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Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category

Patrick Carman–The Black Circle [The 39 Clues, Book Five] (2009)

Posted in Adventure, Black Sabbath, Children's Books, Elton John, Fears, Judas Priest, Patrick Carman, Short Books, Threats, Travel on September 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JUDAS PRIEST-Sad Wings of Destiny (1976).

Before Judas Priest were the force behind “Breaking the Law,” they were still pioneers of heavy metal.  Except that their metal was tinged with all manner of odd progressive embellishments.  Like “Victim of Changes,” an 8 minute (!) multi-sectioned (!) epic. It’s got a great heavy riff and, damn, if Rob Halford’s vocals aren’t the highest-piched in music (I mean, we know he has a powerful voice, but the notes he hits–good grief man!).  The middle section is a delicate ballad that mellows out with breathy sighing and with very sixties-era backing vocals until Halford bursts out of that with his piercing wail.

It’s followed by “The Ripper” a classic metal song.  The best known version comes from Unleashed in the East, so it’s interesting to hear this earlier version where, for instance, “You’re in for a shock,” is followed by a different person’s scream, not Halford’s wail of the word “shock.”  It sounds a little slower but somehow a little more creepy (especially the quiet middle section).

“Dreamer Deceiver” is a creepy quiet song which seems to herald the vocal acrobatics of King Diamond, but this song has a lot more emotion to it, even if it is pretty trippy (like a cooler version of Black Sabbath’s “Planet Caravan,” perhaps).  The piano at the end is a really nice touch and leads into the confusingly named “Deceiver,” a very chugga chugga metal song with more great high notes. 

“Prelude” opens with more piano (technically this song opened the album when it was on vinyl…the cds all seem to have sides A nd B reversed so now this prelude is in the middle. It’s a dramatic near-orchestral opening (that many bands would imitate much later) to the killer track “Tyrant.”  “Tyrant” sounds just as menacing here as it does on the live album except for the backing vocals that sort of slouch through the word “tyyyyyrant”–in the live version Halford crams it all into one breath.   It’s followed by “Genocide” a brutal song that has withstood all of these years as an awesome metal track.

Unlike “Epitaph,” which is a completely strange ballad about a dying man.  It is all piano, it is quite poetic and is indeed quite sad (especially the final line reveal).  But the middle ‘upbeat” section sounds not unlike an Elton John track.  It’s quite peculiar, especially when it ends and the chugging riff slowly builds out of the ashes that turns into the stunning “Island of Domination.”  This is a disturbing track with really creepy lyrics but with awesome music.  The middle section (again with the middle section–did bands just forget about doing cool middle sections in the 80s?) slows the track down with all kinds of echoed vocals.

Although it sounds dated, it still holds up remarkably well as a precursor to later metal albums.  It’s one of my favorite Priest releases and one that I come back to time and time again.

[READ: September 8, 2011] The Black Circle

I haven’t read a 39 Clues book in a couple of months.  It’s not that I was losing interest, I just had other things that I wanted to read more.  But I will admit that a ten-book series (and now a second series) can be a bit daunting.  I’d also never read anything by Patrick Carman before, so I wasn’t chomping at the bit to get into the story again.  Well, Patrick Carman has completely revived my interest in the series.  The first nice thing was that the book is only 168 pages (sometimes a short book can really pick you up).  But aside from that, Carman brings all kinds of cool elements into the story and has more than enough intrigue to keep you guessing and turning pages.

But I was initially concerned about reading this book because Carman reintroduces my least favorite nemeses in the book: the boring and doltish Holt family.  They are big, tough, meat- heads with ridiculous political first names like Eisenhower, Hamilton and Reagan.  And every time we’ve seen them, they’ve been brutish and mean and not terribly clever (and this series is chock full of cleverness, so these guys really stand out like a sore thumb).  But Carman does a wonderful thing with the Holts: he forms a (temporary) alliance between Dan and Amy and the Holt family.  And although it is an uneasy alliance, about midway through the book, we see Dan and Hamilton (the Holt’s son) bonding over driving big powerful trucks and flying helicopters.  It’s nice to see Dan have a “friend,” however tenuous. (more…)

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Bonnie Nadzam–“The Losing End” (Harper’s, August 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Bonnie Nazdam, Boredom, Cigarettes, Death, Fleet Foxes, Harper's, Marriage Trouble, Megafaun, Pranks, Short Story on September 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MEGAFAUN-“Find Your Mark” (2008).

