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Archive for the ‘Excerpt’ Category

Nell Zink–“Marmalade Sky” (Harper’s, July 2019)

Posted in Excerpt, Harper's, My Bloody Valentine, Nell Zink, Pregnancy, Sassy, Sonic Youth, Tragic Mulatto on July 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TRAGIC MULATTO-“Freddy” (1987)

I knew of Tragic Mulatto because they were on Alternative Tentacles records (home to Dead Kennedys).  But I’d actually never heard them before, I don’t think. I knew they were a noise rock band, but I had no idea they were quite so explicit.

The main band members were singer Flatula Lee Roth (Gail Coulson), guitarist Richard Skidmark (Tim Carroll) and bassist Reverend Elvister Shanksley aka Lance Boyle (Alistair Shanks).

This five minute song starts like a deranged circus with a swirling saxophone and  a muddled guitar and drum stomp.  Once the music establishes itself, the vocals come in, a deep growly evil spokenish rhyme that I can’t exactly make out.

Around 1:45 Flatuta takes over, singing a refrain of

“Don’t let him cum in your … butt … ear … rear … head … bed … feet … all over your sheets.” etc. that runs for the rest of the song. It’s surprisingly catchy, but you’d not want to sing it at the dinner table.

Fascinatingly, this album is described as featuring more tightly structured music that emphasized melody was less satirical and more serious.

It sounds like Tragic Mulatto, and especially Gail Coulson, (who is said to have possessed a simply astonishing vocals range) were really ahead of their time.

[READ: July 10, 2019] “Marmalade Sky”

I love Nell Zink’s writing and was pretty excited to see that she had a new story.  This is an excerpt from her new book Doxology.

It is 1990, Pam went over to Joe’s place to listen to records.

Joe let Pam in and introduced her to a man holding a piece of black plastic.  His name was Daniel Scoboda and he was holding the Sassy Sonic youth flexi.

Joe said he subscribed to the magazine as soon as he heard about it. But Pam, who introduced herself as Pam Diaphragm, said the magazine wasn’t long for the world.  Whats the demographic? Thirteen year-old girls who fuck?  Advertisers really go for that.

Joe said he’s a Sonic Youth completist. The only thing he doesn’t have is the single “I Killed Christgau with My Big Fuckin’ Dick.”  Daniel said its not a real record, the editor of the magazine made it up.  [I love this Sonic Youth indie rock banter]. (more…)

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Randy Boyagoda–“Super Dads” (The Walrus, July/August 2019)

Posted in Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Dante Alighieri, Disneyland, Drugs, Excerpt, Grievous Angels, Randy Boyagoda, Rheostatics, The Walrus, Virgil, Walt Disney World on July 15, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: GRIEVOUS ANGELS-“Saturday Night in a Laundromat” (Moose: The Compilation, 1991).

Back in the 1990s, it was common to buy a compilation or soundtrack or even a band’s album based on one song.  Only to then find that you didn’t really like anything else on it.

Maybe that single sounded like nothing else on the album.  Maybe the movie was almost entirely one genre, but they had that one song that you liked over the credits.  Or maybe the compilation was for something you didn’t know, but a song you really wanted was on it, too.

With streaming music that need not happen anymore.  Except in this case.

I bought this compilation, used, recently exclusively for one song, Rheostatics’ “Woodstuck.”  It’s a goofy song and this is the only place you can get the studio version.  The actual compilation was not well documented, so I didn’t know what the other bands on it might sound like.  It turns out to be a compilation for Ontario based Moose Records which specialized in Rock, Folk, World & Country.  They put out another compilation in 1992 and that’s all I can find out about them.

Grevious Angles sound an awful lot like Cowboy Junkies–slow, downbeat folk/country that tells a story.  The story of being in a laundromat on a Saturday night is kind of interesting.

The band is still playing (after taking a brief hiatus in 2004 for singer songwriter Charlie Angus to enter politics for four years.

In this song, Michelle Rumball has a deep, sultry voice.  She left the band after this album, so I’m not sure what they sound like now.

