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Archive for the ‘Culture Shock’ Category

Five Dials Number 15: The November Issue (22 November 2010)

Posted in Advice, Alain de Botton, Anne Cloutier, Émilie Andrewes, Bob Mould, Books about writers, Canadian Content, Claude Mathieu, Craig Taylor, Culture Shock, Dana Bath, Daniel Sanger, David Foster Wallace, David Homel, David Shields, Denis Villeneuve, Essays, Fears, Five Dials, Foo Fighters, Gail Armstrong, Gaston Miron, Gil Courtemanche, Gustav Flaubert, Heathecote Williams, History, Hockey, Incendies, Jean Gautier, Julie Doucet, Leonard Cohen, Madeleine Thien, Maxime Catellier, Michel Temblay, Michel Vézina, Mireille Silcoff, Niven Govinden, Oscar Wilde, Poetry, Raymond Chandler, Rebecca Harries, Richard Thompson, Robbie Dillon, Robert Lévesque, Roxanne Bouchard, Rush, Sarah Steinberg, Short Story, Translation, Travel on July 30, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FOO FIGHTERS-Wasting Light (2011).

The Foo Fighters are huge.  Duh.  But when I think of that, it amazes me that a) the Foo Fighters are the band from “the drummer from Nirvana” and that b) while Dave Grohl knows his way around a melody, he is a metal dude at heart, and some of his most popular songs are really heavy.  He can scream with the best of them.

I’ve enjoyed the Foos for many years, but I didn’t listen to their previous discs all that much (or at least I didn’t listen to the mellow disc from In Your Honor and I don’t remember anything off of Echoes…), but this new one is fantastic.  There’s not a dull song on the disc, and Grohl has hit new heights of catchiness and singalong-ness. 

I also like how noisy the disc is.  It opens with some great discord before turning in a majorly heavy rifftastic scream fest in “Bridge Burning.”  Despite the screaming and noise of the opening, the chorus is super catchy.  “Rope” was said to be inspired by Rush.  Knowing that, I can hear a lot of little Rush-isms in the track: The main riff is very Rush-like, there’s a cymbal tapping that reminds me of Neil Peart in the verses, as well as a little drum solo in the middle (with a cowbell!) and the solo is very Alex Lifeson. (It also feels longer than 4 minutes).

“Dear Rosemary” features Bob Mould on backing vocals (but you can hardly tell it’s him).  It’s got a great chorus as well.  “White Limo” is a wonderful punk song, completely incomprehensible lyrics and all.  Meanwhile “Arlandria” (whatever that means) is another totally catchy track (I find myself singing it a lot).

“These Days” should be the next single: catchy and easy on the ears.  I wonder why it hasn’t been released yet.  “Back and Forth” has another great noisy riff.  One thing that I like a lot about the Foos is that they put different things in the same song:  so “A Matter of Time” has a very simple verse and a catchy chorus, but there’s some really buzzing heavy guitars too.  “Miss the Misery” has a kind of sleazy feel which I think is new for the Foos.  And “I Should Have Known” is a kind of angry ballad (I’d like to see Richard Thompson cover it). 

The final track, “Walk” is a fast rocker that sums up the album really well.  Bravo Dave Grohl.  I can’t get enough of this disc, regardless of how popular it is.

[READ: July 2, 2011] Five Dials Number 15

After the brevity of Number 14, Five Dials Number 15 comes back to a fuller size.  It’s strange to me that the issue is titled The November Issue, in part because they never tell us when the issues were published, but even more because this is actually the Québec Issue.  Most of the authors are Quécbecers and the issue release party was in Québec as well.

I’d like to point out that while I was looking something up about this issue (more later) I discovered the Five Dials News Page.  There are currently 43 pages worth of posts.  But most of them are short.  If there are any especially noteworthy ones, I’ll add them to reviews of future issues, but for the most part so far they’re just announcements of how well received their books are (I’ve already made notes to read two of them).  They also give release dates for the issues, which is how I have been able to retroactively attach dates to some of them.