After listening to the new Megafaun track, I checked the NPR archives.  They have this one song from their debut available for a listen as well.

It’s hard to believe that this is the same band.  Or perhaps I should say that a band can change a lot in three years.  This song begins as a three-part near-a capella barbershop/bar trio.  It reminds me in many ways of a Fleet Foxes track, except they seems more rowdy.  The song merges into a delicate guitar picking section with all of the voices “ba ba ba” ing.  Then, that guitar melody expands to an electric guitar and full band sound.

The introduction to the track (from the NPR DJ says that the album may not be everyone’s cup of tea.  But I like this track so much (even though it is so very different from their 2011 release), that I need to listen to more from this band.  Spotify, here I come. [Actually the album has some pretty crazy noises on it!].

[READ: August 20, 2011] “The Losing End”

This is a strange story about a man named Lamb.  The reason it is strange is because the middle of the story–the exciting part, the part I most enjoyed–is not really the point of the story, at least if the ending is to be believed.

As the story opens, Lamb has just been to his father’s wake.  He is feeling adrift so he goes to a parking lot to sit and think.  In addition to his father, Lamb is also thinking about his wife and his girlfriend.  I’m a little unclear exactly what is happening with his wife (Cathy) but he definitely trying to get time away from her to spend it with Linnie. While he is sitting there lost in thought, a young girl in an ill-fitting tube top approaches him. (more…)

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Jeffrey Eugenidies–“Asleep in the Lord” (New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Culture Shock, Dinosaur Jr., Jeffrey Eugenides, Lemonheads, Megafaun, My Bloody Valentine, New Yorker, Religion, Short Story, Travel on September 13, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MEGAFAUN-“Get Right” (2011).

I’ve never heard of Megafaun before, but this song is just wonderful.  It’s an 8 minute blast of psychedelia that covers and sometimes obscures a beautiful poppy song.  I hear overtones of Dinosaur Jr (but more for J. Mascis’ seemingly lazy style than for his crazy guitar riffing) and a bit of the Lemonheads in the folky pop feel.  Throw in a dose of My Bloody Valentine for the waves of sound and you get a perfectly lovely track.

The opening is a fairly simple, straightforward melody.  And his voice is so familiar-sounding.  There’s some cool squeaky/feedbacky guitars layered over the top of a hazy distorted sound.  By about four minutes, the song turns into an instrumental, with a guitar solo that comes in an out of the hazy chords.

This is a great song, and although the NPR write-up says this is the longest track, I imagine the rest must be equally as exciting.  Preview it on NPR.

[READ: September 1, 2011] “Asleep in the Lord”

This is a story about Mitchell, a formerly unhelpful person who never changed a diaper or helped a sick friend.  He has decided to change that, so he goes to Calcutta with the intention of joining Mother Teresa’s mission (and just how many stories involve Mother Teresa these days?—she even makes an appearance in the piece!).  He’s reluctant to do anything majorly gross, but he’s happy to hand out medicines (for what good they do).

After a few days, Mitchell is still somewhat surprised by his decision to go to Calcutta at all.  Then he meets Mike and Herb.  Herb is following the Bhagwan, but Mike is less grounded in who he is following here in India .  He came here because the economy tanked back home and he wanted somewhere to hide out for a few years.   As we learn more about Mitchell, we see that his intentions are understandably confused.  For really, like Mike, he also came to India to wait out the recession.   However, unlike Mike, he honestly did come to seek some kind of spiritual guidance.  Mike seems to be here for the easy sex–he has a picture of a young woman from Thailand who wanted “to marry him.”   (more…)

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George Saunders–“My Chivalric Fiasco” (Harper’s, September 2011)

Posted in Anachronisms, Corporate skewering, Culture Shock, From the Basement, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), George Saunders, Harper's, Humiliation, Morrissey, Sex, Sparks, Technology, The Smiths on September 12, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SPARKS-“Good Morning” (From the Basement) (2008).

