The edition I’m using.
SOUNDTRACK: KINCH-The Incandenza (2011).
I like this album more than I have any right to like an album that I bought purely for the name. The album name is The Incandenza which is named after the main family in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The band name is Kinch which is named after what Buck Mulligan calls Stephen Dedalus in The Odyssey. That’s pretty high literary tributes. So who cared if the music sucked. But the thing is is that it doesn’t. And I’ve been having a hard time writing about it because I like it so much and yet I don’t know what it is that grips me about the disc so intensely. It’s not staggeringly original. It’s more of an alt rock take on classic rock. But even that doesn’t work because they use pianos prominently and the classic rock is more sound styles than sounds themselves. Yet at the same time I hear a number of different band in the mix (and only a few of them use pianos).
“When I was Young” opens the disc with a great loud piano sound and a strong vocal line. When the chorus comes in, the song picks up tempo and strings add intensity to what is already a catchy song.
“Evelyn” has a great stomping rock guitar sound. At two and half minutes, it’s an amazing potential single with, again, a great chorus. “45 Minutes” opens with screaming guitars and a great bass line that sounds like a classic song from The Jam. “That’s Just the Mess That We’re In” features some horns that accentuate the chorus nicely.
“Once I was a Mainsail” starts like a pretty normal piano based rocker but the screaming chorus adds a great punk feel to the song. “Tea Party Bomba” unravels its beginning into a great prog rock riff, with shades of Queen via Muse everywhere. The same is true in “Bye Bye Bye Bye” which has a bombastic bridge (really showcasing the singer’s voice) until we get to the great shift to the quiet “I don’t think he ever knew.” It’s a wonderful change of pace. It’s followed by the punky buzzy guitars and a simple melody of “Ocean”
“VHS” is another song that is just over 2 and a half minutes. It begins quietly and (again) simply, this time with some gentle keyboard washes as the song build and builds adding drums and guitars. It bleeds into “The Incandenza,” the longest song on the disc at just over 5 minutes. It never feels like it’s 5 minutes long–another great bride with more sing along bits (and a great tempo change after the bridge) and a guitar and whistling solo make the song ever-interesting. even if I don’t think it has anything to do with the Infinite Jest.
Kinch have a few other short albums out and I’m looking to get them as well, but in the meantime all of these great music can be streamed at their bandcamp site.
[READ: Week of February 20] Gravity’s Rainbow 1.1-1.12
This is my first time reading Gravity’s Rainbow. And I know literally nothing about it. I have always felt like I should read it (being a good modernist and a fan of Joyce and David Foster Wallace), but I never bothered to find out even a basic plot. And it’s kind of fun going into this thing completely blind. I had no idea even that it was set in England just Post WWII (1945). So that was a surprise. [Interestingly, having just read The Apothecary which was set in London right after WWII, it is cool to read another story set just around WWII and to hear similar things about the living conditions.]
But back to GR. The only thing I have read before writing this post (aside from a few thoughts over at Infinite Zombies) was a comment (again, on IZ) that you will be confused while reading this book and that’s okay. Phew.
Having said that I didn’t find it as confusing as I imagined. (I’ve been intimidated by reading this book for fear of its difficulty). I admit there are several scenes with pronouns that are somewhat elusive to me, and there’s a few other scenes where characters seem to be there without being fully introduced until later, but overall it’s not that bad.
The first section of the book seems like a lot of exposition–good, thorough exposition, which is also funny—but by section 1.12 we’re still meeting new characters. It feels like serious plot things will happen later. The book opens with a more or less famous line (Okay, I knew about that line before reading the book, but that doesn’t give any context).
And so, the screaming comes across the sky and the city is in the midst of an evacuation, but it is too late. At least for some. And the opening is a little confusing, as an evacuation might be. It certainly seems like the end of everything, but then we also find out that some people are sleeping through it. That this bomb is a localized attack.
Section 1.1 also introduces us to Lt. Capt. Geoffrey (“Pirate”) Prentice. Pirate is just waking up when he notices that his flatmate Teddy Bloat is about to fall off of the minstrels’ gallery but Pirate manages to shove a cot in the way just as Teddy falls off the balcony. Pirate is famous for his Banana Breakfasts (he’s the only person in England who has bananas). And at this point the story settles down into a rather enjoyable domestic scene. I mention in a post at Infinite Zombies that this opening scene of Pirate on the roof is reminiscent of the opening scene of Ulysses (I won’t go into that here).
The next scene is a raucous affair with a bunch of locals clamoring for their Breakfast plates. The scene feels like a college dorm, although the participants are (I assume) older—Pirate himself is in his early 40s.
It’s time to mention Pynchon’s astonishing character names. I love them all, they are so weird and evocative without (always) being obvious. So Teddy Bloat is a good name, but what about Coryson Throsp, the designer of their building. And with the Breakfast comes names out of the woodwork: Osbie Feel, Bartley Gobbitch, DeCoverley Fox, Maurice “Saxophone” Reed, Joaquin Stick. I’m not going to go speculating about names in these posts, but I am sure going to highlight my favorites. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 