There are many Québecois writers included in this issue (thoughtfully translated into English), as well as some standard features by Alain De Botton and frequent contributors David Shields and Raymond Chandler.

CRAIG TAYLOR-On Our Québec Issue, and Young Novelists
Taylor’s introduction discusses many Canadian’s attitudes about Québec and their (seemingly perennial) vote concerning separation from the country (“so, let them go”).

creepy beard

The confusing thing here is that it appears that Taylor is Canadian (or at least lived there in 1995/6).   But surely he is British, no?

There’s lots of information about Québec in here but no grand statement (except that Celine Dion’s husband’s beard is still creepy).

He also introduces a new section called “Our Town” which is all about London.  The final section of the note says that

we are releasing our second Five Dials list of Top Ten Novelists Under Ten (or ‘Ten Under Ten’,or ‘Ten-Ten’, or as some of the writers themselves call the list: ‘Tintin.’) As you know, many of the writers we chose for our first Ten Under Ten list went on to things such as high school.

This is how I discovered the Five Dials News page, because there certainly was no Ten Under Ten section in a previous issue of the magazine.  Of course, nor is there any mention in the news that I have seen.  So I can’t decide if the whole thing is just a big joke or what.  I assume it is (but I’d hate to not give credit to the waaaay precocious kids at the end of the issue). (more…)

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Colin Meloy (with illustrations by Carson Ellis)–Wildwood (2011) [prepub]

Posted in Adventure, Animals, Big Books, Carson Ellis, Children's Books, Culture Shock, Death, Fantasy, Fears, Magic, Marriage (Happy), The Decemberists, Tiny Desk Concert, Trilogy on July 15, 2011| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: THE DECEMBERISTS-Tiny Desk Concert #135 (June 20, 2011).

NPR has loved the Decemberists for years, so it’s no surprise that they made it to Bob Boilen’s office for a Tiny Desk concert.  And yet they are probably one of the biggest bands to appear at the Tiny Desk, so I was quite excited to hear this show.  They play 3 songs, all from The King is Dead: “Down by the Water” (naturally), “Rox in the Box” and “The June Hymn.”

Colin is in good chatty form (after almost getting hit in the face by a violin bow) and makes a very funny comment about thinking that everyone would be working while they played.  He also—I think a first in Tiny Desk history—screws up a song (“The June Hymn”) and has to restart the whole thing—it’s a very minor flub, only noticeable if you listen a few times, but he noticed and clearly felt bad (and didn’t curse either).

The songs sound great even if they’re not radically different from the recorded version (the harmonica solos are the big “improv” moments).  And this set confirms what a solid bunch of songs The King is Dead is.

[READ: July 7, 2011] Wildwood

I had this book signed by Colin and Carson at BEA.  I was so psyched to see that they were signing there, that I got up super early, took the bus into Manhattan and got to the convention center before it opened (I thought they were signing at 7:30, but it was actually 8:30). Of course, I didn’t see the fine print that said I needed a ticket to meet the author and illustrator.  In fact, I didn’t even realize that people were holding tickets until I was next on line. I asked the nice BEA worker if I could still go.   She said they wouldn’t sign a book, but that I could say hello.

I told Colin and Carson that I loved their stuff and I gushed over them like a little fanboy (even mentioned having a Tarkus album) and they gave me a copy of the book anyway (signed by them both).  How cool!

So this book is an older children’s book (I would say on a level of The Mysterious Benedict Society–which the book reminded me of because Carson did the illustrations for that series as well, although the books are nothing alike in content).

I have always loved Colin’s lyrics (yeah, he signed my book, we’re on a first name basis now). They are fantastical and fantastic, and he has a great vocabulary, pulling out obscure words for rhymes.  There’s a generally accepted tenet in writing that poetry is more powerful than prose because poems are typically honed with perfect word choices, whereas prose tends to be a bit lazier because there’s so many more words to play with (ideally, prose should also be finely honed, but it’s much more noticable in poetry).  And so given this, I guess it’s no surprise that Wildwood is not as impactful as Colin’s songs.  There are couplets from Decemberists songs that run through my head all the time, but there weren’t any great phrases in the book that really stuck with me.  Of course, at 540 pages you wouldn’t expect too many phrases to jump out at you (images and scenes and chracters yes, but phrases, no).

