SOUNDTRACK: ANNA MEREDITH-Tiny Desk Concert #713 (March 2, 2018).
I have never heard anything like this. From sound to melody, to intensity, to instrumentation, this whole thing just rocked my world.
The melody for “Nautilus” is just so unexpected. It opens with an echoed horn sound repeating. And then the melody progresses up a scale, but not a scale, a kind of modified scale that seems off kilter just as it seems familiar. The cello plays it, the guitar plays it, the sousaphone (!) plays it. And it continues on in like fashion until only the high notes remain and then a menacing low riff on sousaphone cello and guitar breaks through–a great villain soundtrack if ever there was. While everyone plays this riff, Anna returns to the keys to play the modified scale.
Meanwhile, the drummer has looked like he’s asleep behind his small kit. And then 3 anda half minutes in he wakes up and starts playing a loud but slow rhythm. The guitar begins soloing and as it fades out that main riff begins, now with a simple drum beat–not matching what anyone else is playing, mind you. The sousaphone (which must have an echo on it or something and the cello pick up the low menace and it seems like everybody is doing his and her own thing. But it all works amazingly.
So just who is Anna Meredith?
Anna Meredith was a former BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Composer in Residence. Two of the three songs performed here come from her 2016 release called Varmints.
Bob Boilen was also impressed when he first saw Anna Meredith live:
I first saw this British composer a year ago, in a stunning performance at the SXSW musical festival. It was one of the best concerts of my life. The music I heard sent me into a state of reverie. If music could levitate my body, this is how it would sound. It carried me away and thrilled my soul. I was giddy for days.
Now, I know this isn’t music for everyone. … But if you know and love the music of Philip Glass, King Crimson or Steve Reich — music that’s electrifying, challenging and sonically soars and ripples through your body — then crank this up.
Lest you worry that she couldn’t translate it to the Tiny Desk (she says they normally have 23 suitcases full of crap so this has been an exciting challenge to squeeze in here)
Out of nearly 700 performances at the Tiny Desk, this is simply the most exhilarating one I’ve experienced. The instrumentation is unusual, with pulsing bass sounds produced by a wonderful combination of cello, tuba and electronics. It’s all rhythmically propelled by an astonishing drummer and Meredith pounding a pair of floor toms. And much of the repetitive melody is keyboard-and-guitar-driven that morphs and erupt with earth-shaking fervor.
The second song, “Ribbons” is quieter. It’s and new song and it has vocals. Her vocals aren’t great (“hard when you’ve got the voice of a five-year old boy”) but the melody she builds around it shows that her voice is just one more instrument (albeit saying interesting words). Actually, that’s not fair, they are just so different from the noise of the other two songs that it feels very faint in comparison.
It opens with a quiet guitar and electronic drum. And slowly everyone else joins in. A nice string accompaniment from the cello (Maddie Cutter), bass notes on the sousaphone (Tom Kelly) and even backing vocals from everyone. By the third go around the drummer (Sam Wilson) is playing the glockenspiel. By that time the song has built into a beautiful round and the quietness of her voice makes complete sense. As the song nears its end, Sam has switches to a very fast but quiet rhythm on the floor tom.
She introduces the band and wishes a happy birthday to guitarist Jack Ross. She says this is a great present as “so far all we’ve gotten him is an apple corer, the gifts have been a bit low grade.”
They make some gear switches, “we have a bit of a logistics problem with all our gear we can’t quite afford to bring enough glockenspiels, we pass the pure crap glockenspiel around ans everyone gets to go ‘my turn!'”
“The Vapours” opens with a wonderfully wild guitar riff–fast and high-pitched and repeated over and over. Anna Meredith adds waves of synths and then in comes the sousaphone and plucked cello. Then fast thumping on the floor tom propels the song along. The song slows a bit a Anna plays the clarinet (!). The song dramatically shifts to some complicated time signature while Anna plays glockenspiel. After a few rounds, while this complex guitar riff continues the drum and sousaphone start playing a pretty standard beat the contradicts everything else that’s going on and then Anna just starts pounding the crap out of some more toms.
