SOUNDTRACK: PALBERTA-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #210 (May 18, 2021).
Palberta has a great name (even if they are not from Alberta). They are an underground Philly band. I saw them a few years ago, and this attitude of relaxed yet frenetic fun was evident then as well.
While many of us have gotten better at using technology to feel close to our friends and collaborators over the past year, there’s still no replacement for being in the same room as someone who you swear can read your mind. That’s what it feels like to watch punk band Palberta, whose music makes magic out of repeated phrases sung in tight harmony and charmingly zany pop hooks. For its Tiny Desk (home) concert, shot on a MiniDV and a Hi8, the band crams into Nina’s Philly basement for a set that’s a testament to the group’s tight-knit collaboration and playful exuberance.
The band plays six songs in fifteen minutes (including the time it takes to switch instruments). Five songs are off of their new album Palberta5000.
The guitar-bass-drums trio is made up of Ani Ivry-Block, Nina Ryser and Lily Konigsberg, and each member sings and plays each instrument. Here, they trade places every couple of songs. The songs aren’t over-complicated but still manage to surprise at every turn – a true Palberta specialty.
The “frenzied opener” “Eggs n’ Bac'” has a wild instrumental opening which jumps into a faster indie punk sound for most of the song. All squeezed into less than 2 minutes. For this song Nina is on bass, Lily on guitar and Ani on drums. Their sound reminds me of early Dead Milkmen. Is this a Philly thing?
For “No Way” Nina stays on bass, Lily switches to drums and Ani takes the guitar. Nina sings lead with the other two giving great tight harmonies. For these songs the bass lays down the main melody and the guitars play a lot of single note melodies that run counter to the bass.
For the “queasy-yet-sentimental” “The Cow” it’s the same lineup but Lily sings lead on the first verse and Ani sings leads on the second verse. The staccato guitar style on this song is so unusual.
For the “anxious and melodic” “Big Bad Want” Lily stays on drums and sings lead, Ani switches to bass and Nina gets the guitar. Ani plays some chords on the bass and you can really see how the guitar plays a repeated pattern while the bass takes more of a lead role. The call and response for this chorus is really tight. Nina even plays a guitar solo.
“Sound of the Beat” (from 2018’s Roach Goin’ Down) is “a sweet testament to grooving” and gets a full lineup switch. Nina sits behind the kit, Ani is back on guitar and Lily is on bass. This song is really catchy–surely the catchiest thing in this set. It has a feeling like early Sleater-Kinney. All three sing harmony lead.
They end with “Before I Got Here” with same line up. It’s one of their longer songs at over three minutes. Ani and Lily switch off lead vocals for the fast verses. After a minute or so, the tempo shifts and the last two minutes are a slow instrumental jam with Ani playing a guitar solo while Lily keeps the melody on bass.
It’s tempting to try to see if one of them is “better” at one instrument or another, but they are all clearly very comfortable on each instrument. This leads to endless possibilities for songs.
[READ: May 1, 2021] Weird Women
“Introduction” by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger
Why summarize when they say what this book is about so well
Any student of the literary history of the weird or horror story can hardly be faulted for expecting to find a genre bereft of female writers, at least in its first two centuries. …
Yet there were women writing early terror tales—in fact, there were a lot of them. During the second half of the nineteenth century, when printing technologies enabled the mass production of cheap newspapers and magazines that needed a steady supply of material, many of the writers supplying that work were women. The middle classes were demanding reading material, and the plethora of magazines, newspapers, and cheap books meant a robust marketplace for authors. Women had limited career opportunities, and writing was probably more appealing than some of the other avenues open to them. Though the publishing world was male-dominated, writing anonymously or using masculine-sounding names (such as “M.E. Braddon”) gave women a chance to break into the market. It was also still a time when writers were freer than today’s writers to write work in a variety of both styles and what we now call genres. A prolific writer might pen adventure stories, romantic tales, domestic stories, mystery or detective fiction, stories of the supernatural—there were really no limits.