All of this is a long way of saying that I really enjoyed the story, but I wasn’t blown away by the language of the book.

The story follows Prue McKeel, a young girl who is pretty ordinary.  She lives in Portland (the Wildwood of the title is in Oregon, not New Jersey, which isn’t surprising since they’re from Oregon, but a Jersey kid can hope), goes to school and has a pretty happy home life.  Her mom and dad are nice (I love that her parents are suffused with all the trappings of hippie Oregon–it’s like Portlandia in print!) and her baby brother, Mac, is pretty okay too.  The image that will stick with me is of Prue taking her brother for a bike ride: she transports him through the most peculiar (and reckless and dangerous) way I can imagine–she attaches a Radio Flyer wagon to her bike and plops him in the wagon.  I just have to ask–how did he not fall out??

The story immediately announces itself as fantastical when a murder of crows swoops down out of the sky and grabs Mac from the ground and flies away with him.  Now, Prue was supposed to be watching Mac, so although it’s not her fault a bunch of birds grabbed Mac and flew away with him, it is her fault, you know?  So Prue hops on her bike and follows the birds through the city (a very exciting scene of reckless bike riding).  She skids to a halt when she sees them fly into The Impassable Wilderness. (more…)

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Zsuzsi Gartner–All the Anxious Girls on Earth (1999)

Posted in Advice, All Songs Considered, Books about writers, Boredom, Canadian Content, Culture Shock, Death, Funny (ha ha), Ghosts, Gogol Bordello, Pranks, Short Story, The Pogues, The Walrus, Zsuzsi Gartner on July 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: GOGOL BORDELLO-Trans-Continental Hustle (2010).

When I first heard Gogol Bordello, they were touring for this album (thanks NPR).  Consequently, I knew this album pretty well when I bought it.  At first I felt that it didn’t have the vibrancy of the live show (how could it?).  But after putting it aside for a few weeks, when I re-listened, I found the album (produced by Rick Rubin) to be everything I expect from Gogol Bordello: loud, frenetic fun, a bit of mayhem, and some great tunes that sound like traditional gypsy songs, but which I assume are not.

While I was listening to the album, I kept thinking of The Pogues.  They don’t really sound anything alike but they have that same feel of punk mixed with traditional music.  For The Pogues, it’s Irish trad, and for GB it’s a gypsy sound–I’m not sure if it is attributable to any specific locale.  But they have a common ground in a kind of Spanish-based trad style.  From the Pogues, you get a song like “Fiesta” which is overtly Spanish.  From GB, you get songs like “My Companjera” or “Uma Menina Uma Cigana.”  Singer/ringleader Eugene Hutz has been living in Brazil, and he has really embraced the culture (and the accent).  He also sings in a kind of drunken tenor (his accent is probably more understandable than MacGowan’s drunken warble, but not always).

I’m led to understand that previous albums were a bit more high-throttle from start to finish.  This disc has a couple of ballads.  At first they seem to not work as well, but in truth they help to pace the album somewhat.

It’s obvious this band will not suit everyone’s tastes, but if you’re looking for some high energy punk with some ethnic flare, GB is your band (and if you like skinny guys with no shirts and big mustaches, GB is definitely your band.  It is entirely conceivable that Hutz does not know how to work a button).

[READ: June 20, 2011] All the Anxious Girls on Earth

I’ve really enjoyed Zsuzsi’s stories in recent issues of The Walrus.  So much so that I wanted to get a copy of her new book.  It wasn’t available anywhere in the States yet, so I went back and got her first collection of short stories.

This collection felt to me like a younger, less sophisticated version of Zsuzsi’s later works that I liked so much.  This is not to say that I didn’t like them.  I just wasn’t as blown as w.

