I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD-Quarters (2014).

KGATLW have made all kinds of albums, but up until now they hadn’t put any real restrictions on themselves.  Enter Quarters.  This album is made of four tracks.  Each track is 10 minutes and 10 seconds long.  It was never released on CD, only vinyl (and digital).  And it’s pretty fantastic.

Each ten minute song is very different from the others.  The songs are not complex mutli-part suites or anything, they are more like gently meandering trips which explore a melody in every possible way.

“The River” has a fun opening and then a jazzy main riff in which the vocals follow the guitar line as it meanders nicely.  After a couple of verses it takes off into a kind of Santana vibe, with some great soloing and some bongos.  It seems like its going to end early, but the last two minutes introduce a new guitar riff and style that compliments the beginning–a nice instrumental coda to the beauty that has come before.

“Infinite Rise” opens with the sound of something lifting off–soaring higher and higher–and then the music starts.  It’s a series of slow two note lines (vocal and musical) that conclude with a great verse-ending riff.  It’s such a groovy trippy song that when they start adding sound effects (a baby crying, jolly laughter, a monkey, a rooster crowing) it is a little jarring but still makes sense somehow).  The groovy guitar solo(s) that float through to the end are pretty great too.  This one seems like it’s cheating the 10:10 rule because it ends around 9 minutes but then tacks on the reverse soaring intro and ten seconds of noises.  But it’s not like they ran out of ideas…that song could have jammed for ten more minutes.

“God is in the Rhythm” is a slow, pretty bluesy song.  The vocals are high and gentle and the guitar solo sounds like it came straight from the 1950s, but there’s enough psychedelia on it to keep it from sounding like it’s a 50s tribute song.  The guitar work throughout is really spectacular.   Once again, the last ten seconds or so mess about with sound and speed but it never feels like they ran out of ideas.

“Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer” has a rather dramatic build up for an introduction.  A pretty, meandering vocal and guitar riff is accentuated with cool trippy guitar sound (rising echos and the like) .  The middle has a quiet interlude with more cool guitars and a nice bassline.  It feels like the song is going to end early, but no, it starts a kind of middle eastern riff and then takes off again.  I love that the pretty main riff returns many times to basically start the story over again.

This is a wonderful record.  It’s cohesive and very chill, and the musicianship jumps exponentially with each release.

[READ: February 16, 2019] “This Wicked Tongue”

I love The Walrus.  I read every issue cover to cover (one of the few publications I still do). But sometimes the short stories in the magazine just don’t work for me.

I was pretty intrigued to read this one because it had a kind of prologue: “Here beginneth a short treatise of contemplation taken from the Book of Alice Nash, Ancress of Shere, c. AD 1372.”

But then I started reading the story and I just could not get into the writing style at all.

“Before we leave, we tell You–smoke kestrel, thumb sky.”  What kind of opening is that?

And then to follow it with “But since friend Nance’s murder, our words a poor magic mashed to this world.”

So basically this story is going to take a lot of work just to unpack the sentences.  There had better be a good payoff.  (There isn’t).

I think this story was written by Alice.  But Alice is also mentioned in the story.  I assume the narrator writing third person?

Alice (I guess) and her donkey travel for seven days.  But what to make of this:  “When Richards ask favours, we beg off.  When a Margery with head scabs asks us, we head shake.”  Aside from being annoying written, what are these names that are not mentioned before or since.

Nance is dead and everything is in Your name (You being God i assume).  By the middle of the story Alice believes that Nance lives on in Alice.   “Since when Nance died, Alice became Nance too. For You.”

After travelling for many days she reaches Ailbertine the Tall who welcomes her in.  Alice is told to get to work.  She inquiries about a room, I think, but Cecily has it and Alice won’t get it unless she dies.   And then Cecily dies.  Was it You?

Well, she can’t take much of this so she flees into the night.

I guess.

I’m not sure if Alice is a real person or if this is like a real person’s journal or anything. or if Levine is writing in the style of the day.  I’m not at all interested to find out.