I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: KIKAGAKU MOYO-“Gypsy Davey”/”Mushi No Uta” (2020).

Japanese psych rock band Kikagaku Moyo (who are amazing live) were picked for the new Sub Pop 7″ singles cub release.  I’m not part of that club, but the tracks are available to stream.  Here’s what the band says:

This is a limited release as a part of the Sub Pop Singles Club Vol. 4, and physical copies will only be available to subscribers of the series. As such, it won’t be available at our shows or in stores…but you can listen now on streaming sites.

The first song, “Gypsy Davey,” is a reworking of the traditional British folk song by the same name. We referenced Sandy Denny’s arrangement from the 1971 album Fotheringay for our performance.  We recorded the track in London with guest vocalist Kandice Holmes, aka Bells @be__lls.

The second song, “Mushi No Uta,” was written by Tomo and Go and recorded last summer in their living room.

Both of these were recorded in brief windows during our touring in 2019. We are very happy with opportunity hope you enjoy the songs.

I love the way they have taken this old English folk song “Gypsy Davey” and added some great psychedelic elements.  First off it starts with drums and some very cool sitar work.  The guitars are slow and echoing.  Then after the first verse, the full band joins in with a slow 70’s sounding folk rock (with electric guitars) song.  By the third verses, the two guitars are doing different things and it all works together very nicely.

I had never heard of Kandic Holmes (aka Bells) but her voice is perfect, sounding old school and like she has heard this song a million times and can’t wait to sing it again.

The middle of the song has a wonderful, slow sitar solo.  I love that they have taken folk and made it international folk.

“Mushi No Uta” is a slow ballad. It does sound a bit like a home made recording (or else it is recorded deliberately close-sounding).  The vocals are whispered and the guitars intertwine nicely.  After a minute and a half, expansive, echoing guitar chords come rumbling through totally changing the atmosphere.  The second guitar plays some wild lines.  After about a minute, it all fades out and the original sound returns–gentle folk acoustic guitar and falsetto vocals.

It’s a nice single and shows a different side of the band.

[READ: February 20, 2020] Princeless: Raven Book 1

I really enjoyed Book 3 of the Princeless series in which Adrienne encountered Raven locked up in a castle.

I thought Raven was a pretty awesome character and I was really happy to see that Jeremy Whitley had created a series just for her.

This series is a lot less light-hearted than the Princeless series and definitely skews a bit older than Princeless.  It’s also not quite as funny (by design, I assume).  However, it features a wonderfully diverse crew of women and all of the great feminism that Princeless is known for.

As this book opens, we see Raven’s father showing her how to shoot an arrow–how she came to be known as Black Arrow and how fearsome she was even as a child.

The story of the excitement she had as a child on her father’s ship is contrasted to the drudgery of the present–fixing up the ship that she has commandeered from her brother’s mates.  She realizes that if she is going to get revenge on her brothers for locking her up, she needs a crew.  So she heads into town where she bumps into (literally) a woman who barely speaks English and is down on her luck.  She says she ate today, but has no money left.  Raven gives her some coins and the woman replies, “You give me to have these?”  She gives Raven a huge kiss and walks off.  That’s when Raven realizes the woman stole her purse.

The rest of the chapter shows some excellently drawn chase scenes from Rosy Higgins and Ted Brandt in which the thief (who we will learn is a half-Elf named Sunshine) is impressed by Raven’s tenacity and in which Raven is impressed by Sunshine’s physical abilities.  Sunshine runs into a bar and as Raven is about to tackle her, the bar owner points a crossbow at her.

The chapter ends with Raven turning around and recognizing the man as Cookie–the cook on her dad’s ship.  And as the recognition hits her, so does a bottle on the back of the head.

Chapter two has Raven and Sunshine begrudgingly befriending each other.  Cookie fixes them an amazing meal during which we meet Cookie’s surly, daughter Jayla.  Raven knew Jayla from the ship, but that was many years ago ago.  Jayla is a year younger than Raven but she is super smart in the sciences.