All through this there are electronic sounds adding to the chaos and I have no idea who is triggering them, but it’s really cool.
The end is almost circusy with the big sousaphone notes and yet it’s like no circus anyone has every heard. When the camera pulls back and you can see everyone working so hard and yet smiling ear to ear (especially Maddie), you know this is some great stuff.
The end of the song winds up with a hugely complicated tapping melody on the guitar and everyone else working up a huge sweat.
I couldn’t get over how much I loved this. I immediately ordered Varmints and checked her touring schedule.
How disappointed was I to see that Anna Meredith had played Philly just last month and has now gone back to Europe! I do hope she comes back soon.
[READ: August 30, 2017] McSweeney’s 48
For some reason, I find the prospect of reading McSweeney’s daunting. I think it’s because I like to post about every story in them, so I know I’m in for a lot of work when I undertake it.
And yet I pretty much always enjoy every piece in each issue. Well, that explains why it took me some three years to read this issue (although I did read Boots Riley’s screenplay in under a year).
This issue promised: “dazzling new work; a screenplay from Boots Riley with a septet of stories from Croatia.”
LETTERS
GARY RUDOREN writes about using the Giellete Fusion Platinum Razor every day for 18 days and how things were good but have gotten a little ugly. On day 24 he had a four-inch gash under his nose. Later on Day 38 it was even worse–a face full of bloody tissue squares. By day 67 he is writing to thank McSweeney’s for whatever they did perhaps it was the medical marijuana but now his face is baby butt smooth even without shaving. He wants to change the slogan to Gilette Fusion the shave that lasts forever.
DAN KEANE says if we visit him in Shanghai he’ll talk about how all of the city was cow pasture thirty years ago. When he first moved there he was a movie extra: Office Workers in Newspaper Industry. It was actually a music video for Taiwanese pop star. They were told to look like something eerily familiar was happening, like 9/11, but not.
KATHERINE HEINY. Her 10-year-old son Magnus had a bump on his hand. She thought it was a callus. But he said he has calluses and this one hurts. They went to the doctor and Magnus claimed the bump had been there since second grade (three years ago). A CT scan revealed that it was apparently an embedded splinter. It might eventually work its way out. Magnus is an anxious child to begun with and is even more so now.
COLIN WINNETTE is worried about his vocal cat. They bought a calming pheromone called Feliway to calm him down. And yet still he stares off at nothing and meows and meows.
RACHEL B. GLASER. When she was a kid she moved into a house with a 50 gallon tank embedded in the wall. They decided to fill it with expensive fish but tragedy often befell the tank. One day they found a segmented worm as fat as her thumb with six antennae an a smiling mouth–it became her favorite animal in the tank because it was rarely seen. Over the years he got bigger and was at least ten inches long. The internet said that Smiley (as they called him) was a pest and nothing could survive with it in the tank. Then one day while she was at college it died but she got home, she saw that there were babies. Hundreds of baby smiley!
KEATON PATTI is appalled at the state of modern banking. In claiming that Keaton’s collateral was no good. they were clearly overlooking Keaton’s ownership of a K type star in the Cassiopeia constellation.
DAVID GUMBINER wished to tell us the great story of Latin America. A man he met through couch surfing, his father proved to be a controversial political figure.
SONNY SMITH was given a monstrous gorgeous piano: a 1920s Winterroth. Probably worth $3,000. Then there’s a ring involved and a prostitute and it goes on and on. It seems like a story with no real point or ending. The epilogue says that this was originally performed as a theatrical monologue set to music played by Sonny and the Sunsets in 2013–it’s available on the album Sees All Knows All.
MATT SUMELL begins by talking about living on a boat and a strange phone call and then about how when cars move forward at a green light they don’t all move at the same time, it’s more of a slow chain reaction. This happens in other places too.
