SOUNDTRACK: CITY AND COLOUR Live at the Sasquatch Festival, May 29, 2011 (2011).
City and Colour have a new album coming out soon. So it’s kind of surprising that this seven-song show is three songs from their previous album, two from their first album, a cover, and only one new track (“Fragile Bird”).
This is the first time I’ve heard City and Colour live with a band (most of the recordings I have by them are just Dallas Green solo). It’s nice to hear how powerfully they work together (giving some of those songs an extra push).
Despite the brevity of the set (and the amusing banter about airport etiquette) you get a pretty good sense of what the “pretty-voiced guy” from Alexisonfire can do on his own. I found the cover, Low’s “Murderer,” to be a really perfect choice–one that suits the band and their slightly-off harmonies, rather well.
I’m looking forward to their new release–“Fragile Bird” is another beautiful song. But in the meantime, this is a good place to hear what they’ve been up to.
[READ: early June 2011] 2011 Fiction Issues
Five Dials seems to always generate coincidences with what I read. Right after reading the “”Summer’ Fiction” issue from Five Dials, I received the Fiction Issue from the New Yorker. A few days later, I received the Summer Reading Issue from The Walrus.
I’m doing a separate post here because, although I am going to post about the specific fictions, I wanted to mention the poetry that comes in The Walrus’ issue. I have no plan to write separate posts about poetry (I can barely write a full sentence about most poetry) so I’ll mention them in this post.
The main reason I’m drawing attention to these poems at all is because of the set-up of The Walrus’ Summer Fiction issue. As the intro states: “We asked five celebrated writers to devise five guidelines for composing a short story or poem. They all traded lists–and played by the rules.” I am so very intrigued at this idea of artificial rules imposed by an outsider. So much so that I feel that it would be somewhat easier to write a story having these strictures put on you. Although I imagine it would be harder to write a poem.
The two poets are Michael Lista and Damian Rogers. I wasn’t blown away by either poem, but then I don’t love a lot of poetry. So I’m going to mention the rules they had to follow. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: PEARL JAM-Vs. (1993).
Ten was a solid record, and although it had diversity within it, overall the sound was pretty consistent. On Vs., Pearl Jam mixed it up sonically and otherwise.
Zadie Smith is the editor and she wrote the introduction. I like to cover all of the written pieces in the book, but there’s not much to say about the introduction except that it fills you in on the details of the collection. She thanks Sarah Vowell for the idea but I gather that the rest of the work was done by her.
I Just Read About That... 