[READ: July 1, 2019] “Super Dads”

The July/August issue of The Walrus is the Summer Reading issue.  This year’s issue had two short stories, a memoir, three poems and a fifteen year reflection about a novel as special features.

Another except from this novel was published in The 2019 Short Story Advent Calendar.

In this excerpt, three men, Frank, Nick and Prin are heading to Dizzy’s World, a theme park that has seen much, much better days.

Nick and Frank are from Terre Haute and used to go to Dizzy’s World all the time as kids.  They both have fond memories.  Prin is not from the area and has never heard of the place.

All three had been hired by an evangelical millionaire to help build a theme park inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy.  Prin was a University professor. He understood footnotes and he knew that most people hated even the idea of them.  He was hired to talk footnotes to footnote haters. (more…)

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Khalil Sweileh–“The Tortoise and the Hedgehog” (Harper’s, June 2019)

Posted in Excerpt, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Harper's, Huh?, Humiliation, Jonathan Wright, Khalil Sweileh, Poetry, Poets, Regrets, Relationships, Romance, Translation, Umm Kulthum, أم كلثوم‎ on June 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: UMM KULTHUM (أم كلثوم‎‎)-“It is Too Late” (Fit al-ma’ ad) (1967).

I picked this song because it is mentioned in the story.

I don’t really understand the song and I didn’t really understand the story, so I guess it all fits.

Umm Kulthum was an Egyptian singer, songwriter, and film actress active from the 1920s to the 1970s. She was given the honorific title Kawkab al-Sharq (كوكب الشرق, “Star of the East”).

The version of the song that I found is 27 minutes long with three sections.  I can’t find anything useful in the way of translation (even of the title) which means “It’s too late” or “The rendez-vous is over.”

There are several parts to this song, although it is so traditional it is hard for me to determine them.  I also have a hard time understanding why her voice is so remarkable as she doesn’t really “do” very much.  She seems to have a limited range although with a lot of stamina.

Perhaps there is a different standard of excellence in Egyptian music.  Although I do understand how in the story she hears the song in the cab and calls him and he seems to take a Panadol then lays down and relaxes before turning on the radio and the song is still on.

[READ: June 1, 2019] “The Tortoise and the Hedgehog”

This is an excerpt from Sweileh’s novel Remorse Test.

It was translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright.  The original won an award for literature in 2017.

I include this last part because I found this story really hard to follow and even harder to enjoy.

It is written from the narrator to “you” and wonders what “remorse” is. (more…)

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Jill Ciment–“Then Again” (Harper’s, June 2019)

Posted in Ensemble Signal, Excerpt, Harper's, Jill Ciment, Jonny Greenwood, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Memoirs, Memory, NPR/PRI/PBS, Olivier Messiaen, Radiohead, Sex, Sexism, Sexual Assault, Tiny Desk Concert on June 25, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ENSEMBLE SIGNAL PLAYS JONNY GREENWOOD-Tiny Desk Concert #850 (May 20, 2019).

The blurb for this piece is actually by Jonny Greenwood (instead of an NPR staffer), so I’ll keep the whole thing.

I’ve watched a lot of Tiny Desk concerts over the years. It’s good to see musicians in the raw, away from stage lighting and backing tracks — as if they’ve just stopped by an office to play over a lunch break, with desk-bound employees watching on. The performances should expose flaws, but instead they tend to expose musicians being casually brilliant, like the members of Ensemble Signal, who certainly play these pieces beautifully.

Unfortunately, I was nowhere near Washington, D.C. for this recording. And I still find it bizarre that you can put a musical idea on paper and have it reproduced at such a distance — and with such added life. We’re used to sounds and images being shared as exact clones of one another, but the pleasure in using ink and paper is that the music is interpreted rather than just reproduced. All those years of practice, in all those players, distilled into 15 minutes of music. It’s a big privilege — and a continuing motivation to write the best I can.