“How to Survive in the Bush”
I had to read the opening to this story twice for some reason.  The second read made much more sense and I was able to follow what was going on (I think there were a few terms that I didn’t know–a 1941 Tiger Moth, East Kootenays–that were given context after a few pages.  It transpires that this is a story o a woman who has given up her life to move to the boonies with/for her husband.  The whole story is written in second person which while typically inviting, I found alienating.  It made the story harder to read for me, but once I got into the groove of it I found it very rewarding. (more…)

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Tessa Hadley–“A Mouthful of Cut Glass” (New Yorker, June 6, 2005)

Posted in Culture Shock, Marriage (Happy), New Yorker, Romance, Short Story, Stars, Tessa Hadley, The Kopecky Family Band, Tiny Desk Concert on July 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KOPECKY FAMILY BAND-Embraces EP (2008).

I learned about Kopecky Family Band from NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert.  When I investigated further, I found that I could download this EP for free. I compared their Tiny Desk show favorably to The Head and the Heart.  This earlier EP has a bit more punky edge to it (as their other stuff may as well–Tiny Desk doesn’t really lend towards punk).

And so this EP leads me to compare them more towards Stars.  But perhaps we’ll call them a more acoustic version of Stars.  There is some wonderfully intense musical construction on this EP, and the dynamic of the duel vocalists really bring great tensions.

This is a wonderful EP.  The strings belie the rather heavy chords  (especially on “Trainwreck”) and the harmonies throughout are really infectious.

[READ: June 30, 2011] “A Mouthful of Cut Glass”

I’ve really enjoyed Tessa Hadley’s recent stories in The New Yorker.  So I decided to go back through their archives and read the other stories of hers that they have published.  It turns out that she has been published in the New Yorker since 2002.  But many of the earlier stories were collected in her previous collection which I’ll read one of these days.  But rather, I started with the first ones that have yet to be collected.

“A Mouthful of Cut Glass” is a conflation of two expressions, neither of which I was familiar with: “talking through a mouth full of plums” and “an accent like cut glass.”  The malaprop came from the protagonist’s boyfriends’ mother.  And yet, I say protagonist as if Shiela is the real protagonist.  The story quite clearly opens with Neil.

In 1952 Neil was born into a very poor household.  But over the years, he was able to rise above his sattion and become a successful University student.  It was at University that Neil met Sheila.  Sheila grew up in a vicar’s house with a gaggle of brothers and sisters.  The two of them hit it off very well and began a serious relationship. (more…)

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Lucky Peach: Issue 1–Ramen (Summer 2011)

Posted in Anthony Bourdain, Culture Shock, David Chang, David Rees, Eggs, Essays, Harold McGee, Ivan Orkin, John T. Edge, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Lucky Peach, Mark Ibold, Matthew Volz, McSweeney's, Mike Houston, Ramen, Ruth Reichl, Todd Kliman, Wylie Dufresne on July 10, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ROCKWELL KNUCKLES-“Silly Human” (2011).

This song was NPR’s song of the day on July 7th.  I’d never heard of Rockwell Knuckles before.  He’s a rapper from St. Louis and has at least one other album out as far as I can tell.  I was rather fond of this song for, as the NPR page says, he often prefers to be absurd.

This song has fast, manic music–jittery and confusing and the rap over the top of that music, especially the chorus, is equally frenetic and hard to fathom on one listen.  But the chorus has a interesting twisty melody and the lyrics (the ones that I can follow) are bizarre and thoughtful and not typical “street life” lyrics.

I listened to this sevral times in a row, and will defitely check out his full length (which you can stream here, and the songs I listened to are equally weird and catchy).

[READ: July 6, 2011] Lucky Peach Issue 1

McSweeney’s has yet another new periodical to occupy my ever diminishing reading time.  This one is a food magazine which, as the cover states is “the new food quarterly from Momofuku’s David Chang.”  I don’t especially like food magazines (Sarah subscribes to several, but I just can’t get into them–reading recipes to me is the equivalent of looking at XHTML code for most people).  I mean, I like to cook sometimes, but I don’t look for new recipes or anything like that.  So, I am probably the least likely recipient of this magazine.  Not to mention I’ve never heard of David Chang and only know about Momofuku because of the Elvis Costello album.