I’ve enjoyed Sparks for a long time.  But I never got around to getting the album that this song comes from (Exotic Creatures from the Deep–which has two wonderful song titles: “Lighten Up, Morrissey” and “I Can’t Believe That You Would Fall for All The Crap In This Song.” 

“Good Morning” was the first single from the album.  It features a very bouncy keyboard opening which reminds me of Strangeways-era Smiths.  And then Russel Mael’s crazy falsetto comes pounding in on top of the whole thing. 

Visually, Sparks are fascinating because Ron Mael looks exactly the same as he has since day one: slicked back hair, thick glasses and a crazy little moustache.  This band is doubly fascinating because the two guitarists and bassist all have shoulder length hair and are wearing T-shirts with the new album cover on them.  In fact, the bassist and one guitarist look like they could be twins (the other guitarist is wearing a hat, so he messes with the identical-ness).  It’s an amusing scene to see.

This is a strange song, it’s catchy in its repetitiveness, but it’s got a cool bridge that breaks up the song into different parts (and the backing guys hit the high falsetto notes perfectly–I think I would have assumed they were women!).  This seems like a strange choice for a single and I can see wh it wasn’t a big hit.  (Most Sparks songs are kind of strange, so who knows which of their songs will catch on).  Of course, I don’t know the rest of the album so I don’t know if there was a more likely choice.  Nevertheless, I may have to investiagate this disc a bit more.

[READ: August 31, 2011] “My Chivalric Fiasco”

This is the second Saunders piece in a couple of weeks in two different publications (this seems to happen to him a lot–do I smell a new book coming out?).  This is one another of Saunders’ more corporate-mocking pieces.  He plays around with name brands and has a lot of trademarked and capitalized words.

But it starts off very unlike that whole realm. It seems to be set at a Ren Faire or some such thing.  On TorchLightNight the narrator sees Martha running through the woods saying, that guy is my boss.  Don Murray comes out of the woods after her, and it clear that something has gone on between them.  When Ted, the narrator, asks them what’s going on, they admit to a “voluntary” fling.  Then Don tells Ted that he has been promoted out of Janitorial; he is now a Pacing Guard.

The next day, Ted is given some KnightLyfe, a pill that helps him with medieval improv.  Until the pill kicks in, Ted is horrible in his role, but once it does, he (and the story) switch into a  kind of crazy Ren Faire “Olde” English: “Quoth Don Murray with a glassome wink, Ted you know what you and me should do sometime?” (more…)

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9/11 + 10 (New Yorker, September 12, 2011)

Posted in Airlines, Colum McCann, Culture Shock, Daniyal Mueenuddin, David Remnick, Death, Duran Duran, Edward Conlon, Edwidge Danticat, Elif Batuman, Essays, Explosions in the Sky, Fears, Friday Night Lights, Harry Potter, Hisham Matar, Ian Frazier, Ian Parker, J.K. Rowling, Jonathan Safran Foer, Lorrie Moore, Mogwai, New Yorker, Nick Paumgarten, Play (Drama), Threats, TSA, Zadie Smith on September 11, 2011| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY-Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (2011).

I found out about Explosions in the Sky because of the events of 9/11.  Back when everyone was looking for albums to point fingers at in some kind of hysteria (that’s also how I found out about I am the World Trade Center who are not as exciting as Explosions…).

EITS make beautiful epic instrumental music (as well as the soundtrack for Friday Night Lights).  They play music in a similar vein to Mogwai, but they take their epic instrumentals in a different direction.  And this album is perhaps their most commercial to date (as commercial as you can be when you write 10 minute instrumentals).  And while “commercial” is not usually an adjective that I give as praise, for this album it is indeed.

Take Care, Take Care Take Care is a terrific album.  It ‘s not as visceral as past releases; rather, it seems like a more experienced band playing with their sound and tweaking it in subtle ways to make it less obviously dramatic but somehow more powerful.

On “Last Known Surroundings,” there are soaring guitars that give way to simple, pretty guitar riffs.  Martial drums propel the songs forward, even if they lead to unexpected places.  It’s soundtrack music that’s not background music.