The first piece, Three Miniatures from Water, was originally a sketch for an Australian Chamber Orchestra commission in 2014. I thought it’d be easier to approach writing for full orchestra by starting with a piano miniature and scaling it up. In fact, only some of the material made it to the final commission, and I always felt the original three miniatures hung together well enough as its own piece of music.

I’m a big admirer of composer Olivier Messiaen, and one of the musical scales he favored was the octatonic mode. It’s a lot like an Indian rag in that it’s a rigid set of notes, yet isn’t necessarily in a major or minor key. There are hundreds of rags in Indian music, but I was surprised to find that Messiaen’s octatonic scale isn’t one of them. Despite this, it sits nicely over a drone — and that was the starting point for this music. That and the glorious sound of the tanpura, the drone instrument that underpins everything in classical Indian music.

The piece is called Water, after the Philip Larkin poem with the same title, and was especially inspired by the final stanza:

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

The second piece, called 88 (No. 1), is also in one of Messiaen’s modes in the first half, before becoming a celebration of the mechanical nature of the piano. The performer has to put fingerless gloves on halfway through, partly in tribute to the immortal Glenn Gould, and partly because the technique requires some painful hammering. But don’t let that fool you into thinking the music is dark or angry: It is — or is meant to be — joyful.

“Three Miniatures from Water” features lots of drones from the strings ( Lauren Radnofsky on cello and Greg Chudzik on bowed upright bass).  There’s also the excellent tanpura drones from Paul Coleman and Elena Moon Park. The violin from Olivia De Prato plays a slow melody that seems to appear and disappear while the piano plays a somewhat spooky pizzicato melody.

“88 (No. 1)” is a solo piano piece by Lisa Moore (who played piano on the other piece as well).  It does seem to use all 88 keys in various fashion.  Indeed, she does put on fingerless gloves a little more than half way through the piece where she does play quite possibly every note (I can’t imagine what that looks like on paper).  For the last 45 seconds, she seems to be banging relentlessly (but tunefully–are there chords?) all over the keys.

Neither one of these pieces seem particularly joyful to me–they both seem kind of scary, but I am fascinated at the kind of compositions the guy from Radiohead makes.

[READ: June 1, 2019] “Then Again”

This is an excerpt from The Other Half, a manuscript that Ciment is writing to rebut her own 1996 memoir, Half a Life.

In that original memoir, she wrote about meeting her husband.  At the time she was seventeen and he was forty-seven (and her art teacher).

She asks what should she call him now.  “My husband”?  Yes, if it is the story is about the man she married and lived with for forty-five years.  But what if it is about an older man preying on a teenager.  Should she call him “The artist” or “the art teacher.”

She says he didn’t know what to expect when he kissed her for the first time–she could have screamed or slapped him.  But she had fantasized about him for the last six months, so that was not going to happen. (more…)

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Stephen King–“On Impact” (New Yorker, June 19 & 26, 2000)

Posted in Autobiographies, Books about writers, Car accidents, Cars, Essays, Excerpt, Marriage (Happy), NonComm, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Stephen King on June 4, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RODRIGO Y GABRIELA-NonCOMM (May 16, 2019).

The biggest shame of NonCOMM 2019 is that Rodrigo y Gabriela only got 19 minutes. Oh man, these two need an hour to show off everything they can do.  The other shame is that the person who wrote the blurb doesn’t know the song titles.

Normally their show–two people playing acoustic guitar–is a surprisingly loud and percussive affair.  Gabriela slaps her guitar and plays amazing drum-like sounds across the strings, while Rodrigo solos all over the fretboard.  Even though they play acoustic guitars, they have metal in their blood (they recently covered Slayer).

But this show is a rather quiet affair.  They begin with a quiet piece with a simple backing guitar line and a lead line that runs through the song.

Rodrigo y Gabriela may have started off their set with a soft, lullaby-ish tune, illuminated only by a single spotlight. But don’t get too comfortable with that mellow sound, beautiful as it is, because what followed after was a loud, jarring song that gave us a taste of what heavy metal might sound like if it could only be played with two guitars.