Spiritualism—the belief that spirit communication could be conducted by a medium at a séance, and could be scientifically proven (despite continued evidence to the contrary)—was widely popular, and so one might expect to find that many writers of this period were producing ghost stories. But ghost stories were just one type of supernatural story produced by women writers at this time. Women were also writing stories of mummies, werewolves, mad scientists, ancient curses, and banshees. They were writing tales of cosmic horror half a century before Lovecraft ever put pen to paper, and crafting weird westerns, dark metaphorical fables, and those delicious, dread-inducing gems that are simply unclassifiable.
ELIZABETH GASKELL-“The Old Nurse’s Story” (1852)
Gaskell wrote primarily about social realism, but she also wrote this creepy story. The set up of this story is fascinating. A nursemaid is telling a story to her new charges. The story is about their mother–from when the nursemaid used to watch her. The story seems like one of simple haunting–strange things are afoot at this mansion. But there’s a lot more going on. I love the way everyone is so calm about the broken pipe organ playing music day and night. Way back then, the children’s mother saw a girl outside and went to play with her. But it was winter and when they found the child, alone, under a tree, there was no evidence of anyone else being there with her. That’s when we learn the history of this house and the way the owner treated his daughters. The ending gets a little confusing, but when you unpack it, there’s some wonderful deviance at hand.
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD-“The Moonstone Mass” (1868)
Prescott was one of the most widely published writers in America, having written a lot under he maiden name before adding Spofford to it. In 1865 she created the first “series” detective character. Her 1860 tale “Circumstances” was said to have shocked Emily Dickinson!
This story is set in the arctic. The set up is that the narrator is afraid of living in poverty. He wishes to marry a woman, but his uncle, from whom he hopes to inherit all of his fortune, does not approve of women–he “was a bitter misogynist, and regarded women and marriage and household cares as the three remediless mistakes of an overruling Providence.” So if he married his beloved, he got nothing. Then his uncle made him an offer–sail to the Arctic and help to discover the Northwest Passage. If he does so, he will earn a vast amount of money. It’s a perilous journey and most of the crew dies. But he found himself near a moonstone–something that was surely otherworldly. But when he reached for it, it resisted him. There’s a lot of hollow earth theory in this story, which I like. I also like the way the narrator seems to doubt his own story,
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT-“Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy’s Curse” (1869)
Yes, the author of Little Women loved writing horror. She believed that was where her talents lay. She wrote a thriller A Long Fatal Love Chase which was deemed “too sensational” by Victorian publishers. It was finally published in 1994. This story is not the first to use a mummy, but it is considered the first major work to use one.
This story has a framing device around it. Evelyn is given a gift by Paul–they are seeds of an unknown plant. When she asks where he got them, he tells his story of his expedition to Egypt. Evelyn “likes weird tales and they never trouble [her].” So he tells what happened. Paul, Professor Niles and their guides went to explore the Great Pyramid of Cheops. They were separated and then one of them was injured in the tunnel. They chose to make a fire to draw attention to themselves. The only burnables were the mummy’s casket and then the mummy itself.
When he took down the mummy he found he small golden chest which he eventually gave Evelyn the seeds in. She freaks out a bit, but he assures her that it’s okay. But he then tells her that in a parchment it was revealed that the seeds are cursed. They don’t believe it until it seems that the curse might just be true.
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS-“What was the Matter?” (1869)
Phelps was a feminist who challenged Christian traditions of the afterlife and of marriage. She often said “burn those corsets!”
This was a very cool story about a young woman with psychic abilities. The protagonist tells the story from her childhood. Her father died while she was young and her mother called on her dear sister Alice to come stay with them. But Aunt Alice never arrived. Her train came to the station but she was not on it. The narrator’s mother is distraught. They believe Alice is dead, but not knowing is even worse.
Sometime later, they are looking for a handmaiden. They came upon an orphaned girl named Selphar (!) She was bland and sensible–the perfect disposition. So it comes as a surprise when after several months of calm employment she claims to be able to see an item outside that was lost under the snow. Or when she can tell that robbers are trying to break into the house. When she had these visions she went into a trance state and remembered nothing about the time. Finally, after finding a knife that someone dropped at the picnic site several miles away, she told everyone that she could see Alice, alive and well. What can be the meaning of this?