And then geez, the first issue is about Ramen?  Who gives a fuck about Ramen?  It’s that crappy stuff you buy 10 for $1 at the supermarket.  And you’re really going to devote 174 ad-free (except, obviously lots of mentions of Momofuku) pages to ramen?

Well, yes they are.  And holy shit if it wasn’t amazing.  David Chang is a really funny guy and co-editor Peter Meehan is a great foul-mouthed humorist.  [I have never seen so many “fucking”s in a cooking magazine before–in fact I suspect I’ve never seen any in a cooking magazine before].  The articles were funny and a little low brow (I doubt most cooking magazines mention people throwing up either), but they were engaging and interesting too. (more…)

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Five Dials Number 12: The Utterly Broken Britain Issue (6 May 2010)

Posted in Advice, Africa, Alain de Botton, Alan Hollinghurst, Alan Wykes, Books about writers, Brenda Walker, Craig Taylor, Culture Shock, Dan Hancox, Death, Decadence, Essays, Fears, Five Dials, Guster, History, James Robertson, Jeremy Gavron, Nick Dewar, Paul Davis, Poetry, Political Humor, Sex, Simon Prosser, Sophia Augusta, Stephen Vizinczey, The Walrus on July 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: GUSTER-Easy Wonderful (2010).

This Guster album is confusing.  It’s rather short (compared to their other discs).  Combined with the (kind of flimsy) cardboard packaging, it feels almost like an EP.  It also seems to be kind of religious (although I don’t think it is)–like a themed EP.  And yet it isn’t off-putting or anything (a few mentions of Jesus is all, although that’s a lot more than usual).

But, like most of Guster’s releases, it’s super catchy kind of alternative jangly pop.  After one or two listens the songs are instantly recognizable.  There isn’t a bad song in the bunch.  However, they’re also mildly underwhelming compared to their previous releases.  The songs feel a bit more subtle, but really it seems like they might be just a little too smooth.  The dynamics aren’t quite as exciting as they have been.

Having said all that, the disc is still pretty great and I find myself humming a lot of these songs all day long.

[READ: June 18, 2011] Five Dials Number 12

Five Dials Number 12 has a theme explicitly stated on the cover.  The premise of the theme is that the Conservative Party of Britain had been claiming (in their TV ads and billboards) that Britain was broken.  This idea was relentlessly pushed across Britain.  And Five Dials wondered if people thought that that was true in general.  So they asked 42 citizens (no idea what kind of random sample it may have been, realistically) and they recorded the results.

The rest of the issue has some of the standard Five Dials material we’ve come to expect: essays and fiction, advice and lists.  The theme gives an interesting tone to the proceedings.

CRAIG TAYLOR-A Letter from the Editor: On Broken Britain and Nick Dewar
Taylor addresses much of what is said above.  David Cameron (I still can’t get used to him being Prime Minister, it’s still Gordon Brown in my head–I guess Cameron hasn’t done much yet) is the man who keeps trying to “mend our broken society.”  Even though (and statistics are similar in the U.S.):

They found that violent crime had almost halved since 1995, while crime generally fell by an extraordinary 45%. The figures for teenage pregnancies – a favourite of those talking about social decay – remain constant since Labour came to power in 1997; so too do those for teenage abortions.

The rest of the letter is devoted to the passing of Nick Dewar.  Dewar drew the illustrations for Five Dials Number One.  I really liked Dewar’s style, and his absurdist sensibilities.  Taylor says that Dewar’s color work was even better.  And I think he’s right. (more…)

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Alexi Zenther–“The Rules of Engagement” (The Walrus, July/August 2011)

Posted in 35 rhums, Alexi Zentner, Canadian Content, Claire Denis, Culture Shock, Marriage Trouble, Sarah Selecky, Sex, Short Story, The Walrus, Tindersticks on July 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TINDERSTICKS-35 Rhums (2008).

This is a charming and very French sounding soundtrack. A delightful melody runs throughout the disc (which totals just over 25 minutes).