It segued into “Krotona Days” a heavy opening thuds before the two masters take off through fast and slow, loud and quiet.

Often standing face to face with their guitars in hand, Rodrigo y Gabriela engage in a conversation without any words, their narration punctuated by lighting perfectly selected to match each emotion. Even in the absence of lyrics, the listener is drawn into the band’s vulnerability; it’s as if they’ve invited us in as witnesses of their funky, fiery story as it unwinds song by song.

‘After Gabriela talks to everyone, they play “Electric Soul,” another quieter song.  Usually they are blowing our minds with speed, but here they demonstrate beautiful restraint.

The next song starts slowly, but after a build up of Gabriela’s percussive guitar it… returns to a quiet melody again including some harmonics.  I’m almost disappointed that they didn’t really do what they are known for, but this demonstration of a different side of them is pretty amazing too.

Most of these songs come from their new album Mettavolution, which features six original instrumental compositions, many of which we did get to hear.

They end the set with the titular song “Mettavolution.”  On the record it is a big loud raucous affair with loud pummeling chords to open.  It’s a bit more subdued here even if the main riff is still pretty intense.

I’m not sure why they chose to play so quietly, but it’s an interesting take on their music.

[READ: June 1, 2019] “On Impact”

When I was in high school, Stephen King was my favorite writer.  I read everything he’d written.  When I got to college I was really bummed that the school library had no Stephen King at all.  My freshman year I read the Tommyknockers and didn’t really like it and I think that was the last I’d thought about Stephen King.

At some point in the 1990s I read some of his newer books and remembered why I liked him so much.  Maybe I should go back and start all over again–will Salem’s Lot freak me out now as much as it did then?  I don’t know.

I don’t recall if I knew that he had been in a car accident.  I know I found out some years later (possibly when I read On Writing).  It’s also possible that this essay comes from that book.  It’s been 19 years, don’t remember, but I’m guessing the title of this is a nod to the book. (more…)

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Dinaw Mengestu–“Addis Ababa, 1977” (Harper’s, February 2007)

Posted in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Dinaw Mengestu, Ethiopia, Excerpt, Harper's, Kelsey Lu, Politicians, Skrillex, Violence on May 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KELSEY LU-“Due West” (2019).

I hadn’t intended to listen to so much of the Kelsey Lu album, but the third track was the one produced by Skrillex and I was curious what it would sound like.

I was expecting something very dancey and poppy.  It is nowhere near as over the top as I would have imagined.  Rather, it has a wonderful subtle hook in the bridge just because she sings a few words faster than the other.  Nearly everything else she sings is soft and slow, this little uptick is really cool.

Of the three songs, this is certainly the peppiest. It has some catchy electronic drums and definitive dance quality.  It’s still remarkably understate.

But i can see that the whole album could have sounded very different had she picked different producers.

The song ends with a surprisingly long guitar passage.  It is gentle and sweet with what sounds like crickets playing in the background.

I really don;t know all that much about Skrillex, but I think he’s a wild dancey EDM kinda guy.  The little I know leaves me astonished that he could produce something so subtle and pretty.

[READ: May 1, 2019] “Addis Ababa, 1977”

This is an excerpt from the novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.

It is a horrifying example of what it was like to grow up in Ethiopia in 1977.

The bedroom is a wreck and letters are scattered all over.  He will forever be able to see the room, the house, like this.

Soldiers have arrived. The house guards had already left (begging forgiveness as they fled).  There are three soldiers in the house and at least four waiting in the truck,

The lead solider pushes his father in to the room, considering him weak and vulnerable.  The soldiers can’t be more than a year or two older than the narrator. (more…)

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Pamela Lu–“Ambient Parking Lot” (Harper’s, January 2007)

Posted in Excerpt, Harper's, Huh?, Kelsey Lu, Music, Pamela Lu, Skrillex, The Flaming Lips, Theater on May 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KELSEY LU-“Rebel” (2019).