EMMA FRANCES DAWSON-“An Itinerant House” (1878)
I didn’t really enjoy this story that much because the characters were constantly quoting from other works–novels, Shakespeare, songs–it was very distracting. Essentially a woman dies unexpectedly. The scientists know that they can bring her back with a charge of electricity. And indeed it works. But she is angered that they roused her. She was dead but now she is in hell and she sends god’s curses on them. Then as far as I can tell, the house that the woman died in follows them around like the Flying Dutchman, bringing its curse with it,
MRS. J.H. (CHARLOTTE) RIDDELL-“Nut Bush Farm” (1882)
Riddell was a very popular Irish writer. This story is noteworthy because there is a strong independent woman at the center of it.
A man meets the strong women when he wants to rent her property to farm it. She is tough and knows what she wants and what to expect from a tenant–especially since the last one took off on her and left her with a monetary loss. The narrator promises he’s trustworthy and they enter an agreement.
It soon turns out that people think the property is haunted. He says he could never bring his weak wife or small child to a haunted farm, so he prepares the land for use and tries to get o the bottom of things,
The tenant who left has two stories told about him: he either ran off with a pretty young girl leaving is wife and child behind, or he was killed. Most people believe he ran off with the girl (even if it was very against his character) because he was never seen again.
But the ghostly figure that people talk about and which the narrator sees one night, looks just like the former tenant. The story leaves the reader to judge what is and isn’t real.
SARAH ORNE JEWETT-The Gray Man (1886)
Jewett wrote many regional story about Maine, but she also wrote supernatural stories as well.
A man moves to a village. He is friendly and helpful–offering to do anything for anyone. But he never smiles, and people find this very disconcerting. People started to make up stories about him until one day he just disappeared.
OLIVE SCHREINER-In a Far-Off World” (1890)
The whole reason I go out this book was because I had read bout Schreiner in another novel [Finuala Dowling’s Okay Okay Okay]. In that novel the young protagonist was writing a paper about Olive and spoke very highly over her. I couldn’t fond any of her novels, but I saw that she had a story in this book. She mostly wrote about racism and feminism in South Africa, but this story (which is barely two pages long) is a dream-like tale of true love
A young couple seemed to be in love. On a moonless night the woman happened upon a shrine and said a prayer. She offers her man the best of all blessings–that which is best for him. Moments later she sees him on a boat sailing away.
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN-“The Giant Wistaria” (1891)
Gilman write this tory one year before The Yellow Wallpaper.
A husband and wife buy a house that the wife is sure is haunted. But they can find no evidence of ghosts, sadly. So she invites her best friends out . They laugh and joke bouta the ghost that they don’t see Then in the morning they all relate the dreams they had. All involving a girl wearing a thin cross necklace…. And it seems very familiar.
There’s some amusing lines in this story too
-O Jack, don’t be so horrid!
-I am not horrid by nature, only professionally.
MARIE CORELLI-“The Lady with the Carnations” (1896)
Corelli was the most popular author of her day, outselling Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle. She even appeared on postcards. A Romance in Two Worlds established her as a writer interested in occult themes. She lived for forty years with a female companion Bertha Vyver
This story is about a woman who goes to the Louvre. She sees the painting The Lady with the Carnations by Jean-Baptiste Greuze and is captivated by it–as if they lady is asking her to stay to hear her story. She starts seeing the lady with the carnation everywhere–although no one else can see her. Eventually she gets out of the city and visits a friend in the countryside. The house is full of carnations outside and it was rumored that Greuze stayed there. Eventually the lady with the carnations appears and she asks to hear her story. I love the revenge against sexism the story encourages.
CLEMENCE HOUSMAN-“The Were-Wolf” (1896)
This story was released as a stand alone book (a short novelette) with lots of illustrations. It starts fairly conventionally with a family at a farmhouse waiting for the arrival of a Christian, one of the men of the house. There’s knocking and screaming outside but when they check on the sound, no one is there. This happened a few more times until at last when he opened the door a frail woman stood there. The house dog growled and tried to attack, but she said that she had travelled far in the snow but was not afraid of any beasts. Her name was “White Fell.”
