SOUNDTRACK: YIM YAMES-Tribute To (2009).
I really like My Morning Jacket, but I find that Jim James’ solo work is a little too slow for me. This album is a collection of six coves of George Harrison songs. I’m not a particularly big fan of George Harrison’s solo work, so really this just doesn’t work for me all that way.
This record is incredibly languid. Although after several listens I finally found a way in and have begun to enjoy the melodies. Also, reading this quote makes me like the album more
James recorded the album in December 2001 on a relative’s eight-track reel-to-reel tape recorder, just days after Harrison’s passing. Of the recording, James told Billboard magazine that “I felt like I was in the weirdest head space when I did that EP … I felt really confused a lot of the time. I wanted to just do it and let it come out even if I messed stuff up. It’s definitely not the tightest or most professional recording you’re ever going to hear in your life but I like that. I think it lends it a more childish atmosphere.”
“Long, Long, Long” has a nice melody in the chorus. While “Behind the Locked Door” has a nice melody in the verse.
“Love to You” introduces a banjo, which adds a nice texture to the EP. “If Not for You” is the most uptempo song on the record and is quite lovely.
The first time I listened through this album the only song I knew was “My Sweet Lord,” which was never a particular favorite. Although I like the way Yames multitracks himself.
“Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp” has piano in it and it is also fairly upbeat, although boy does it go one for a long time.
the final song is “All Things Must Pass.” This track is also quite pretty but also slow and long.
The whole EP definitely sets a mood, and if you are in the mood for pretty, slow acoustic songs, this is the place to be.
[READ: June 4, 2019] “Hereafter, Faraway”
The June 10th issue of the New Yorker features five essays by authors whom I have enjoyed. They were gathered under the headline “Another Country.”
This essay is about the author’s mother’s death and the author’s subsequent return to Vietnam.
Her mother believed that another world awaited her and was not concerned. The author imagines this other world was was like those found in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film After Life. In the film the newly dead pass through a halfway house run by angels. The travelers must pick one even from their life that the angels will make into a movie, starring the travelers themselves. Heaven is this short film played on an endless loop.
The author says in this scenario she would be indecisive and come out a filmmaker.
The films and photographs that she remember are all from America and are in color. But a sister who stayed in Vietnam sent her some photos from when the author was still a baby–those were in black and white. Her mother is in her late thirties and, knowing the importance of having your photo taken, looks glamorous. The author writes, “there is no trace of the refugee about her.” His mother had been a refugee twenty years ago when her homeland had been bisected and then again twenty some years later she would become a refugee again, fleeing Vietnam for America.
For a land that would never be as glamorous.
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