Cookie tells Raven that is she wants a crew, she needs three things: a mission that promises a big payday, food for the trip (which Cookie will give her) and a room full of unemployed pirates–that’s what a bar is.

Raven goes out to the main hall and says she is looking for a crew.  I love the absolute sexism that is on display and how quickly Raven wants nothing to do with these men.  There are pirates who want a captain who is stern but sexy or who think she’s just looking for a man to run her ship.  After a revolting slew of pirates comes by, a woman sits down and says she came to this place to find Raven or someone like her.  Someone she could follow into battle. Her name is Katie and she is awesome.

Katie suggests that rather than using the drunk louts in this place they try to find an all-female crew.  And Katie has a guild of women she can ask.  The Guild started as a book club, then she started running a game.  What kind of game?

It’s sort of a post-catastrophic sword and sorcery dungeon crawler.  I run a level 27 Squirrelon Warchief.

Raven replies: I don’t understand like half of the words you’re saying and he other half I’m certain you’re not using correctly.

But when Katie says they are also her fencing club and survival scouts, Raven is ready to meet them.

Before they leave, however, a bar fight must break out!  Raven, Sunshine and Katie hold their own very well until Jayla comes out with one of her science experiments.  She shouts to the room that she is a witch and starts a fire right on the floor.  The men flee.  She reveals it was a liquid that burns hot and fast abut doesn’t ignite the surface it’s on.

When Raven says its a potion, Jayla bristles.  She doesn’t like the word potion she likes the more scientific “chemical reaction.”

As things settle down, Cookie reveals that Ximena is in town.

The next chapter flashes back to the earlier time, when Raven and her dad were boarding a ship.  They were looking for Ximena.  Raven finds the young girl cowering under a table. But as soon as Raven looks under the table Ximena jumps out and grabs Raven’s throat with a compass pointing at her face.  Raven assures her that hey mean no harm and after some calming measures, Ximena agrees.  Since they are roughly the same age and the only two of that age on the ship, they become friends.  Although as the scene ends we see Raven’s father tells the ship’s captain to “tell your general his daughter will be taken excellent care of so long as my fleet remains unharmed.”

Ximena has a map shop in town  and when she comes out to meet her customer (Raven), it is revealed that she is stunningly beautiful.  Of course as soon as she recognizes Raven she does the same thing as the first time they met and threatens Raven with a compass.

Things settle down and Raven reveals that yes, she was initially sent in to get Ximena so that Ximena’s father wouldn’t come after their pirate ship.  But she promises that they were friends.  Raven considered Ximena her only friend.

Then Ximena reveals that her father died. When he failed to bring in Raven’s father, the king asked the captain of the ship who told the king what happened.  Ximena’s father was executed.   Ximena believes that Raven didn’t know, but she knows that Raven’s father did.  Raven says that if Ximena comes with her, they will bring her father to justice.

Meanwhile, we see that Katie has taken Sunshine to her guild.  There’s some wonderful scenes of dice rolling and Sunshine being welcomed as part of the team.   After the leaders of the guild discuss Katie’s offer to go pirating with them, all of the women in the room agree that they want in.

The crew established, they are all set to get a good nights sleep until they return to Cookie’s to find that the men are back with torches and pitchforks looking to burn the witch.

Raven goes to start something with them, but Ximena pulls her back.  She says that those are the king’s men.  If she fights them she will be executed for treason.  Instead, Ximena has an idea.

Her solution involves a lot of pigs blood.  It’s disgusting but effective.

After the altercation, Jayla has one last fight with her father and says that she is joining Raven’s ship whether he likes it or not.  He doesn’t.  But e also knows that this is not the place for her and he hopes she finds what she needs.

As the book ends we see Raven with her four superior officers: Katie, Sunshine, Ximena and Jayla surveying the ocean as they get ready to set sail.

There’s much more excitement (and violence) to come.