Then we see Christian in the woods. He sees wolf footprints heading toward his house and he follows them with much concern. But when he arrives ta the house the wolf prints disappear and are replaced by a woman’s foot prints. Aha, the were-wolf. But no one believes Christian, especially his brother Sweyn who finds White Fell so beautiful.
But the story gets a little crazy when Christian realizes that the kiss from the were-wolf marks someone for death. When she kisses Sweyn, Christian realizes he must kill her before the night is over. So he chases her. And the story turns into a kind of epic tale of Christian and White Fell running for some twelve hours through the night.
Even the editors poke a little fun at the unsubtlety of this story. His name is Christian and the last line [edited] says, “And he knew surely that to him Christian had been as Christ, and had suffered … to save him from his sins.”
If the story had been about fifteen pages shorter and there was less running (so much running!) it would have been quite enjoyable (even with the heavy-handed allegory).
DORA SIGERSON SHORTER-“Transmigration” (1900)
Shorter is a well regarded poet of the Irish literary revival
This story is a harrowing tale of a man whose soul enters into another man’s body. He is initially delighted to have access to such a happy healthy body. But the transmigration has made him decidedly evil. And soon enough he has ruined the man’s family, and has brought about the destruction of another man through gambling. How much damage will he do and can he get back into his own body?
MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN-“The Wind in the Rose-Bush” (1902)
Most of Freeman’s many novels looked at the changing roles of women in rural settings, but she also wrote supernatural stories “Luella Miller” is a classic of vampire fiction “free of the influence of Dracula and its imitators.” She also became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction.
This is the story of a woman going to retrieve her niece. The woman’s sister had recently died and while she is not angry that her sister’s husband has married anew, she thinks it would be best if her niece cam to live with her.
She arrives at the house and is met by the new wife, Mrs. Dent–a standoffish and rather unpleasant woman. Mrs Dent tells the narrator that her niece is out with a friend and won’t be home until later.
When the narrator notices that the rose bush in the front of the house has one bloom on it, the woman tells her not to touch it! And when the bush starts blowing in the wind–when there is no wind and nothing else is blowing Mrs Dent says “I can’t try to account for everything that blows out of doors. I have too much to do.”
The next day, Mrs Dent has another excuse for where the niece has gone. And then more and more excuses–the train conductor taking her niece and the friend on a trip, the mailman lost the post etc. The excuses are audacious and the narrator’s patience quickly wears thin, but she remains calm. The ending of the story is very abrupt and quite dramatic
HERMINIE TEMPLETON KAVANAGH-“The Banshee’s Halloween” (1903)
Kavanagh wrote the stories about Darby O’Gill which Disney eventually bought and made into the film Darby O’Gill and The Little People. The film incorporated this story, although in the stories Darby is a lad, but in the films, he was played by a 74 year old man.
This story is written in an incredibly challenging dialect:
The misthrayted lad turned a sour eye on the chumultuous weather an’ groaned deep as he pulled closer about his cowldhers the cape of his greatcaot an’ plunged nto the daysarted an’ flooded roadway
Phew.
This story has two parts, Darby is bringing tea (tay) to an ailing woman on Halloween. Halloween, as you know is the night when spirits and ghosts are most active. So Darby gets it into his head that ghosts are going to come after him. He was told that ghosts mostly just wanted to have someone to talk to–so they could tell why they were unhappily walking the earth. Any decent traveler could talk to a ghost and get the ghost to calm down. So when Darby hears what he is sure is a ghost he closes his eyes and offers to listen to it’s story. Although when he opens his eyes the ghost is actually a donkey (this seems so Disney). The way it is written I can absolutely see Disney turning Darby into drunken old man attacking and then befriending a donkey.
In part two he gets to the house where he is supposed to bring the tea–the home of Cormac McCarthy (!). Cormac’s wife is on death’s door and fears that Cormac will marry a new woman when she is gone.