STORIES
JULIA SLAVIN-“Only Good for a Day”
This story was very cool and went in some unexpected directions. Set against the backdrop of the Occupy movement, Jonathan meets a girl who wears only newspapers. She made them meticulously–buttons and what not–and all of the print was legible, pointedly so. She even folded it in such a way that there was no break in continuity. Jonathan was immediately attracted to her. After some flirting, she agrees to go home with him. He lives nearby and is not exactly part of the Occupy movement–well, he is but he goes home from time to time. When she removes her “clothes” there is backwards newsprint all over her body. He scanned her body all over, reading and reading. When he removes his clothes he lays her down and…gets consumed by her words. She understands: “It’s not your fault…boys just want to read me.” There’s a strange interlude in which he is attacked by some other guys in the movement…they want to know what he’s read on her. But all things must come to an end, as Occupy did. And he knew he would never have another girlfriend that he couldn’t read.
DAN KEANE-“The Lazarus Correction”
Wednesday is the maid’s day so he is out of the office pretty early to avoid her. He goes to the news station where he works and he learns that two female tourists are dead. No nationality or cause of death given. He had to file this report but if he files too soon and they are not dead, you have a Lazarus correction, and nobody wants that. Most of the story involves his learning more about the cause of death and ultimately contacting loved ones. But there’s a parallel story with his maid Diana. She does an amazing job but then her appendix burst. Her son took her to the emergency room and the narrator insisted next time anything like that happens to call him. her son Wilson came to clean while his mother recuperated but it had been almost two months–turns out there’s some kind of infection that she can’t kick. Again the narrator says he will take care of it. He has to deal with the possible death of a person he knows and an actual death of someone he doesn’t.
KELLY LINK-“I Can See Right Through You”
This is a fascinating story about two on-screen lovers and their lives after their show is done. He is referred to as “the demon lover” because he is a vampire and she his woman. The “her” is Meggie, costar of his series. They were good friends and would always be thus. So when things went south with his other ladies (like the sex tape that happened with Fawn) he cried on her shoulder. It has been several years and Meggie’s career has been revitalized. She has been working for a paranormal show called Who’s There. On the current location, they are having no luck with the spirit. Since it is a lake and the “ghosts” died while nude, the entire cast and crew decides to work nude as well. Its weird at first but they get used to it. So when the demon lover comes to her to cry on her should, he walks in on a nude scene. There is flirtation, and frustration and I really enjoyed the way this whole story played out. It was one of my favorite McSweeney’s stories in a long time.
REBECCA CURTIS-“Waterloo!”
This story begins with an epigram of CBO analysis saying that the Affordable Care Act would shrink the work force by more than two million full-time positions. Republicans claimed that the act would nudge people to work less. So this story plays with that idea to extremes. The man goes to get a coffee and no one is working. The barista is not the barista but the owner, she had no workers left so she is closed. He meets a CEO who says he is quitting his own job because now that he can buy health care he doesn’t need a job. The entire place is in chaos Mitt Romney says it’s all Obama’s fault. This is Obama’s Waterloo! Then Obama shows up… can he save the day?
ISMET PRCIC-“Nimrods”
I really enjoyed this one as well. The story is written from the point of view of a movie theater employee. His boss Hunter Lopez is a real jerk. Anyone Hunter doesn’t like he calls a nimrod. And he talks tough all day. The narrator is Bosnian, he has survived the war and he has no tolerance for Hunter’s faux machismo. But Hunter also has no tolerance for reality, so he makes fun of the narrator–I am Bosnian. I survive war. The narrator mostly thinks about his ex girlfriend in Bosnia–she was aggressively sexual. He had no idea what to do with her because he was so immature. While he thinks of her Hunter yells at him, Yo nimrod–its tome to change the marquee.
He is on a ladder in a precarious position and he puts up the new letters: Pilp Fuction. But Hunter doesn’t notice and when the narrator gets in to work the next day Hunter is furious . He doesn’t suspect the narrator but he’s feeling annoyed, so he spikes the narrator’s Mountain Dew. The narrator does not take it well and he freaks out, which frightens Hunter but also somehow gets them to bond a little.
Looking for revenge, he waits until Friday night again and this time deliberately messes up Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to… use your anagramming skills! Hunter bonds with the narrator trying to figure out how to get the guys who did it and the next Friday night an ambush is planned.