Perhaps the biggest difference with this album and previous ones is that this album doesn’t quite live up to the band’s name.  There’s no major explosive crescendos.  There are noisy bits but they’re not climactic per se.   “Human Qualities” slows to a quiet drum beat and while you’d expect to come out of that with a cacophonous explosion, it doesn’t.  The explosion does come later, but only after it has worked up to it again.

“Trembling Hands” features “voices.”  Or maybe just one voice.  It’s on a loop that becomes more of a sound than a voice.  The song is only 3 minutes long, but it’s an intense 3 minutes–more great drum work on this one.

“Be Comfortable, Creature” has a beautiful delicate guitar opening that drifts into a kind of solo.  After 3 minutes it settles into the main riff, a winding guitar line that send you on a journey.  “Postcard from 1952” is a great song. It begins as quiet intertwining guitars and slowly builds and builds into a gorgeous rocking conclusion.  7 minutes of steady growth with a nice epilogue at the end.

The final song, “Let Me Back In” also has kind of spooky voices that appears throughout the song (distorted and repeated).  But you know this song is a winner from the get go (even if the opening chord structure is a bit like Duran Duran’s “Come Undone.”)  It’s a slow builder, a cool, moody ten minute piece.  When you get to the beautiful descending guitar riff that shoots out after about 2 minutes, it’s an ecstatic moment–air guitars are mandatory.

And let’s talk packaging.  The album comes in a gate-fold type of cardboard.  If you open it up all the way it can be folded into a little house (with windows and a door and a chimney).  That’s pretty cool, guys.

If I have one compliant about the album it’s that the quiets are really quiet and he louds are really loud.  That makes this a very difficult album to listen to say, at work, or basically anywhere where other people will be blown away by your speakers.  The middle of “Human Qualities” for instance, is really quiet, you feel like you need to turn it up to hear the drum beat–there’s too much volume fiddling (listening in the car by yourself negates any reason for this complaint, of course).

Keep it up, guys.

More “controversy” from the band

[READ: September 10, 2011] New Yorker essays

Ten years ago, The New Yorker published several short essays by famous and (to me anyway) not so famous writers.  They were all written directly in the aftermath of the attacks and they were moving and powerful.  I was going to wait until today to re-read them and post about them, but for various reasons, I decided to do it on May 12.

Now, ten years later, The New Yorker has published several more essays by famous and (to me anyway) not so famous writers.  I note that none of the authors are the same (that might have been interesting) although Zadie Smith does quote from John Updike’s piece of ten years ago.

The strange thing to me about these pieces is that ten years seems to have hindered the writers’ ability to focus on the incident and to talk about What It Means.  In this collection of essays, we have a few that talk about an individual and how his life has changed since 9/11.  These are pretty powerful, although it’s odd that they would talk about another person and not themselves. We have a couple of essays that talk about the writer him or herself, but these seem kind of unfocused.  And then we have ones that talk about the state oft he world; honestly, what can you say about that.

It’s possible that I’m jaded or in a bad mood and that’s why I didn’t appreciate these essays.  Or perhaps I’m just facing the futility of things.

This is not to say that I think that writing about 9/11 is easy (you’ll notice I’m not doing it).  Indeed, I think talking about it in any kind of meaningful, non-strident, non-cliched way is nigh impossible.

But these writers do give it a try.  And I am grateful for that. (more…)

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George Saunders-“Home” (New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2011)

Posted in Canadian Music, Consumerism, Funny (strange), George Saunders, Marriage Trouble, Military, New Yorker, Rheostatics, Short Story, Unreliable narrator, War, tagged on September 10, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Calling Out the Chords Vol 1 (2005).

In addition to the Rheostatics’ main catalog, the cool label Zunior has released a couple of “official” bootlegs.  Calling Out the Chords Vol. 1 (no Vol. 2 has been released as of yet) is a collection of 2004 live recordings from The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern.  The Rheos do multiple nights at the Tavern, and this is a selection of songs from those shows.

