SOUNDTRACK: CHASTITY BELT-“Ann’s Jam,” “Elena” and “Drown” (2019)
When Chastity Belt first arrived they posted some gnarly band photos and wre pretty aggressive musically. Their No Regerts album was brash. Jagged music, pointed lyrics and rather harsh vocals.
Over the course of five years they have mellowed out quite a bit. Not necessarily lyrically, although there is some of that, but musically it’s almost a different band. Their guitars are tastefully echoed and the vocals are really pretty and delicate.
The music on these three tracks (the only ones streaming on bandcamp) is practically shoegazey with the hazy vocals and ringing guitars.
There’s some really nice harmonies on “Elena”–and when the two distinct vocals lines intertwine, it sounds great.
“Drown” opens with a really catchy guitar part–it’s a bit faster and sounds a little more like their last two albums, but continuing with the softer vocals.
The only problem with these songs is that they tend to lack a bit of the dynamics that their earlier songs had. We don’t want them to be too chaste, after all.
[READ: September 20, 2019] “Traditions”
This story is about an English school. It opens with seven boys: Hambrose, Forrogale, Accrington, Olivier, Macluse, Newcombe and Napier. Each boy has discovered that his tame jackdaw–birds they had taught to talk (as well as a jackdaw can)–had been killed.
The boys suspect Leggett. Although Olivier believes it is one of the “girls,” one of the maids who lived in the nearby village and attended to the boys.
Despite the birds, they must go on with their day. This included Olivier going before the headmaster. The headmaster was disappointed because Olivier had failed to come up to scratch in any of the sciences he was studying. When the headmaster asked if Olivier had ambitions in that direction, he had to admit that no, he was just curious about the sciences.
The headmaster replied
You indulged a curiosity. You indulged yourself. That can be dangerous.
But when Olivier offered to drop out of science, the headmaster said that would be dangerous too.
Olivier quickly forgot about that and resumed thinking about the dead birds. He was more convinced than every that it was a girl. Although the other boys had found Leggett and beat him up (and then didn’t think he had done it).
There had been other traditions of strange things happening at the school–bells ringing in the night, things going missing. But no one was ever caught.
Olivier was certain it was a particular girl, a maid who was no longer a girl, really. It seemed like she was watching him as well.
No one–no previous headmaster–knows that this maid, who had been with the school for a long time, had been part of a tradition at the school “supplying to boys who now were men, a service that had entered the unofficial annals.”
I have to assume this is an excerpt from a novel, because as a short story it was very unsatisfying. So many characters introduced, the whole science thing, and so much unspoken about the maids. But it doesn’t appear to be from the novel he published in 2002. So I don’t know what to think.
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