When Sarah first heard it, she said, “What’s this French music you’re listening to?”  And indeed, it is very French-sounding. There are very simple instruments: melodica, acoustic guitars, piano.  And that melodica is a prominent sound–giving it a sense of intrigue as well as a sense of solitude (the melodica can sound so yearning).  But it’s not all melodica and intrigue; for instance, there’s some delicate xylophone on “Night Time Apartments.”

There are also several snippets from the movie online.  Here’s one clip (with Tindersticks score underneath):

Of the new soundtracks releases this one is my favorite.  And it’s one that I could see listening to for fun.

[READ: June 16, 2011] “The Rules of Engagement”

This is the final story in The Walrus‘ Summer Reading issue.  As I mentioned, the intro states: “We asked five celebrated writers to devise five guidelines for composing a short story or poem. They all traded lists–and played by the rules.”  Alexi Zenther was given rules by Sarah Selecky (which I posted below).

I really enjoyed this story, despite the immoral behavior.  Susan and her friends from high school (it’s ten years after high school now) are enjoying a foreign vacation for a week.  The first thing we see is a man seducing Susan.  They call him “Fork” because after a few hours of flirting, he asked, “And now we fork?”  Amusingly, for someone who made a living seducing women, he was bad in bed.

The other women also meet and bed these professional gigilos.  After sex, one of them simply walked over to the woman’s wallet and took money when he was ready to leave.  She notes that he took “probably less than I would have given him if he had asked.”

The women are in various stages of relationships, one woman is divorced, another is serially monogamous and a third is married (that’s the immoral part).

There’s a wonderful diversion in the story that flashes back to Susan’s grandfather Bert.  Bert had a U-pick apple stand and the girls worked there for many summers.  There’s an especially tender moment in which Susan and Bert are wandering the island and they see a wild horse.  And the scene fills Susan (and the reader) with a sense of wonder at her grandfather. (more…)

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Five Dials Number 11 (2010)

Posted in Advice, Alain de Botton, All Songs Considered, Books about writers, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, Cluster, Craig Taylor, Culture Shock, David Bowie, Death, Decadence, Essays, Excerpt, Five Dials, Food, Funny (ha ha), Harper's, Irish Writer, Jon Savage, Kate Bland, Lou Reed, Negativland, Neil Young, Nick Drake, Patti Smith, Paul Murray, Pavement, Primus, Raymond Chandler, Roberto Bolaño, Sand, Steely Dan, Suicide, The Bay City Rollers, The Pogues, The Residents, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on July 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE RESIDENTS-Meet the Residents plus Santa Dog EP (1973/1972).

Like a proto- Negativland meets Primus, The Residents took the world by storm in 1973.  Their debut album (pictured here) bore the unmistakable tagline: The First Album by North Louisiana’s Phenomenal Pop Combo.  And so it is.

Read more about the album in the Jon Savage essay below.

“Boots” is a sampled and remashed version of “These Boots Are Made for Walking.”  “Gylum Bardot” sounds like a Primus demo.  “Breath and Length” is noise and noise and effects and a soothing female vocal singing the title.   “Consuelo’s Departure” is a noisy soundtrack to nothing and “Smelly Tongues” sounds like a hammered dulcimer with a menacing bassline behind it until the vocals come in: “Smelly tongues looked just as they felt”.   And all 6 of these songs last less than ten minutes total.

“Rest Aria” changes tempo of things.  It’s five minutes long.  It starts as a simple piano track (slightly out of tune) but it slowly adds crazy horns and what sounds like children’s instruments.  The other longish song, “Spotted Pinto Beans” comes with a kind of faux chorus (female and then male) singing a kind of call and response which is overtaken by noise.

The one-minute “Skratz” comes between these two longer songs and is mostly  mumbling spoken vocal.  “Infant Tango” sounds like a normal song.  It opens with a funky wah wahed guitar.  Of course, the skronking horns and mumbled bass vocals tell you this is not going to be a hit.  It runs 6 minutes long with a strange little “guitar solo” in the middle.