It’s an interesting mix of essential live recordings and weird tracks that die-hards will appreciate but that newbies may scratch their heads at.  Some essential recordings are the wonderful version of “California Dreamline” that segues into a blistering version of “Horses.”  The version of “Mumbletypeg” with The Fall National Horns adding brass is also pretty great.

But there’s a number of songs here that are peculiar.  Great for fans, but perhaps hard to explain otherwise: an instrumental version of the 1996 song “Four Little Songs.”  I’m not sure why they went instrumental, as the lyrics are pretty essential, but there ya go.

There’s a crazy song “We’re All Living in a Chemical World” sung by special guest Ford Pier.  The intro says that this was one of Tim Vesely’s first songs, and it’s written in their early synth pop style (Pier is an insane vocalist too).  It’s quite a surprise.  And speaking of guests, there’s a lot of music from special guest Kevin Hearn (who has been with Barenaked Ladies since 1996–Hearn is a touring machine, apparently).  Anyhow, he contributes two songs to this disc “Who is that Man and Why is He Laughing?” and “Kevin’s Waltz” and he helps out on “I am Drummstein” and “Weiners and Beans.”   “I am Drummstein” and “Weiners and Beans” are unusual tracks as they come from their children’s album and their tribute to the Group of 7.

The final track is “Legal Age Life at Variety Store,” one of their staple live songs.  But this one has a twist contest in the middle.  Audience members are invited onstage to twist.  It is quite long (and without the actual visuals, it’s a bit hard to listen to more than once or twice) but it’s a fun way to hear the band interact with the audience and it shows what a fun live show they put on.

This is a great recording and a bargain for $5.55.

[READ: August 31, 2011] “Home”

I read this story twice.  The first  time, I didn’t really like it, I found it to be  kind of jumbled and confused.  I don’t know if that’s a typical reaction to this story or if I was feeling lazy, because the second time through I followed it okay and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

It’s a social commentary from Saunders, although exactly what the comment is is a bit unclear to me (even after the second reading).  The main character is a veteran who has just returned from one of the wars we’re fighting, “…the one that’s still going on.”  When he gets back home, his mother has shacked up with an unemployable guy, his sister won’t let him see her new baby and his wife has taken their son and has shacked up with some asshole he knew in high school.

And every time someone finds out he just got back from the war (like the sheriff who is evicting his mom), they all say, amusingly, as if by rote: Thank you for your service. (more…)

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Jhumpa Lahiri–“Trading Stories” (New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2011)

Posted in Books about writers, Death, Essays, From the Basement, Jhumpa Lahiri, Memoirs, My Morning Jacket, New Yorker on September 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  MY MORNING JACKET-“Touch Me, I’m Going to Scream (Part 2)” (From the Basement) (2009).

As I mentioned, My Morning Jacket is one of the few bands that has two videos up on the From the Basement site.  So here is Part 2 of the song from yesterday.  While Part 1 is a beautiful, smooth, folkie kind of song, Part 2 delves into a more electronic sound.  It starts with some keyboard noodlings, morphs into a loud rocker and then ends with more keyboards noodlings. 

I enjoyed watching this because Jim James is playing the keyboardy parts on a very small contraption the size of an iPad.  It’s one of those new fangled instruments that make me show my age.  I gather it’s a sampler, but even looking at the buttons I have no idea what he’s doing with it.  About midway through the song, James puts down the keyboard object and pulls on the Flying V guitar for some good loud guitars. 

Again, the harmonies are fantastic and it’s cool to see the whole band sing along.  I also enjoyed watching the other guitarist play the slide on his guitar.  

By the end of the video, it’s amusing to see them all sink lower and lower to the ground as the music fades and regresses into tiny quiet twinklings.  Until, that is, the surprising (and unannounced) addition of the 6 second “Good Intentions.”

Jim James does not wear a cape during this song, by the way.

[READ: September 1, 2011] “Trading Stories”

I have still yet to read much Lahiri, a woman whom I know I should be reading.  And now that I just learned she won a Pulitzer, it seems even more egregious that I haven’t. 

This personal history is about growing up without books.  Her father was a librarian so they borrowed a lot of books; however, but she never really owned any.  [My wife and I are not that kind of librarian–books litter our house]. 