I saw that Kelsey Lu was playing NonCOMM this year.  I had never heard of her, but her record was getting some high praise.  Then as I was going through some older Harper’s things, I saw this story by Pamela Lu.  I quickly thought it might be the same person.  Then I double checked and of course they are different, they just have the same last name.

Kelsey Lu is a classically trained cellist and has become one of many classical performers who have migrated into the pop world.  She is certainly underplaying her chops on the record, going more for melody than virtuosity.

This piece opens with a pizzicato cello (looped I assume).  It is overlaid with a mournful melody before Kelsey sings in her quiet but affecting voice.

The song is just over three and a half minutes and it slowly builds with more and more organic sounds–strings and voices.  By the half way point, there’s echo and by the three minute mark, this quiet, almost chamber pop song has built into a full-sounding piece which just as quickly drops nearly all the music as two cellos fade the song to the end.

It’s an astonishingly pretty and subtle song to start an album that has production credits from Skrillex (on a different song).

[READ: April 24, 2019] “Ambient Parking Lot”

I started reading this excerpt and thought it might have had something to do withe The Flaming Lips’ Parking Lot Experiments:

During 1996 and 1997, The Flaming Lips ran a series of events known as “The Parking Lot Experiments”. The concept was inspired by an incident in Coyne’s youth, where he noticed that car radios in the parking lot at a concert were playing the same songs at the same time, Wayne Coyne created 40 cassette tapes to be played in synchronization. The band invited people to bring their cars to parking lots, where they would be given one of the tapes and then instructed when to start them. The music was “a strange, fluid 20 minute sound composition.”  [from Wikipedia]

I’ll assume there is some kernel of something, maybe, that inspired this, frankly, disappointing piece.

It begins by talking about the recording of “Ambient Parking #25.”

With just a little filtering, the empty landscape managed to express its industrially generated solipsism and came to overshadow even the engine gunning and trunk popping of SUVs.

The seven inch vinyl was released two weeks later on an indie label.

It was a huge success compared to attempts 1-24 and inspired them to make a full album. (more…)

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María Gainza–“Both Sides Now” (Harper’s, May 2019)

Posted in Art, Canadian Music, Excerpt, Franco-Prussian War, Harper's, Herni Rousseau, Hot Air Balloons, Local Rabbits, Louvre Museum, María Gainza, Pink Floyd, Rheostatics, The Tragically Hip, Thomas Bunstead, tagged on April 7, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Molson Centre Montreal, QC (December 9, 1996).

This is the 21st night of the 24 date Canadian Tour opening for The Tragically Hip on their Trouble At The Henhouse Tour. According to this host of the RheostaticsLive site: This in my opinion is the best show of the tour.

This show opens with the recording of the French language hockey game.  This time you can clearly hear him shouting Esposito!  After the recording fades,

It opens in a very amusing way.  I imagine that Dave and Martin are lying on the stage, because Dave asks, “Martin can you sleep?  I should have been asleep hours ago.”
Martin: “No, I can’t sleep.  I was up all night listening to the Local Rabbits.  Those riffs will keep anybody awake.”
[Tim starts playing the bass].
Dave “I had this weird dream we were playing in a giant rock stadium, opening for Ringo’s All Stars.  It felt really weird.  And everyone was speaking a different language.”
Martin: “Ringo’s really giving it this tour.”
Dave: “I’m just gonna get out of bed and see what Tim and Don are doing.”

They launch into “Fat.”  I really like the nice little bass tag Tim adds to the end while Martin sings “Bye Bye.”

“Aliens” is a nice surprise–I feel they just don’t play it all that much.  The feedbacking guitar segues nicely into a rocking “All the Same Eyes.”

It’s followed by a fun and bouncy “Michael Jackson.”  At the end, Martin says, “It feels good to be alive.”  Tim deadpans, “sometimes.”

Thanks to CSRG & CHUM FM and C5 for coming down and talking to us today.  This is a song [“Bad Time to Be Poor”] that’s getting played on the radio in all the finer dentist offices in the land.