VALERIA LUISELLI-“Because Night Has Fallen and the Barbarians Have Not Come” [translated by Christina MacSweeney]
Two adult children learn that their mom has a boyfriend. They go to Acapulco to visit her. She says he looks like Slavoj Žižek a Slovenian critic and poet. However, he is blind. This shocks the children–blind! How will they deal with that, but more pressing issues come up when her date doesn’t turn out as she expects.
TÉA OBREHT-“One, Maybe Two Minutes from Fire”
This story began in a delightfully cryptic way–we are in the head of a driver as he tries to figure out how he almost hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk. The kid hit the hood of his car and shouted “Oh my god.” And then the kid told him his car was smoking–he needs to see a mechanic. He pulls the car over and tries to figure out what happened when a guy who was sitting on a stoop nearby comes over to talk about the car. He’s a mechanic and can help with the problem. The mechanic says he’d better not move the car at all–it could seize up. So he calls the garage and says he can work in it thee. Several things happen in this short story. The first is surprising. the second is terrible but awesome. The way the story unfolds is great.
JOHN McMANUS-“Gainliness”
Victor was peculiar. This assessment of him irked him even though he knew it was correct. He had weird dreams, he used needle nose pliers to extract snot and he peed sitting down. After brushing his teeth he always swallowed the toothpaste. And worse yet, he had to begin all journeys on his left foot. When he was little his uncle Micah came and visited. He told Victor that he would be trouble in a few years. Victor loved this idea and yet it made his mother upset and he promised he would never be trouble. Victor said that Micah was a name he wouldn’t hate. He hated his own name because of its ugly asymmetry which suggested an ungainly boy. He didn’t mind his parents names: Mary and Raymond. But he had strong opinions of the boys across the street: Albert and Sievert.
Albert and Sievert were twins. To Victor, the name Albert connoted decrepitude and unsightliness. He’d never known a Sievert before and he was impish and lithe. Victor yearned to touch him. Sievert was beautiful and Albert was fat and disgusting.
A few years later though, when Sievert called to him–he had thin and lithe and strong. But it turned out that it was actually Albert. Albert said that while Sievert was a Jehovah’s Witness he, Albert, worshiped the devil. Victor told Albert to call him Micah and they began a strange friendship based on lies and abuse. Soon enough Victor outgrew Albert and moved on.
As he grew older, Victor learned to deal with his hatred of people’s names by drinking. He hung out with guys who played D&D and drank. But one day Sievert called and said that Albert really missed him . He was at a military school and he carved Micah’s name into his bedpost. Sievert asks Micah to write to him to say he never loved him so that Albert could avoid going to hell. And that is what Micah does. As Victor/Micahs’ drinking grows, so does his confusion. And the whole twin/twin names thing builds more confusion at the end of the story (the drinking doesn’t help).
GEORGI GOSPODINOV-“Gaustine’s Projects” [translated by Angela Rodel]
A brief look at some of the projects that Gaustine has been involved in over the years. Like movies for the poor–they could watch movies and then tell the poor about the movies for a small fee (there’s a light aside to pay respects for all of the things that are no more: Tamagotchi, VCRs, telegrams). Then there was a Personal Poem. Meet a person for ten minutes and write a poem about that person. That proved harder than imagined. What about a Condom Catwalk to show off condom brands–how well might that be received? There are several more. He received a text message at 3AM with another great idea–it could only be from Gaustine.
ETGAR KERET-“GooDeed” [translated by Sondra Silverston]
A rich woman hugged a man spontaneously. The man said she was a good person. She was so moved by this whole scene that she gave him $700. He said it was too much but she said it was the right amount. Later she told her friend about the good feeling she got from doing that. Then they came up with an app–it told you where to find the neediest person near you. Mark Zuckerberg bought it and changed the name from One Good Deed a Day to GooDeed. And she made a fortune from it. Later she ran into the man again, but he was no longer homeless, which gives her mixed emotions.
PAUL WHYMAN-“St. E’s”
On a train ride, a woman thinks about her past and future wondering if she can change things, if she can let things go. A TSA man boarded the train and asked what she was reading Lost in the City. She says it was 30 years old and out of print. The TSA dog sniffed it and all was fine. The man next to her (a black man) was playing Gitmo Escape XI. And that’s when it dawns that this is a dystopian train ride. And as the story progresses people begin to die. It’s pretty surreal.
