SOUNDTRACK: TAME IMPALA-Innerspeaker (2010).
Tame Impala are from Australia, and their sound is majorly retro. They remind me a lot of Dungen, including the fact that I would have guessed (from the way the words are sung) that English wasn’t their native language (which makes this already trippy album feel even more trippy).
Fuzzy guitars over a cool bassline introduce this album. “It is Not meant to Be” is something of statement about the sound of this album. And when the vocals come in (fuzzier still), it’s retro all the way. “Desire Be, Desire Go” continues the fuzzy guitar with a slightly faster pace. The chorus comes in a little cleaner which is nice as it breaks up the fuzz somewhat (but only somewhat). “Lucidity” ups the noise and pace with a great catchy riff and a strong chorus. I think of this as the “hit” based solely on the fact that I heard it first, but when they played KEXP in studio sometime after the release of the album, they didn’t play this song .
They did play “Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind” which is probably the real single–the cool reverbed riff and the soaring guitars sound great. “Solitude is Bliss” has become my favorite song on the album lately. The vocals remind me of early songs by The Who (maybe from Sell Out), but again, the music is all reverbed and hippie sounding, it’s a nice pairing and the chorus is once again, really catchy. “Jeremy’s Storm” opens with a cool riff. It turns into a wild jam instrumental. “The Bold Arrow of Time” sounds like a song from the 70s. The guitar sound as it opens could come from Jesus Christ Superstar and when the riff finally kicks in, it could be a Cream song. And yet the vocals (always soaring) don’t sound like anything from that time).
I love any song with a good bassline (especially one that’s not just repeating the guitar riff)–so I love the cool bassline that runs through “Runway, Houses, City, Clouds”–high and kind of obtrusive. A perfect way to keep pace. And when the bass gets a little “solo” at the end, it’ s a nice payoff. The final song is “I Don’t Really Mind.” It’s the most conventional and not dreamy sounding album on the album. There’s even a break from the wall of guitar where we get just some drum beats–it’s very p0ppy. It’s a good ending, upbeat and catchy and makes you want to start the whole shebang over again.
The album is a little long-feeling overall (it’s about 55 minutes), and some of it can be a little samey, but there’s enough diversity and great songwriting to make this album really enjoyable.
[READ: July 2012] At Home on the Range
Another frickin cookbook? For a guy who doesn’t do cookbooks, there’s certainly a lot of cooking-based items on this blog. Blame McSweeney’s who put out this book, too.
As everyone knows Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat, Pray, Love. I’ve never read it (although I have read some of her earlier books (Pilgrims and Stern Men) which I liked quite a bit–I was into her before she was cool, man). But this book is actually a cookbook that her great-grandmother wrote and had published in 1947. Gilbert’s contribution is slim, but engaging. She gives a lengthy biography of her Gima. She was born rich (Main Line Philadelphia rich) and loved to travel. Gilbert says that you can sum up Gima with a Jazz Age sensibility and one word: Enjoy! By the time she was married (to an “impossible” man) much of their money was gone–indeed, she slipped out of a few foreclosed homes as the sheriff was coming for them.
Gilbert also points out how far ahead of her time Gima was. The 1940s saw food moving towards prepackaging and processing. So this cookbook came out right around frozen dinners to try to re-introduce women to the kitchen (although not in a retrograde way) and to be proud of what you can accomplish there. But more than just a cookbook, Gima tried to introduce Americans to Brains with Black Butter, Eels, Tripe and Calves’ Head Cheese. She was also unafraid to try things in different neighborhoods (the story of how she first encountered pizza is wonderful). Gilbert wonders what might have become of her in a different time place or circumstances and it’s true for she was really a remarkable woman.
And the remarkable nature of this cookbook is not the recipes (which are remarkable and I would like to try some of the simpler ones), but the prosaic nature of the book. Gima is telling a story with each recipe. Indeed, the recipes aren’t even given in standard annotated form: they are written in the prose. Gilbert’s other contribution is to take ten of their family’s favorite recipes from the book and write them out in conventional cooking style for ease of cooking. I enjoyed this book a lot–Gima is a fascinating woman with a delightful taste for life. The question is what to try first? (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: THE DICKIES-“Eve of Destruction” (1979).
I didn’t know the original of this song until I listened to it just now (man it is depressing). I have known this Dickies cover since the 90s, which speeds up the original almost twice as fast and makes the lyrics pretty much inaudible (which makes it less depressing).
I Just Read About That... 