SOUNDTRACK: CARM-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #192 (April 15, 2021).
CJ Camerieri is a co-founder of yMusic, which is how I know him (I saw him perform with Ben Folds).
This is his new project, CARM. Camerieri is also a member of Paul Simon’s band, a collaborator with Bon Iver and a Tiny Desk alum. (You can hear his French horn with The Tallest Man On Earth from their 2019 Tiny Desk Concert.)
“Soft Night” is the first track and introduces us to what CARM is about. He plays trumpet while Trever Hagen plays electronics and sets up the melody and drums. Then Camerieri switches to French horn while Hagen plays some trumpet. Then in a fun moment, Camerieri picks up the trumpet with his right whole still holding the French horn in his left. He plays the trumpet melody and then puts down the trumpet and starts on the French horn. For the rest of this five-minute instrumental, the two jump back and forth playing trumpet riffs and leads as the electronics build satisfyingly.
For CJ Camerieri … home is where the art is. He performed his concert at the Pablo Center in Eau Claire, Wisc., where [he] conceived and recorded all the songs for his 2021 debut solo album, CARM. “This particular community has been a really big part of my musical life for 10 years,” CJ says after playing the calming tune “Soft Night,” “so it seems like the perfect place to be doing this.”
He made “Song of Trouble” with Sufjan Stevens. They wrote it before the pandemic but the lyrics have taken on new meaning. S. Carey plays piano and sings. This is another mellow song with some lovely muted trumpet and simple electronics backing the song.
“Nowhere” is a little stranger. It opens with jittery trumpet and skittery and loud electronics. The juxtaposition of the organic horns and the electronic instruments is very cool.
“Slantwise” opens with some rapid and wild drum loops. Then Camerieri loops the French horn and trumpet giving the song a rather majestic feel.
[READ: May 11, 2021] A Complicated Love Story Set in Space
The librarian in West Windsor recommended this book to my son. He didn’t read it, but I loved the title and was really interested in reading it.
And wow, did I enjoy it.
I have not read anything by Hutchinson before, so I’m not sure how this compares to his other books, but this was, indeed, a very complicated love story. In the acknowledgments Hutchinson says that originally the story was called Gays in Space. And while that is a fun title, I think the final title is wonderfully compelling.
The story opens on Noa. Noa is a normal teenager from Seattle. But he has just woken up and he finds himself in a spacesuit, floating outside of a spaceship. He has no recollection of how he got there. There’s a note that says “You are in space floating outside a ship called Qriosity. There is no reason to panic.”
Well, thank goodness for that.
After getting his bearings, a voice speaks to him. The voice is from a teenaged boy named DJ. DJ is from Florida and he is aboard the Qriosity. He also has no idea how he got there.
They are each tasked with a pressing problem and if they don’t fix them immediately, the ship will explode. Noa panics (as he tends to do) but DJ calms him and talks to him as they work together to fix the ship. Which they do. But as Noa is heading to the airlock, his tether is not attached and he is flung from the ship. He has nowhere near enough oxygen and soon enough, he is dead.
That’s a rough start for the protagonist of the story.
DJ, with the help of the ship’s MediQwik (health redefined. MediQwik is a trademark of Prestwich Enterprises, a subsidiary of Gleeson Foods), manages to resuscitate Noa (with no brain damage).
Noa turns out to be a remarkably unlikable protagonist for much of the first half of the book. He is (understandably) bitter. He is (understandably) angry. He is (understandably) confused and (understandably) he wants to go home now. (Understandably) hates everyone and everything. But DJ is in the same predicament and he’s at leas trying to make the best of the situation they are in. No matter how nice DJ is to him (and DJ is super duper nice to him), Noa just can’t accept his friendship (or is it more?).
And yes, I get that DJ is going through something terrible, but the fact that he doesn’t even want to try to find something positive here means it’s going to be along, unpleasant journey. You really want to smack Noa and tell him to wake up.
Later on we find out that he has a very goof reason not to trust anyone, a terrible incident with an ex-boyfriend) but you do wonder why DJ seems to like him so much.
And that’s certainly what Jenny tries to do. Jenny is another teenager who has woken up on the ship. DJ and Noa didn’t know she was there right away–in fact, they found her locked in a bathroom. Jenny is a funny, tough girl whose family travelled a lot when she was young. She’s used to waking up in unfamiliar places, but this is ridiculous.
There’s another Jenny on the ship as well, she is a hologram named Jenny Perez, (whom you probably remember as the precocious kid detective and bestselling author Anastasia Darling on the award-winning mystery entertainment program Murder Your Darlings). Jenny Perez seems to have all the answers, unfortunately a lot of the time it seems that she can’t tell them anything.
Obviously this is all very strange, but there are even stranger things going on. Like why is the ship stocked with Nutreesh bars (and just what is in them) and why does Jenny like them so much?
Once the trio gets settled in and starts to learn how to operated the ship, they realize that navigation is down and they have no idea where they are. But when they try to activate the navigation system, they also activate the Trinity Labs Quantum Fold Drive. What this means is that every nineteen hours, the ship opens up a fold in space and transports to a new sport instantly while hoping to find the quickest way back to Earth. This is great news! Except that it takes thirty hours for the ship to calibrates its location. So before the ship can figure out where it is, it launches itself blindly to the next location. And it only turns off when it reaches Earth. So they keep jumping from unknown emptiness in space to unknown emptiness in space.
Not much changes as the three of them zip around space. Noa, in a funk, starts binge watching all of the Jenny Perez entertainments on the ship (the only entertainments on the ship…and they are lousy). he also refuses to shower, feeling that everything is futile. DJ tries to figure the ship out (he is a mathematical genius) and Jenny is stuck trying to get the two of them to work together. Really, even though jenny doesn’t have a major role, she is my favorite character.
But a few unexpected things do happen. They suddenly discover a body on board. But before she can communicate with them, she dies. The only thing she can say is, “You were supposed to die” (directed at Noa).
They spend a lot of time trying to figure out where this girl came from, especially since the room she was in didn’t exist a few days ago.
There’s also a whole section of the book in which Noa finds himself in a Groundhog Day type of loop. It’s pretty fun–especially when it starts jumping ahead to day fifty and sixty.
And then an alien attacks the ship at the same time as a radiation leak occurs on board.
But the most exciting thing happens when they land in a new part of space and see ahead of them a floating island. And on that island is… a high school. Of course they have to land there. The school is pretty normal looking. Except that al of the teachers are robots and all of the students are terrified of them.
This was an awesome diversion.
DJ and Noa have a wonderfully romantic prom experience at the school before being shot at with lasers as the teachers refuse to let them escape. It’s only when Jenny’s date, Ty, says that he wants to leave with them that the story changes. Dramatically.
From here on out. anything would be a terrible spoiler to give away. Just read the book, because when you get to this part the excitement really starts.
I enjoyed this book a lot. The sci-fi was really good, the characters were very real (even if Noa was annoying) and the romance was really sweet. And of course, the whole premise of the story was absolutely fascinating.
I’m definitely going to have to read more by Hutchinson–he has several other books out already, so that’s good for me!
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