Some cool sounds from Martin open up “California Dreamline.”  The ending part totally rocks until the denouement where it sounds like someone rocks so hard they may have de-tuned their guitar.

They wish Happy birthday to Gary Stokes, the finest soundman in the land.  Which leads to a lovely “Claire” that segues into a quiet intro for “Horses.”  It builds slowly and powerfully.   Lots of repeated lyrics in the middle–threaten to chop, chop.  These signs will wilt–they’re just paper ink and paper.

While martin ends with some wailing horse noises, Dave sings the first two lines of “Another Brick in the Wall” to end the show.

[READ: April 9, 2019] “Both Sides Now”

This is an excerpt from Gainza’s novel Optic Nerve which was translated by Thomas Bunstead.

It’s a little hard to guess what the whole novel is about since the excerpt worked so well by itself.

The narrator notes that one day you develop a fear of flying.

Before you turned twenty-five, flying seemed natural, but now it seems insane.  Nevertheless, you are supposed to fly to an art convention in Geneva. (more…)

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Clarice Lispector–“The Indirect World” (Harper’s, April 2019)

Posted in Clarice Lispector, Excerpt, Huh?, Johnny Lorenz, Leikeli47, Tiny Desk Concert on March 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  LEIKELI47-Tiny Desk Concert #831 (March 11, 2019).

Leikeli47 made such an impression with her recent Tiny Desk Concert that NPR asked her to be part of the Tiny Desk Family Hour as SXSW.  From this Tiny Desk Concert it’s almost enough to see why.

I say almost because I don’t think the live show translated as well on video:

Remember that scene in The Color Purple when Shug Avery was somewhere between the juke joint and her daddy’s church, singing at the top of her lungs, and the Saturday night sinners got all mixed in with the Sunday morning saints, and it was hard to tell if they were praising the high heavens or raising holy hell?  That’s what Leikeli47’s Tiny Desk felt like in the flesh.

The blurb gives a little bit more explanation of the mask

She came masked up, as always, the better to catch a glimpse of her soul. And there was so much soul to bare. Backed by a four-piece band of bruhs dressed as uniformed TSA agents (introduced as “the TSA Band, taking flight with me”), Leikeli47 and her working-class crew proceeded to transform Bob Boilen’s Tiny Desk into something akin to a pulpit or a mid-century parlor room. Portier sat hunched over the upright piano, while Justus West plucked guitar strings, Simba Scott tapped out bass lines and Timmy Manson Jr. kept everything in sync on drums.

They played five songs and apparently

traversed the entirety of black music, translating her hip-hop and afro-electro empowerment anthems to live instruments by jazzing up songs like “Attitude,” from her 2017 Wash & Set major-label debut, and laying down the vamps on “Girl Blunt” from her 2018 LP Acrylic. It wasn’t genre-bending as much as it was a musical remembering of the blues that brought her here — from the hoods of Brooklyn to down-south Virginia and everywhere else she’s called home.

“Attitude” has a very cool bass line and a nice jazzy sound from everyone.  I like her delivery although I don’t need the “bitch I got an attitude” line or the “let me hear you say Kelis is god so is Beyonce.”  That’s just weird.

“Droppin'” is slower and I like her delivery on this one.  “Ciaa” is very mellow–a short song about gangs guns and cocaine.

“Let’s Go Get Stoned (Portier’s Vibe)”  is sung by Portier–a bluesy song after which Leikeli47 asks if they want to get high with her.  Presumably through a “Girl Blunt.”   It’s catchy and I like it but the chorus is so repetitive: “This shit is a girl blunt I only smoke girl blunts.”  But the music is great.   She ends the show, like in the Family Hour with “Money.” It’s a bit more fun here, but again, the lyrics are so blah.

Nevertheless, I agree with the blurb:

In an era when women are no longer the anomaly but rap’s new standard bearers, Leikeli47 deserves all the praise for pushing the genre forward with both feet steeped firmly in tradition.

