SOUNDTRACK: FIRST AID KIT-The Lion’s Roar (2012).
This album was my first exposure to First Aid Kit and I immediately loved the harmonies and the dark but positive-sounding vocals.
I’m probably one of ten people on earth who doesn’t love Bright Eyes, but I love the production by Bright Eyes’ Mike Mogis (with contributions from Bright Eyes’ Nate Walcott and band leader Conor Oberst–maybe I need to re-listen to Bright Eyes).
The first song I’d heard was the opening cut “The Lion’s Roar.” The song starts with a minor key guitar chord progression and “electronic flute.” It’s atmospheric and a bit spooky-sounding, but when they come in with the chorus “And I’m a goddamn coward, but then again so are you” in wonderful harmony that is at times right on and other times kind of dissonant, it’s goose-bump-inducing. Oh wow. what a moment
Pitchfork describes that electronic flute as “one deeply eerie flute tone that lingers throughout, floating in and out of scenes like a sly specter” and that’s pretty accurate.
It’s followed by “Emmylou” the most gorgeous country song I’ve ever heard, complete with pedal steel guitar and a wonderfully evocative chorus: “I’ll be your Emmylou, and I’ll be your June/ If you’ll be my Gram and my Johnny, too,” (do watch them sing it to Emmylou Harris at an award ceremony and watch her brought to tears).
“In The Hearts Of Men” slows things down with some wonderful moments as the sisters sing the “la la las” throughout the chorus. Once again, there’s surprisingly dark lyrics for two women around 23 and 21. And speaking of dark lyrics, the pretty xylophone and guitar play a chirpy melody in “Blue” which has this stark and dark verse:
And the only man you ever loved / You thought was gonna marry you / Died in a car accident when he was only 22 / Then you just decided, love wasn’t for you / And every year since then / Has proved it to be true
Damn. How does a song with that lyrics have a beautiful soaring chorus that is so uplifting and Abba-esque and yet again lyrically:
But you’re just a shell of / Your former you / That stranger in the mirror / Oh, that’s you / Why’d you look so blue?
“This Old Routine” features more of that uncanny, how are you only 21 years old lyrics sung with such beautiful harmony (and delicate mandolin sprinkled in):
This old routine will drive you mad
It’s just a mumble never spoken out loud
And sometimes you don’t even know why you loved her.
Well you look at her now, and you see why.
The second half of the song has strings and such, playing a simple five note melody. There’s a moment near the end where the strings play that five note riff and its followed by the mandolin playing the same melody one step up and it’s just gorgeous.
“To a Poet” has a fast tight guitar melody. As the song builds, a harmonium is added. The chorus goes in a high register until the simple catchy end line: “There’s nothing more to it / I just get through it.” The poet in question is Frank O’Hara
But Frank put it best when he said
“You can’t plan on the heart”
Those words keep me on my feet
When I think I might just fall apart
The string section ending is bit of a surprise since neither one of them palsy on it but it does add some nice texture to this song that has just grown from a tiny guitar to full orchestration over the course of 6 minutes.
That cool flute sound returns on “I Found a Way,” as it runs through the falsetto-filled chorus. “Dance To Another Tune” slows things down for a while until the middle features another string section. This time the sisters add their “bah bah bahs” to it and it sound terrific.
“New Year’s Eve” brings back the autoharp (you can really hear the plectrum zipping along the strings–something I’ve never noticed when others play it). It’s a suitably quiet song with a gentle harmony on the final line of the chorus: “that’s what’s going to save me.” And I love that no other instrumentation is added.
The end of the record is quite different from anything else. “King of the World’ is a dynamic romp, easily their fastest, loudest, stompingest song. It’s got a full band behind them and a vocal turn from Conor Oberst. There’s all kinds of strings and mandolin tucked in the corners that peek out here and there. There’s even horns which sound a bit like Calexico.
This album is just fantastic. And their harmonies get better and more confident with each album.
[READ: January 22, 2018] “Writing Teacher”
I have not really enjoyed any of the stories I’ve read by Wideman. This was the first one that I felt was on the right path to my enjoyment. And then it kind of drifted away from me at the end.
It also features one of the things I hate most in stories–more on that in a moment.
This is the story of a writing teacher. He is reading and reviewing a story by a student, Teresa McConnell who, “wants to help other people.” The story “wishes to save the life of its main character, a young woman of color, a few years out of high school, single, child to support, no money, shitty job, living with her mother who never misses an I-told-you-so chance to criticize her daughter’s choices.”
What I hate most in stories comes a few sentences later:
Worse now because a baby daughter is trapped with her. Lack of understanding not the narrator’s problem.
That second “sentence,” written in that truncated business-efficiency-style (reminding me so much of George H.W. Bush) just breaks me out of any story that uses it. I get that this teacher is using it because he is instructing this student (it’s unclear to me if this is meant to be a conversation they are having or if he is thinking it while he is helping her), but I hate it. And it happens a lot in this story.
He says that if her story wants to actually assist people, then it needs help. He commends her for not writing about fair-skinned people–like the ones that go to the school, like her. She reveals that her father is a bigot, although her mother is more open-minded. Either way this is rather brave of her.
The problem is that her story, like the people in it, is stuck with nowhere to go.
He wonders how much he should tell her–that he is contemplating retiring, that he is coping with the likelihood that neither his brother nor his son will be released from prison anytime soon, or that his sexual desire is still strong even if it isn’t physically. No, he can’t say that, obviously.
He says that her story addresses the reader “you” but that identifying the reader as the enemy too early is not a great idea. Or, as he writes it “I advise my students that identifying readers as the enemy too early in a story not the wisest strategy.” Ugh. Just imagine Dana Carver doing H.W. Bush and saying “not the wisest strategy.” Why can’t he just put that “is” in the sentence? “Readers bad-mouthed are same readers the story endeavors to woo.” Bleagh. “We, my student and I, not characters in a sci-fi drama located in hyperspace.” Waaaah.
But anyway he moves on to some suggestions. Rather than having her deal with an obnoxious clerk, your story suggests she needs more than words: “So maybe chopping off the clerk’s head a way out.” Ugh and What? He advises: “Risk lettering her do what you would never do.” He notes to himself, I assume, “One thing is for certain, my student is not the young brown woman inside the story.”
Then he starts talking about empires falling (to himself? to her?) and it kind of loses me.
We wait and wait for the moment to arrive. Wait for the time to celebrate. Time to love. We understand empire a chimera, a bad idea. Same bad idea over and over again. Empire dead. Long live Empire.
But he tells her (more than once) that this is her story and she doesn’t need to take his suggestions.
Then he seems to go crazy. He tells her tomorrow he will get a weapon, assassinate a sadistic prison guard … blow up a building.
Inside his head he sees empire of his desire topple to the ground.
Then he tells her to focus on the clerk–the point where the energies converge, crackle, glow. He thinks there is something of her, of her father, in this racist clerk.
He seems to be thinking things in his head and saying other things to her. Talking about soldiers, prisoners, the tortured. Is she any different from them?
What on earth is this poor girl thinking?
I was intrigued by this story, wondering how he would help a white student deal with race in his story but I have I no idea what happened at the end.
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