The banshee appears in this section, getting tangled up with Darby and losing her magical comb. Darby then makes a deal with the banshee–he is granted three wishes. One is sensible, the other is generous and the third is pathetically hilarious (and I can see why Disney wanted to film that as well). Darby tips his hat to the banshee “you’re a woman of your worrud.”
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT-“In the Closed Room” (1904)
Barnett is known for her children’ stories. She wrote this before A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, but after Little Lord Fauntleroy.
This is a wonderfully spooky story. There’s also some wonderful slang:
“Hully Gee, what a queer thing for a young one to say”
and my favorite:
“Hully Gee, a cold bite’s all a man wants on a night like this. Hot chops’d give him the jim-jams.”
Anyhow this story begins in the city. A family lives by the train tracks and their young daughter is quite afraid of them. She is a very solitary child and keeps to herself most of the time. Her parents think she is an angel because she is so quiet. Well, they get the opportunity to house sit in the country and get out of the scalding summer city heat. So they jump at the chance, not knowing why the owners of the house have left so quickly. There is one room that is locked and which they must not go into. Of course, eventually the young girl manages to get into the room. And like one of the other stories in the book, a girl from a painting appears to the little girl. I was especially impressed with how dark and chilly this story was for the time. And the ending is pretty wow.
OLIVIA HOWARD DUNBAR-“The Dream-baby” (1904)
I didn’t really enjoy this story all that much. Essentially two old women retire from teaching together. Agatha has a dream that Emily has had a baby. Emily’s one regret in life is not having a baby. She is initially pretty excited at the idea of this dream baby. Every night Agatha dreams about this baby–its first words, steps etc. But in all the dreams Emily is unable to hold the baby, just like in real life. Emily starts to go a little crazy from grief.
E. BLAND (EDITH NESBIT)-“The Third Drug” (1908)
E Nesbit wrote The Railway Children, but also this super creepy story. Roger Wroxham was despondent about his life. He was walking along a dark street when he was set upon by bandits. At first he didn’t care–he even tried to fight back. But once he felt the knife, he realized he could die and that would be terrible. So he fled. He found an open door and sneaked in to hide. The door belonged to a doctor. He saw Roger’s cuts and invited him inside for care. When Roger awoke he felt better, but then started to feel a little weird. The doctor told him that he had to drink a potion quickly, before it was too late. This seemed excessive for a small laceration, but he went ahead with it. Later the doctor told him that he was the only person who had made it past the first stage alive–he was excited that the narrator was soon ready for the third drug. The doctor told him that this drug would make him “know everything.” But he has bound Roger to a table for fear that he will be too strong. If the experiment works, he will take the third rug himself. It’s a pretty gruesome story. Very well plotted.
MARY AUSTIN-“The Pocket-Hunter’s Story” (1909)
This story about Prospectors and dead men and other such things in the desert was really lost on me. I’m not sure if I was burnt out on the book or what, but I really didn’t enjoy this one.
MARJORIE BOWEN-“Twilight” (1912)
Bowen is considered one of the great supernatural writers of her century. She wrote a ollection of stories about historical figures. This story is about Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess d’Este. Borgia died at age 39 but in this story she is very old–obviously Bowen is taken license with this. This is a spooky story set in the woods in which a beautiful Borgia tries to seduce a young man. By the end we realize that she is actually dead already.
REGINA MIRIAM BLOCH-“The Swine-Gods” (1917)
Block wrote two well-received collections of stories and then never wrote again. This story was about a man who has a dream that he sees people worshipping the devil or various devils. It’s more of a wild nightmare than anything especially scary, although if you were a religious person, this might chill you to the bone.
ELLEN GLASGOW-“Jordan’s End” (1923)
This story had some hard to read dialect in it “F’om dar on hit’s moughty nigh ter Marse Jur’dn’d place”. It’s about an insane man and the woman who has to deal with him. I didn’t really enjoy it mostly because of the dialect.
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Overall this book was really cool and a great introduction to female writers of supernatural terror. I just found out there’s second volume coming out in September!
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