“Seasoned Greetings” (with it’s weird holiday wishes at the end) segues into the 9 minute “N-Er-Gee (Crisis Blues”).  “N-Er-Gee” is a piano “melody” which is really someone banging the same notes very hard on the piano.  The voice on both tracks sounds like the aural equivalent of blackface until the sample (a very long sample that apparently voided placement on some releases) of “Nobody But You” morphs into a manipulated sampling of the word “boogaloo” and eventually becomes a dissonant chant of the title.

The appended Santa Dog is a bit more song-like.  Totally weird songs yes, but there’s actual melodies and lyrics.  Like on “Fire”: “Santa dog’s a Jesus fetus.”  “Aircraft Damage” is mostly a bunch of people reciting bizarre lyrics over each other.  The whole EP was about 12 minutes.  It’s weird but more palatable than the LP.

Despite how much this album foreshadowed loony alternative bands in the future, there is a clear predecessor in Trout Mask Replica.  Although Captain Beefheart followed a (relatively) more conventional song structure, you can hear elements of the Beefheart within.  This album is also notable for being made in the early 70s when the technology to do this easily was very far away.  You could whip this album up in a few minutes now, but back then with splice and paste, it would take ages.

It did not sell as well as the similarly titled Meet the Beatles.

[READ: June 16, 2011] Five Dials Number 11

Five Dials Number 10 was a special issue, but Number 11 goes back to the format we know.  It sort of has a theme about lists.   It contains half a dozen short essays and one long short story by Paul Murray (author of Skippy Dies).  This issue is also something of a surprise as it weighs in at a fairly small 16 pages (sometimes smaller is perfectly fine).  The issue also raised a couple of totally weird coincidences which I will point out as they come up.

CRAIG TAYLOR-A Letter from the Editor: On Wilton’s and Lists
Number 10 was designed to be ready for an evening at Wilton’s Music Hall on February 26th.  But the real theme of the issue is lists.  In part this is inspired by the Raymond Chandler entry, it’s also inspired because Taylor keeps lists around the office.  At the end of the letter he provides a list of all of the notes he’d left to himself in the office.  Some are about the issue (Paul Murray manuscript), other are seemingly more random (USA 5 Canada 3, men’s Olympic ice hockey result;  Canada 7-Russia 3, men’s Olympic ice hockey result; ‘Range Life’–Pavement).  And the one that is most coincidental to me–(The Umbrellas of Cherbourg–Jacques Demy).  This is coincidental because on the day that I read this, my friend Lar wrote a post about this very movie, which was completely unknown to me. (more…)

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Five Dials Number 8 (1 October 2009)

Posted in Albert Camus, Ali Smith, Audioslave, Books about writers, Coco Chanel, Craig Taylor, Culture Shock, Essays, Five Dials, Funny (strange), Geoff Dyer, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Joanna Walsh, Joe Dunthorne, John Updike, Lauren Elkin, Leanne Shapton, Mark Ovenden, Oulipo, Paul Davis, Postmoderism, Rage Against the Machine, Short Story, Soundgarden, Steve Toltz, Susan Sontag, Tor Freeman, Truman Capote on June 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: AUDIOSLAVE-Audioslave (2002).

Despite the pedigree of this band: Rage Against the Machine + Chris Cornell, I wasn’t all that interested in the band when they came out.  I was over Rage and was bored by Cornell’s solo stuff.  But then recently, someone donated a copy of this album to th elibrary, so I thought I’d see what all of the fuss was about (nine years ago).

There are times when this album is really superb.  The Rage guys get an amazingly full sound out of their instruments (the choruses of “Show Me How to Live” are so full).  And when it works, and Cornell’s amazing voice is in full force, this seems like a genius pairing.

But there’s a lot that feels kind of clunky here (and there’s some really bad choices of guitar solo work by Tom Morello–the weird noises that compriose he solo of “What You Are”–in Rage the noises were weird but exciting and inflammatory, these are just kind of dull.  Worse yet, is the, well, stupid solo in “Like a Stone”–boring and ponderous at the same time).  Although he redeems himself somewhat with the cool solo on the otherwise dull “Intuition”.