[READ: March 23, 2019] “The Indirect World”

I feel like back in college, Clarice Lispector was someone I needed to read.  I didn’t, but I couldn’t forget her name.  Now I’ve read a few things by her and I find that I don’t like her style at all.

This was translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz.

The story starts with a little introduction in which Mateus, on his final business trip, brought his wife to a rented a house on the island.  We never hear about him again (although this is from the novel, The Besieged City, so I’m sure he reappears).  She was still unhappy.

She decided to go for a walk where she ran into Doctor Lucas. (more…)

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Han Kang–“White Out” (Harper’s, February 2019)

Posted in Deborah Smith, Dogs, Excerpt, Han Kang, Harper's, Huh?, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Short Story, Snow, The Dog Dies, Translation on February 19, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD-I’m in Your Mind Fuzz (2014).

Even though this record came soon after Oddments, this has been considered the first major release by KGATLW (maybe that’s because it was the earliest recording that was still in print (until the reissues).  This album is a major step forward in their psychedelic garage rock sound.

The first four songs are more or less a continuous suite.  Not really, but all four songs contain the same breakneck drum pace and rumbling bass line and each one segues into the next.

“I’m in Your Mind” has a simple guitar riff, lots of wickedly distorted harmonica and a catchy vocal line.  It segues into “I’m Not in Your Mind” which is a three-minute jam based around a guitar solo.  The tone has changed slightly, but only slightly.  The solo features the main melody from “The Streets of Cairo or The Little Country Maid” (which we in the States think of as the Egyptian song or the snake charmer song because it was in every cartoon from the 1950s). The end of the song features a bass rumble which segues into the intro to the classic KGATLW song “Cellophane” (where the lyrics are nearly all nonsense singing and the word “cellophane”–catchy as anything).  The quartet returns to the opening song with the reprise called “I’m in Your Mind Fuzz.”   The same guitar melody and tempo resume with a similar-sounding chorus.

A click opens the next song, “Empty,” which halts the fast-paced bass and drums and grows much slower.  With a new rhythm and a more staccato delivery, this song maintains the fuzzy sound and distorted vocals and adds, I believe, a flute.  It’s followed by the wonderful “Hot Water.”  It’s an uptempo song with muted delivery in the vocals and guitars.   It’s also got the simple chanted chorus of “Hot Water” all surrounding this cool 70s sounding melody.

“Am I in Heaven” begins as a folkie acoustic song.  It’s pretty gentle for about 45 seconds until it turns into a screaming and thumping rocker with all kinds of wailing—guitars, vocals, harmonica.  Then at 3 minutes it returns briefly to that original folkie melody until, once again, the loud rocking just overtakes the whole thing with psychedelic soloing.

“Slow Jam 1” slows things down a lot. “I need to slow my mind down” is the lyrical opening.   It is slow and hazy for a few gentle minutes.  “Satan Speeds Up” sounds like it might be an old lost psychedelic/metal song–a cool vibrato guitar riff and flutes play this excellent opening.  The verses are gentle–falsetto singing as the band chills out around it.

“Her and I (Slow Jam 2)” returns to that acoustic mellow sound, this time with some extra fuzzy notes sprinkled around the song.  After about a minute and a half (of the 8 minute song), the tempo picks up and there’s a cool guitar solo which returns a couple of times by the end adding harmonica and wah wah guitar.

This is a very cool album that really shows what KGATLW is all about.  At least until their next release.

[READ: February 18, 2019] “White Out”

This issue of Harper’s had two stories and I didn’t really enjoy either one.

This first one was written in Korean and was translated by Deborah Smith.  What I didn’t like about it was that I wasn’t sure if these nine short pieces were sections of a big story or individual (somewhat) connected stories.  Either way the blocks of text were all quite short and not always complete.

Frost
This tells us that she was born on a day of frost but her father chose seol, snow, as one of the characters for his daughter’s name.  I found that pretty interesting and would have liked to know more about that. (more…)

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