The story reveals Jhumpa as a child writing stories with a friend in school (even during recess).  They were immensely creative and inventive and they loved it.  But she slowly began losing interest in writing.  (more…)

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Aleksander Hemon–“The Aquarium” (New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2011)

Posted in Aleksandar Hemon, Cancer as plot device, Death, Essays, Fears, From the Basement, My Morning Jacket, New Yorker on September 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MY MORNING JACKET-“Touch Me, I’m Going to Scream (Part 1)” (From the Basement) (2009).

My Morning Jacket is one of the few bands that has two videos up on the From the Basement site.  The two videos are parts one and two to the song “Touch Me, I’m Going to Scream” (which is kind of funny as the two parts are really quite unrelated and they seem to have been recorded not consecutively in the show.

As I mentioned in the Fleet Foxes review, I love seeing bands singing harmonies.  And the voices in My Morning Jacket songs are often soaring and, sometimes unbelievable (how does Jim James hit those notes?).  So this “concert” is visually satisfying in this regard.  Not to mention, Jim James wears a cape throughout the song!

It’s also very satisfying musically.  The band sounds great (as have all of the bands during these sessions).  “Touch Me” is a great catchy, sing along song from Evil Urges.  And this version is quite perfect.

[READ: August 30, 2011] “The Aquarium”

This is the first of the longer articles in the New Yorker’s 2011 Summer Fiction issue.  But despite the issue’s title, this is not a work of fiction (at least I hope it isn’t because it’s a shitty thing to make up).  So, assuming it is true:

Hemon found out that his nine-month old daughter had a brain tumor.  This essay details his life while dealing with this unthinkable issue and also trying to maintain a normal life for his three-year old daughter.  He tells this story in a surprisingly roundabout way.  Meaning, we don’t learn the fate of his daughter till nearly the end of the essay.  And in this way it mimics his own experience of finding out the fate of his daughter: one hundred and eight days after the initial diagnosis.  (more…)

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Ben Marcus–“What Have You Done?” (New Yorker, August 8, 2011)

Posted in Ben Marcus, Humiliation, New Yorker, Palladia, Radiohead, Short Story, Unlikable main character, Unreliable narrator on September 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RADIOHEAD-The King of Limbs: From the Basement (2011).

The TV channel Palladia has been showing this BBC production since it became available.  And it’s scheduled to be broadcast a few more times in the next couple of months. 

From the Basement is a show in which (very cool) bands play in this recording studio (presumably in the basement of wherever it is recorded).  The show is filmed in HD and the sound is fantastic.   The Wikipedia page gives some context for the show–it was originally designed as a program to showcase several bands playing a few songs.  Several of these episodes aired (the Wikipedia page gives details).  The show was created by Nigel Godrich, Radiohead’s producer.  Thus, it makes sense that Radiohead have now done live sessions shows for their last two albums.

So this is a recording of The King of Limbs.  I’m not sure if the album had come out by then, but this is basically the complete album and two extra songs: “The Daily Mail” and “Staircase.”

The session sounds amazing.  There’s a brass section for a number of songs, there’s two drummers (both completely bald, which is kind of neat to see), and you get to see Thom Yorke up close (sometimes a little too close) on all kinds of instruments.   I feel a little bad for Jonny Greenwood as it seems like Thom plays most of the guitar parts (unless Jonny is on keyboards too–it’s not always clear who is playing what).

I liked King of Limbs, but I must say that this live recording brings much more depth to the album.  While the band sounds tight as a drum, paradoxically, they also seem looser in their overall feel.  They seem like they’re really enjoying themselves.  It doesn’t have the same vibe as a concert (they’re not playing off the crowd or improvise at all), rather it has a feeling of jamming with friends–trying to get a perfect take, without the tension of fretting about the perfect take.  It’s really a great show and worth watching for any fan of Radiohead.

[READ: September 5, 2011:] ” What Have You Done”

I had a hard time getting into this story.  It’s about a man named Paul.  Paul is headed home to visit his family in Cleveland and he is more than a little apprehensive about it.  He deliberately hasn’t been home in about ten years, so this is quite a chore for him.  And it is quite clear from the outset that Paul is something of an asshole.  We don’t really learn why in the beginning (and that’s why the story was hard for me to get into–more on that)–he’s just sort of accepted as an asshole and that his family will give him shit.

