I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: NICK HAKIM-“The Want” NPR’S SOUTH X LULLABY (March 24, 2017).

It’s always interesting to hear someone with a big hairy beard sing in high falsetto, and that’s just what Hakim does here.

This song is very simple with twinkling synths and programmed beasts all underneath Hakim’s delicate voice.  The blurb introduces Hakim to those of us who don’t know him:

Nick Hakim begins with a bit of a fake-out — languorous strings like something out of a Stars Of The Lid record rumble from a sampler, somber and hesitant. But as he begins to sing in a heartbroken falsetto, surrounded by optical fibers hanging from the ceiling of SXSW’s Optic Obscura installation by Raum Industries, the ambient intro morphs into a quiet, psychedelic croon.

“The Want” will appear on Hakim’s full-length debut, Green Twins, but for now, this solo version is only backed by Mellotron and the reverb’d rhythms of what sounds like a Casio preset. It’s soul music for outer-space, performed in a room that looks like outer-space.

This blurb makes this song sound a lot more trippy than it actually is.  To me, the only psychedelic bit is one harp line.  Otherwise it sounds like a very spare, echoing, simple song.  The end does add some interesting layers of sound, but maybe the recorded version is more trippy.

[READ: June 1, 2016] The Good Neighbors: Kith

I didn’t really love book one in this series.  I enjoyed the premise, but found the execution flawed–both in the “script” and to an extent in the drawings–there a bunch of characters who all look vaguely similar.  But I did like it enough to want to read Book 2.

There’s a handy recap that catches us up.

Then we see Rue sad because of her sullen boyfriend who might be breaking up with her.  But he’s a dick anyhow as are most of the characters, frankly.

About 30 pages in something interesting happens when they discover a knife in a tree.

Rue’s dad is still dating Amanda because his wife (Rue’s mom) is still missing (it’s been a long time).  Then somehow Rue sees her mom as a dream/otherwordly figure and she winds up going to the underworld or the faerie realm, or something.

While she’s there, Rue’s mom wants her to stay there with her although Rue wants to being her mom back home.  Then she runs into Aubrey (her grandfather–who looks remarkably young).  He tries to prevent Rue from leaving and taking her mom with her.   So he tells her to stay just one night.

Eventually, she brings her mom home, much to her father’s surprise–he wants to stay faithful to her even though he loves Amanda (there’s a real history with him and Amanda).

As the book draws to a close Rue finds out why Dale has been so distant lately (it has to do with, well, demon ladies in a pond who like to lick him).  They kids also find out that Ann has been inside of a tree all this time.

It’s all kind of weird and confusing and not many of the characters are very likable.  The only consistently interesting characters are the woman with the short spiky hair and mullet and the guy who looks like Carrottop.

The ending of this book says that “Aubrey won and we lost” and for the life of me I cant figure out why.

I will read the third book if i can find it (my library doesn’t have it) but mostly to see what kind of closure I can get, not because I actually understand whats happening).

Naifeh’s humans are really quite pretty and his monsters are really creepy–he’s an excellent artist.  But again, several of the characters  look a lot alike, especially in close up, which makes it hard to always know what is happening.