SOUNDTRACK: DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE-“Kicked In” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).
Death Cab for Cutie are immediately recognizable here. And they take this Superchunk song and make it sound like a Death Cab for Cutie song.
This cover is the rare cover in which the band takes a song and makes it clearly their own, and yet they don’t alter it all that much from the original. The Superchunk version is slow (for Superchunk), with buzzing, distorted guitars and Mac’s vocals riding over the top. The DCFC version features Ben Gibbard’s voice riding over the top as well. But DCFC make the song a bit cleaner. Rather than distorted guitars, we get chiming guitars and simple notes. Instead of being a kind of grungy anthem, it feels somewhat uplifting. And in true DCFC style, the uplifting sounding song really disguises something darker.
Even though the DCFC version feels slower, it’s not any longer than the original, and I think the pacing is pretty much the same. It’s a neat trick. I like both versions equally.
[READ: May, 2, 2012] “Men Against Violence”
This story came in third place in the Narrative Magazine Fall 2011 short story content. It had a very different feel from second place winner. It is set in college. It feels contemporary and it reads young. This, of course, means that I liked the style immediately. I admit I was a little confused by the opening—I felt the exposition was little convoluted and relationships were not established effectively. But once it got moving, the story was really engrossing.
This is a reasonably simple story. Kyle has a Hennessey scholarship—he received hundreds of thousands of dollars over his four years of college. As the story opens he is attending the dinner which announces the newest scholarship grant, and introduces Kyle to the latest scholarship winner, whose name is (in all lower case letters) madison pepper.
The guest speaker at the banquet is Brooke Hennessey. She is the granddaughter of Dorothy Hennessey and is currently is Kyle’s class at the college. She speaks eloquently about her family’s donation (of the Hennessey Art Museum). What she doesn’t say is that she ran away at 15, spent two years living in a car in Portland and that she accepts no money from her family (and has a mountain of debt). She also doesn’t say that she is currently dating Kyle.
Kyle has problems of his own. He recently got into a fight with a Trevor, a fairly important person on campus and he is now on a kind of probation—if he fights again, he loses the scholarship and has to back all the money. This is why he joined Men Against Violence. There’s a funny (but not really) insight into the existence of MAV on the campus, which leads to many unanswered questions about gender relations. And the subject of gender relations is all over this story. That delicate subject is handled very well. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 