SOUNDTRACK: CULTS-Cults (2011).
This album was on many year end lists in 2011. But it’s really tough for me. I really really want to like it. The cover alone is very cool. And in fact, I do like it quite a bit. The songs are simple and catchy and after just one or two listens they are very easy to sing along to. So what’s the problem? The album sounds an awful lot like the girl group/Phil Spector sound of the 6os which I really do not like. I have never enjoyed that era of music–and I think it is mostly something to do with those singer’s voices.
Cults singer Madeline Follin has a delivery that reminds me a lot of that sort of Ronettes vibe. Even though the music is not like that–Cults is much more 90s indie sounding (although the drum beats are often the same) I’m conflicted about how much I enjoy the record.
When I can just lighten up and bop along it’s wonderful. Indeed, some of the album embraces other styles. I hear the mood of Twin Peaks on “You Know What I Mean” And songs like “Never Hear Myself” sound more contemporary which takes that girl group edge off. “Never Saw the Point” has a strange Japanese quality to it that makes it stand out from the rest of the tracks.
I found that after listening a few times I could get past the parts I don’t like and enjoy that punky fun. Although I don’t imagine that I would get another Cults album after this. But you never know.
[READ: January 20, 2013] Buddy
I rarely get a book that I don’t like. So I rarely get a book that I don’t finish. This book seriously had me considering not finishing it. In fact, I even said I wasn’t going to finish it. But I plugged on, got the minor amount of redemption I expected and am now done with it.
So what was so bad about this book? Well, first, the title suggests that this will be a book about a rooster. Perhaps I should have wondered how McGrory was going to write 300 pages (yes) about a rooster. And then answer is, he isn’t. He’s going to write 300 pages about McGrory. I had no idea who he was when I checked out the book. He is a columnist for the Boston Globe and, God help us, a novelist. And I should have known that, since it was in the biography section that it would be all about him, but again, I was charmed by the cover and the title.
So the book opens with a brief bit about Buddy, a rooster who lives, sometimes, in their house. And whom McGrory clearly does not like. McGrory lives in the Boston suburbs, although with a house with nearly an acre of property I’m not sure exactly how suburban that is. My family lives in NJ we have almost two acres and we aren’t really in the suburbs of any big cities. We also have chickens–a lot of chickens and a few roosters. And this is why I wanted to read the book–see how this guy adapts to a rooster in his life.
After that first chapter, the next 120 some pages have nothing to do with Buddy. They are all about McGrory and his dog, Harry. As any dog owner, McGrory thinks that his dog is the best, smartest, coolest etc dog in the world. And that’s fine, although I didn’t need over 100 pages to be told that. What I also learned in those 120 pages is that McGrory is a smug, entitled jackass. He somehow believes that he is a regular guy although he is going to a vet on Newbury Street (I lived in Boston, that’s a swanky street… I can’t even imagine what a vet charges there) and because of his reporting job, he has access to all kinds of fancy places to eat, people to meet, sports teams to see etc. He also, and let’s make this very clear, things that the suburbs are a vast wasteland, that kids are overindulged and, well, every other cliche that rich, cranky, white men complain about (some of which I agree with mind you, but he seems so bitter about it all). (more…)
