I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BORIS-DEAR (2017).

The plan was that after 25 years, Boris would retire.  They recorded songs for Dear, but then toured the anniversary of the album Pink.  This inspired them to write more songs, and somehow through all of that, Dear was created (with apparently enough music for two more albums).

Then they toured Dear (a tour I was lucky enough to see) and are still going.  Who knows if they are done.  Who knows if this is their final album.  Either way, this is a doozy.

10 songs and 70 minutes (on the U.S. release), Dear specialized in slow droney heavy songs.  The album opens with seven smacks of a drum before loud heavy chords signal the beginning of “D.O.W.N -Domination of Waiting Noise.”  The vocals are loud but just loud enough to add to the overall drone sound.  Things slow down further with “Deadsong” a deep bass drone with whispered, rather spooky/demonic vocals.

Despite the drones there are moments of catchiness (relative).  “Absoluego” is a faster, downtuned song with a big shouted chorus and “Beyond” is a quiet, moody song featuring Wata on vocals.  About 90 seconds into the song there is blast of metal guitars and drums that lasts for 30 seconds or so before fading out.  When it happens again, one of the guys starts singing too, a faster heavier, catchier melody.

“Kagero” opens with a low rumble.  Eventually a slow, heavy guitar comes in with near falsetto singing.  “Biotope” has a steady pulsing bass drum through the track.  The guitars are slower with an occasional plucked string that resonates. This song even has some ooohs in it.

“The Power” has my favorite Boris riff since “Tu la la.”  It’s got six notes all of which are strangely menacing and yet catchy at the same time. This was a great song to see live.  “Momentio Mori” is slow and menacing with cool echoed/chorused vocals–there’s an Alice in Chains vibe to the vocals.  With about a minute left, the song slows down and grows quiet almost as a lead in to the 12 minute “Dystopia -Vanishing Point.”  This song opens with two minutes of warbly accordion (I loved watching Wata play this part live) and some thundering drums.  It all fades away into some quiet ringing guitars and whispered vocals.  This continues for a few minutes as waves of guitars are added.  And then at 7 minutes the loud guitars and drums blast forth and Wata gets to do a screaming solo for the final 4 minutes.  She is still soloing as the song abruptly ends and switches to the final track.

“Dear” opens with those low downtuned guitars echoing.  I love that the guitars simply slide up to a very high note and hold it until sliding back down.  There’s a muffled chug on the low chords while the heavily echoed vocals ring out.  The song continues like this, a mountain of low rumble, for 9 minutes until it starts to consume itself–feedbacking and disintegrating until it sounds like all of the plugs are pulled.

There’s not a lot of diversity on this disc, which resembles some of their earlier music.  I’m very curious to see what they do next.

[READ: February 9, 2016] “The Republic of Bad Taste”

This story (it feels complete and not like an excerpt, although the title seems unlikely as a short story title) was 20 pages long in this issue of the New Yorker.  That’s one of the longest pieces I’ve seen in the magazine.

And it covers a lot of ground.

Like how does an at-risk-youth counselor agree to commit murder?

It begins by introducing us to Andreas Wolf in East Germany circa 1987.  He is a disaffected youth, an atheist with a super libido and he has found employment at the church on Siegfeldstrasse.  Andreas felt the whole regime was ridiculous.  In fact he felt that a lot of things were ridiculous.  The Republic was just so German that it couldn’t even go after misfits unless it was by the book.

His “job” at the church was as a youth counselor.  He was surprisingly good at it. In part because he really didn’t care and in part because he himself was almost at risk.  He wasn’t really at risk because his father had a good position with the government, but they had more or less disowned him (aside from agreeing to make sure he never got into real trouble).  Plus, he was pretty good-looking so many of the at risk girls found him attractive–with all that implies.

He took advantage of this.  He found that his monetary reward was so pitiful that a reward in beautiful girls made up for it.  At the same time, he did have some scruples.  He never had sex with anyone underage or anyone who had been sexually abused.  What a guy.

He was usually very discreet with his conquests and, of course, he never saw them again.  But then he met a woman who wanted to sleep with him but wouldn’t do it in the church basement where he lived.  So, he agreed to take her to his parents’ cabin in the woods.

Within minutes of arriving, the police banged on the door wondering why lights are on in the cabin.  When they call his father, he tells Andreas to get the hell out and never come back.  (There’s some great details in this).

And that really shut him down going forward.  He basically never left his room.  Even the church folks noticed.

Finally the church’s vicar came to tell him about a girl who was upstairs in the church.  She was scared but unwilling to talk.  So Andreas agreed to see what he could do.  Annagret was beautiful and young and although she didn’t want to talk to him at first, she eventually found him easy to talk to and he quickly got to the bottom of her situation.

We learn all about her homelife.  That her sister met a guy Horst, who was much older than her.  And when Horst met the girls’ mother (who was hot and close to Horst’s age) he decided to date her instead.   Annagret’s sister moved out and things seemed to go pretty well in their house.  Horst was cool and without her sister around, it seemed like a good change.

But then Horst eventually started telling Annagret that they had to start keeping secrets. He even claimed to work for the Stasi secret police. And of course, soon enough, his hands went where they shouldn’t be.  Annagret felt really guilty about the whole thing.

Andreas tried to think of ways to help her, but none sounded appealing.  She eventually just said that she would give in to his desires.  And that’s when Andreas said that he would kill Horst for her.

Amazingly that is only half of the story.  The second half of the story is the actual planning and follow through with the attempted murder.  It’s a pretty shocking story from Franzen, frankly.

Of course, all of this is happening while regime change is underway in Germany.  And soon it become unclear just how much trouble Andreas is in.

It’s a pretty bleak and gloomy story, but as with nearly everything Franzen does, it’s very well written  and the emotional depth is pretty heavy.