And that’s what families do, this idea is in no way new.  But what’s is odd about the story is that we don’t really have any context for Paul’s attitude.  We seem to jump into the story with him feeling like an asshole and assuming that his parents will treat him like crap.  That they won’t believe anything he says and that they’ll give him a hard time.  Indeed, when he finally gets to his parents’ house (and his sister and her husband are there) he is so aggressively defensive that he’s quite unlikable.  And yet we still don’t know if he is defensive or if they are nasty.  Paul seems to flare up at anything anyone says and yet we don’t know if he has a right to.

The crazy thing is that Paul’s major fault seems to be that he’s fat.  Quite a bit is made of the fact that he is fat.  And he seems to be so very lonely–hateful of his family and resentful of his sister’s happiness–that when we finally learn the truth about him and what he’s been up to these last ten years, it’s hard to believe it’s really true.  His family doesn’t believe him, and the only reason we do is from a phone call that comes in to him.  But he’s so paranoid, it’s hard to know what to believe. (more…)

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Zadie Smith–3 Book Reviews (Harper’s, September 2011)

Posted in Arranged Marriage, Art, Book Reviews, Craig Thompson, Danzy Senna, Death, Essays, Fears, From the Basement, Harper's, Ian Thomson, Racism, Super Furry Animals, Violence, Zadie Smith on September 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK–SUPER FURRY ANIMALS-“Let the Wolves Howl at the Moon” (From the Basement) (2007).

[DISCLAIMER: This post was published on September 6th see that post for details].

Continuing this exploration of the From the Basement series, I found this unlikely video from Super Furry Animals.  SFA have never been big here (well, that had a fluke hit but that doesn’t count).  I have no real idea how big they’ve been back home.  So maybe it’s not a surprise that they are playing here.

SFA were a bunch of crazy psychedelic indie rockers.  Their early albums are totally nuts (like the EP Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (in space)).  But over the years, they have mellowed considerably. This song is the final track from Hey Venus!, an album that returned the Furries to their more rocking roots.  Despite the album’s overall rockingness, this song is the mellow ender to the album. 

This live version is very good, with Gruff Rhys sounding in fine form.  Visually, it’s more interesting than say Neil Hannon’s in that there are five of them, but they’re not exactly putting on a crazy show. What’s nice is the chance  to see just what the recording space looks like (there’s lots of wide shots) and to see just which hairy Welshmen are making which sounds. 

This is a wonderful song that could easily have been on anyone’s mellow folkie playlist.  The album version has a little bit more going on, but it’s not missed in this someowhat stripped down form. 

[READ: August 29, 2011] 3 Book Reviews

After last month’s tour de force about one title, this month returns to Zadie’s typical 3 books/month schedule.

The first book is Ian Thomson’s The Dead Yard: A Story of Modern Jamaica.  Zadie makes the amusing observation that this book, a very good and very well researched cultural study of Jamaica was written by a white Scotsman; she notes that a sense of remove from the culture was probably essential in order to create this book. 

Thomson offers historical context for the dangerous world that Jamaica occupies now (it’s not all “Jah, ganja mon” in the country.  In fact, five people are murdered every day (on this island of 3 million).  Fascinatingly, there is much racism in Jamaica—people seen as too black are often looked down upon in favor of lighter-skinned people.  Because of this, respect is very important.  Indeed, any kind of disrespect can cost you your life—just about everyone packs a gun (hence the stat above.  Of course this racism also may be why the Jewish, Indian and Chinese Jamaicans are thriving while the majority black are not.

Zadie says the only place where Thomson falls flat is in his utter dismissal of dancehall music (he likes reggae but can’t stand dancehall).  He dismisses Sean Paul and although Zadie’s not a huge fan of Sean Paul, she finds this dismissal a poor oversight possibly due more to his age (culture being a young person’s game) than anything else.  I especially enjoyed her dissection of one of Sean Paul’s videos. (more…)

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