MIRIAN TOEWS-an excerpt from All My Puny Sorrows
An except from this story which I had just finished. This is the first few pages.
The story is fairly simple, although from my perspective it was also fairly exotic. The main action of the book takes place in present day Winnipeg. But there are flashbacks to the main characters’ childhood in 1979. And the way it opens–with the family watching as the house that their father built is put on the back of a truck and driven away is one of the more memorable opening passages of a book that I’ve read.
DAVE EGGERS-“The Dentist on the Ridge” (nonfiction)
Marko is a dentist in a small Croatian city called Metković, ninety minutes north of Dubrovnik. Eggers and his wife rented a villa in Kremena for July. Metković is not a tourist city, while Dubrovnik is stunning–cobblestone castles, fortresses unpoisoned by commerce. This was in 2004 Croatia was peaceful and thrilling. Then we learn about the most historically significant structure in the region. The Stari Most–The Old Bridge of Mostar which had been built by Ottomans in 1566–an architectural astonishment. But in 1993 a Croatian solider destroyed it, Mostar had been multicultural and the bridge served no strategic purpose–so the destruction was purely political. While he was there the bridge was being reconstructed–just as it had been in 1566.
Alienation and Absurdity, at Home and Abroad: Six Stories from Croatia with photos by Boris Cvjetanović
JOSIP NOVAKOVICH-“The New Wave of Croatian Writing”
After the war of independence in the 1990s nearly a hundred new publishers emerged–a celebratory time for new writers and yet almost none of them address the recent wars. Many Croatians writers take it as a challenge to get translated into English. All of these stores delve into the fabric of current Croatian life.
GORDAN NUHANOVIĆ-“Authentic Moldova” [translated by Celia Hawkesworth]
This is a meta-fictional story of literary works. “Authentic Moldova” starts out as an absurdist and cynical tale about publishing and translation and ends up as tribute to Pushkin. This was a confusing story (one will say absurdist) about a writer trying to get published, although his agent trying to get him to get out of the country to make some money. What’s confusing is that there’s a story in the middle of the story which may be the story that the writer in the story is trying to sell. Or maybe it’s not.
TEA TULIĆ-“Hair” translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać
This story is a series of vignettes strung together. They deal with a mother with cancer–snapshots of a life and death. I loved the phrasing:”on the day my grandmother didn’t die.” I love that they take family photos for an uncle in Canada but make sure not to look too well off so he might help them out. As a girl she learned she was impure and demanded to be baptized. Then she asked the priest:
How can God send my father to hell when he loves me?
He said nothing. After a while they moved him to another church, me to another school and God to a phone line.
There’s a good vignette about feeding a stray dog their dinner: “It was big and hungry like Dad was later that evening.”
DAMIR KARAKAŠ-“It’s Me” [translated by Stephen M. Dickey]
Philip and his wife moved to Canada. She had been a teacher but was a now a cleaning lady in the new country. He had a degree in electrical engineering but turned screws in a factory. They left so he could avoid conscription but he regretted it–he would rather be in a war than here.
She tells her husband that Indians get free credit–couldn’t he ask his Indian friend for help getting free credit?
In part 2 he returns home to Brinje–he’d never seen the a medieval castle. Philip’s father hated it when he drew pictures as a child. He threw them all away. Philip’s older brother got into it and tore up drawings too. The brother even beat him–Phillip’s mother and father approved of that–whoever deserves a beating should get it. When he gets back, the brother tells him their father really loved him–he was afraid o Phillip turning into a faggot.
In his childhood bed Philip found a pencil and began to draw. He hung up the picture and felt happy. He believed that his wife and kids are better without him. Later the picture is gone. His brother says maybe a weasel stole the picture but when they go to investigate, the darkness that consumes Philip comes out.
