SOUNDTRACK: LOS CAMPESINOS! Live in studio at KEXP, July 31, 2008 (2008).
For this brief in-studio performance Los Campesinos! play four songs from their debut album Hold on Now, Youngster. The band sounds great in this setting. I don’t have this album, so I don’t know if they deviate at all from the originals, but the live versions are tight and very effective.
The interviews are informative and rather gushing (I’ve never heard a DJ kiss the ass of a performer in such a nice way before–and the band seems really flattered by it–it’s all very sweet). There’s also some fun comments about their screaming tendencies.
What I didn’t notice so much on Romance is Boring was how many different lead singers the band has. With these four songs, there are enough lead vocalists to show a lot of diversity (and a lot of screaming, too–“don’t read Jane Eyre!”). And, as one might expect from the later disc, their earlier lyrics are smart, funny and wicked, too.
The difference between Romance and Hold On, seems to be that the band were much punkier on the early disc, and that all comes out in these live tracks. And the songs are all short: 3 minutes and under. They really pack a lot in here.
[READ: January 6, 2011] The Facts of Winter
This book is, apparently, an elaborate joke. It is set up as a book written by French author Paul Poissel. But unlike the other things that Poissel wrote (his most famous and lasting works were written after this book), this is a collection of dreams. Specifically, it’s a collection of dreams from random unnamed people in France, circa 1841.
The book is laid out with the original French story on the left page and the translation on the facing page. I don’t know French, but my minimal French comprehension leads me to think that the translations are accurate.
So, each entry (most about a half a page, some stretch to two pages) is a recounted dream. I didn’t count how many dreams there were, but there’s more or less one a day from January to March. None of them are outlandishly crazy or dirty or anything like that, but they are amusing to read. There is a preponderance of canoes in the dreams.
After the dreams we get a lengthy Afterword (which all told, may be longer than all of the dreams combined). The Afterword details La Farge’s work while translating and learning more about Poissel. It is rather funny and goes into all kinds of personal details about La Farge and his ex-girlfriend as well as the friend he met in the city of Aix who takes him to all kinds of old ruins. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 