The biggest surpise comes in “Like a Stone” which is insanely catchy and mellow–something one assumed Rage didn’t know how to do).  Lyrically the song is pretty stupid (as are most of the songs), but the combination of melody and Cornell’s great vocal lines really raise this song high–shame about the solo).  Also, a song like “Shadow of the Sun” seems to highlight Cornell’s more mellow moments (and shows that the Rage guys can actually play that slow), and they all seem to be in synch.

And there are several songs that rock really hard, sounding at times like Rage and at time like Soundgarden, but working on all cylinders together.  “Cochise” and “Set It Off” are simply great riff rock songs.

But ten or so years later, and twenty years since Badmotorfinger (my favorite Soundgarden album), it’s nice to hear Cornell rocking again.  Although man, the record is too long!

[READ: June 1, 2011] Five Dials Number 8

For Issue Number 8, Five Dials went to Paris.  And so the whole issue is given over to French concerns and ideas.  For a magazine that didn’t need a change of pace, it’s a delightful change of pace.  The feel of the magazine is different, and there’s an air of vacation about it (which is not to suggest that it is slacking off in any way), and it feels really vibrant.

I don’t know a lot about France in general.  I mean, I’ve been there, and I keep up with things, but I am not a Francophile by any means. So a lot of this stuff was simply new to me, which is always fun.  What I especially liked about the issue was that they were not afraid to show some of France’s uglier sides as well–it’s not just a tourism booster.

It even starts out differently than the other issues. (more…)

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David Bezmozgis–“Rome, 1978” (The Walrus, April 2011)

Posted in Culture Shock, David Bezmozgis, Excerpt, Fears, Nazis, Religion, Short Story, The Sound of Young America, The Walrus, Threats, Travel, Trenchmouth on June 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TRENCHMOUTH-Vs the Light of the Sun (1994).

I learned about Trenchmouth from an interview with Fred Armisen on The Sound of Young America.  He informed us that he was the drummer in Trenchmouth before he was on SNL.  And he and Jesse Thorn had an amusing discussion about how he was sure they would make it big.  I can’t recall if they played a snippet of the band or not, but it’s a pretty laughable thought that Trenchmouth might be his claim to fame.  Because they are awesome, but they are totally NOT commercial.

In fact, just a few seconds into the lead-off track “Washington! Washington!” will tell you how noncommercial they are.  (It’s a sort of fast heavy punk version of prog rock–jazzy guitars, independent bass, wonderful drumming (Armisen kicks ass) and the screamed hyperkinetic vocals of Damon Locks (he’s passionate, man).

There’s a lot of atonal work here (“Washington! Washington!” opens with drums and Lock’s ragged voice), and once the guitars kick in, it actually makes the song more confusing.  “A Prescription Written in a Different Language” opens with wavering harmonic notes before busting into a full on punk noisefest.  The album lurches around to different styles of weird noise rock (most of the songs are quite short, although “A Man without Lungs” runs over 6 minutes).

But before making it sounds like this is a mess of a record, a few listens will reveal the sanity beneath the chaos.  There are even some discernible choruses: “Here Comes the Automata”‘s “Everybody needs protection” and “Bricks Should Have Wings”‘ “Let the bricks fly” are fun to sing along to.  Similarly, the guitar work that opens “Set the Oven at 400” is rather conventional and quite pretty.

This disc is not for most people, but Trenchmouth is a cool band that has been unfairly lost to the annals of history.

[READ: April 4, 2011] “Rome, 1974”

I had received a pre-pub of Bezmozgis’ novel The Free World, but I haven’t read it yet.  I am interested in Bezmozgis’ writing and was planning to read the book.  As it turns out this “story” is really an excerpt from the novel.

The story is about the Krasnansky family, a Jewish extended family emigrating from the Soviet Union to Italy.  The opening scenes detail the physical hardship that such a move would have taken (it’s played for somewhat comic effect when the large duffel bags are thrown off the train).  There is much dissent among the family members although they sem to settle in well–except for patriarch Samuil who is disconcerted by everything and unhappy to have left the communist country he feels comfortable in. (more…)

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