OLJA SAVIČEVIĆ-“Pretty Hunger” [translated by Stephen M. Dickey]
This is a story about anorexia and body image. Sunday is the narrator’s water day–she doesn’t eat. Her bitch Aunt Carmen makes her eat. She wonders what her father and his fatty sister were like as kids. Then she gives us this disturbing sentiment:
Eating serves no higher purpose. The conscious acceptance of hunger, on the other hand, does something wonderful: it promotes the gradual attainment of perfection. After a while you get used to the pain, and begin to see it as part of the beautiful, terrible sacrifice you are making. You begin to worship the hunger. Da is on her side, the fat cunt. It’s not really unhealthy to be “ana.”
Her aunt left a plate of food for her on Monday and she ate it, all even licked the paper. She was so mad about giving it that she took her revenge: dumped salt in the soup, burnt the food, but Tabasco in the icing, toothpaste in the mayo.
Her cousin Zvjezdana comes. She is a sunbeam, but the guys seem attracted to her including the hottest guy who calls the narrator “skeletor.” It’s a disturbing story with a dark ending.
ZORAN FERIĆ-“Saliva” [translated by Coral Petkovich]
Of all of the Croatain stories in the book, I enjoyed this one the most, perhaps because it was the most straightforward. It’ a fairly simple premise. While a boy’s mother is in the hospital his father has him go to an address to deliver an ashtray and a bouquet of flowers to a woman there. The woman welcomed the boy warmly, but he was uncomfortable the whole time. Meanwhile he stops in the hospital to see his mom, but his father makes excuses not to go. His mother embarrasses him, saying that he is fifteen and needs a girl, he must have needs. He keeps assuming that his mother will be home soon, but she never does. Once again he brings money to the lady. She says the money is for the nurses taking care of his mother. The boy wants to know why he is bringing money to this lady but doesn’t ask. One day, at the hospital he hears his mother whisper “kill me, in the name of God.” And then the boy decides he knows what the money is really for and he decides to keep it for himself. He also decides to take his mother’s words to heart (but surely not as she intended) and bring that money to the red light district.
BEKIM SEJRANOVIĆ-“A Happier Ending” [translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać]
A man is going through some rough patches. He jumped into the Sava River; he couldn’t stop thinking about his wife–telling himself he didn’t love her anymore. He decided to fly from the Balkans back to Oslo. But whenever he was in Norway everything got on his nerves. And he began recall the Balkans fondly. But he went anyway. On the flight into Oslo he was stopped by customs. He was asked if he knew why he was pulled over. He guessed that he had had weed in the backpack at some point. But he was released and made his way to a friend’s house where was offered a room and he settles in. The end of the story which is also the title is unexpected and brings the story full circle in a weird and ultimately satisfying and yet unsatisfying way.
BOOTS RILEY-Sorry to Bother You
The screenplay from Boots Riley was called Sorry to Bother You and I really enjoyed it. Here’s a few words from my original post about it.
Cassius Green (known as Cash) lives in a garage bedroom. He has just scored a job at a telemarketing office (his faked resume was hilarious). His girlfriend, Detroit, is an artist. She wants what’s best for him, but also doesn’t want him to suck up to the man. But at the same time, they do need some money.
In their neighborhood there are billboards everywhere for WorryFree. There’s also a TV ad that plays during the movie in which we learn that WorryFree “guarantees you employment and housing for life” (the TV shows six bunk beds, like a prison done up by a hip interior decorator). The concept of WorryFree permeates the movie.
Cassius is torn between the success and money he is making and the major sell-out he is becoming (by the middle of the movie half of Cassius’ lines are overdubbed by a “white actor”). While he is at a party, he learns about something incredibly disconcerting about what the head of WorryFree has planned. And when he sees the evidence of said plan, he is understandably freaked out. How can he possibly convince anyone that what he saw was real?
This was an issue chock full of good stuff. I didn’t love the Croatian stories as much as I would have liked, but overall this was a solid collection.
For ease of searching, I include: Gordan Nuhavonic, Bekim Sejranociv, Zoran Feric, Olja Savicevic, Damir Karakas, Tea Obreht, Ellen Elias-Bursac, Slavoj Zizek, Boris Cvjetanovic, Metkovic
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