirwan from Black 47).  There’s an instrumental section that scorches with noisy guitars for about a minute and then at 9 minutes the song returns to that beautiful chorus (with male voices added) and that delicate violin.  It goes on like this until the end.  It’s really lovely.

The final song “Rains Thru the Roof at Thee Grande Ballroom (For Capital Steez)” is also rather different for the band.  It is “introduced” by an interview (in English and translated into French) from an unnamed musician who is talking about how being in a band is more than a part time gig … it’s what you devote your life to.  When the music comes in it’s floor toms and an unsettling distorted and scratchy strings or keyboards or sampled voices and keyboard which slowly growing louder.  There’s stabs of piano and vocals which are far back in the mix.  The melody is nice but mournful and it continues for all of the four minutes.  [Capital Steez was a rapper from Brooklyn who committed suicide in 2012.  I honestly can’t tell what this song has to do with him].

I’m not sure which band we can expect to hear from next, but both GYBE and SMtZ have released really strong records in the last few years.

For this album, the lineup stays the same as on the previous album (and the band name has remained the same, too).

Thierry Amar: Upright bass, electric bass, plucked piano, vocals
Efrim Menuck: Electric guitar, acoustic guitar, mellotron, vocals
Jessica Moss: Violin, plucked piano, vocals
Sophie Trudeau: Violin, plucked piano, vocals
and David Payant has taken over for Eric Craven on drums, organ, piano and vocals

[READ: March 15, 2016] “Confessions of a Humorist”

I only found out about this story from reading The Fate of the Artist.  I have always vaguely liked O. Henry, but can’t say that I’ve read much by him.  I found this story to be simple and fairly obvious, although perhaps it was obvious because he introduced this style of storytelling to the world one hundred years ago.

The narrator is a bookkeeper in a hardware firm.  We learn a bit more about him and his family.  This line delighted me for some reason, “Naturally, we lived in a vine-covered cottage.”

On the occasion of the senior partner’s 50th birthday, he was selected to give a speech.  And it was a hit.  People laughed and suddenly his reputation as humorist was established. (more…)

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