SOUNDTRACK: SUNFLOWER BEAN-“Moment in the Sun” (2020).
When Sunflower Bean first came out they were a wonderful poppy guitar band. They sounded like a classic indie pop band from the 90s with Julia Cummings great vocals and Nick Kivlen’s delicate guitar sound that also worked in some roaring solos.
Their last EP was a lot more synth and even more poppy. This new track, “Moments in the Sun” continues in that poppy synthy style.
The song opens with a slinky disco bass line and guitar chords. Cumming’s voice sounds husky until the end of the each verse which has a catchy echoing falsetto vocal. Bouncy synths accompany the vocals.
The propulsive chorus strips out the synth for a really catchy vocal harmony between Cummings and Kivlen.
The song sounds vaguely familiar–very catchy and simple
This aggressively poppy direction is a bit surprising given their earlier sound. It’s not all that far afield from their initial sound, but I do miss Kivlen’s excellent guitar work.
[READ: September 14, 2020] “The Englishman”
This is the second story of Stuart’s to appear in the New Yorker this year.
In this story, a college-aged Scottish man has answered a want ad to help an older Englishman named William. The young man (who is nicknamed Caspar by William) was expected home from college for the summer. His family farmed on a Scottish isle and were often buffeted by the harsh Atlantic winds. His older brothers had been saving up the worst chores for his return. So when he said he wouldn’t be coming home, they were furious at him. His father was also disappointing–he said nothing when Caspar told him he was spending the summer in London.
The position paid four hundred quid a week. William was a wealth man, with much cash at his disposal–he offered to fly William in from Scotland. William was fastidious in his dress but his house was a shambles. (The narrators mother would have died to have her house look like this).
The first day Caspar did some odd work around the house, but William told him not to bother–he wasn’t really getting paid to work.
That first morning when Caspar got out of bed, William surveyed him the same way his father looked at sheep–assessing everything in front of him. It was clear that William wanted more from the narrator than his ad let on. Then he was blunt
Christ’s Sakes. The advert was in the back pages of a gay magazine. For a houseboy.
Caspar asks why he didn’t put what he wanted in the and William said that he had done that with no success.
Then he showed the narrator a photo album–summer after summer of all the college aged boys who had come to London to be with William.
After a week, William had gotten annoyed saying it was obvious that the narrator didn’t like him the way he had hoped.
The narrator tells us that he is not a prude–he has gone with questionable men when the opportunity arose. (Opportunity so rarely arose where he lived).
I could stomach feeling dominated, powerless in a sexual situation–but I didn’t like to feel bought. I didn’t want o feel owned.
Finally, William wanted to get what he had paid for. He lay Caspar down and covered him with a blanket then he crawled under the blanket and removed Caspar’s pants. Caspar didn’t mind the act, but he was disgusted by the intimacy afterwards.
The question was, how long would Caspar stay before returning home in shame. And, would he, as William predicted, ever come back?
In addition to the story itself, there were two things that coincidentally appeared in the novel that I am currently reading. In fact, I read them a day apart.
The first was a smell of lemons triggering a memory
The Englishman reminded me of my mother’s lemons… The Englishman was standing over me and all I could smell was his Penhaligon’s cologne with its undertones of lavender and peppery, heady citrus.
In A Beginner’s Guide to Free Fall by Andy Abramowitz, it says the main character Davis
Sometimes made lemonade…because the clink of stirred ice cubes and the citrusy smell of lemons reminded him of the lemonade stand that he and Rachel had launched last summer.
and
In this story, toward the end, William says
“One of the best qualities of the Scotch is that they’re a pragmatic bunch”
“Scot-tish, Scotch is what fat Americans call Whiskey.”
In A Beginner’s Guide to Free Fall Davis’ sister is dating someone who went to Scotland. He says
“I remember the Scotch being really friendly”
“They were,” Molly said, letting it slide that he’d called Scotland’s natives by their signature whiskey. Common mistake. No reason to be a snob.
The lemon memory is probably pretty common, but the Scotch/Scottish thing can’t come up all that often. Weird that i read them both a day apart.
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