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Archive for the ‘Fears’ Category

Arthur Bradford–“Wendy Mort & I” (Nerve.com, February 21, 2007)

Posted in Arthur Bradford, Buffalo Tom, Dinosaur Jr., Fears, Hüsker Dü, Humiliation, J. Mascis, nerve.com on August 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BUFFALO TOM-Buffalo Tom (1988).

After listening to the new Buffalo Tom song, I decided to go back and reappraise their back catalog.  This first album was produced by J. Mascis, and a lot of reviews talk about the album sounding very Dino Jr.  But I have to say that rather than Dino Jr, I hear Hüsker Dü.  There’s some big loud choruses and, to me, the vocals sound much more like any of the screamier Hüsker Dü songs than anything Dino did.

There are a couple of songs that have the catchy urgency of Hüsker Dü, but for the most part the disc feels like it’s all urgency, with little in the way of songcraft.  There are elements of something here but it feels underdeveloped, especially compared to their later releases (an unfair comparison, I suppose).

 It’s also a surprise to hear just how punky this is when as recent as their next album, they would be far less abrasive.  I don’t dislike the album, but it didn’t leave a very big impact on me.

[READ: July 18, 2011] “Wendy Mort & I”

Bradford has a second story published by Nerve.com.  This one, while again featuring a rollicking sex scene (more explicit than your average short story) ultimately also went in an unexpected direction.

The narrator is dating an actress named Wendy.  Wendy is not so much an actress as an “actress.”  The narrator first sees her in an experimental play in which she is naked for the entire second act.  He’s pretty psyched to have this naked woman right next to him after their second date.  In fact, sex is the bulk of the beginning of the story,  Their relationship is very physical.  In the beginning, he is expressly forbidden to go without a condom.  But later in the story, there’s an intense scene where they have sex without one.

Now the gun on the wall must go off by the end of the story, right?  And yet this one doesn’t (minor spoiler).  The story does not focus on anything that could go wrong without using a condom–in some ways its nice that the condomless sex is all about pleasure.  (Of course, this is for nerve.com, which is all about sexual pleasure). (more…)

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Téa Obreht–“High School Confidential” (New Yorker June 13 & 20 2011)

Posted in AV Club, Awkward, Books about writers, Essays, Fears, Humiliation, Kanye West, New Yorker, Parts & Labor, Set at School, Téa Obreht on August 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PARTS & LABOR-“Runaway” (2011).

Parts & Labor cover Kanye West’s “Runaway” at the AV Club. 

I didn’t know Parts & Labor when I played this, but I was really curious to see how any band of non-rappers would perform this awesome Kanye West track.  It’s a testament to how great the song is that Parts & Labor (who totally kick ass) can play around with it as much as they do (they wisely don’t rap) and retain the greatness of the song. 

Parts & Labor seem like a pretty standard punk-type outfit: guitars, bass, drums and keys (although some of their studio albums belie that simplicity).  But the keyboardist (who opens the song) is playing notes while manipulating effects pedals on top of the keyboard.  It’s a great introduction.  The bassist (with his amazing beard) sings in a couple of different registers that work out the angst of the song wonderfully. 

But for me the guy I can’t stop watching is the drummer. He opens the track with his snare drum on his lap.  While keeping the beat with one finger on a floor tom he is clearly playing the snares of his snare drum with a guitar pick.   When the song breaks half way through and he puts his snare back, he is a maniac of intensity and cacophony. It is amazing.  The second half of the song is a cathartic release for the noisy beginning. 

This is a wonderful cover.  And I’ll be checking out Parts & Labor on Spotify to see what I’ve been missing.  Watch it here.

[READ: July 20, 2011] “High School Confidential”

Continuing with the New Yorker’s Fiction Issue, we get this Starting Out essay from Téa Obreht.  Now, Obreht’s story was the least believable of the five for me.  As you can see by this photo, Obreht is adorable.  Now we all know people who blossomed from an ugly childhood or had a youthful gangly phase or grew into beauty or whatever.  But the introduction of her essay, when she describes herself in quite unflattering terms seems like it may be, if not over the top, then at least wishful thinking.

Téa

She claims she was awkward, tall, gangly with coke bottle glasses a huge gap in her teeth from one that never came in.  In reading it again I guess it’s not as dramatic as I though the first time, and corrective work could fix those things, but still.  It seemed a bit like that MTV show Awkward (second mention in a few days–it’s been a slow summer, TVwise), in which the main character is way too cute to be considered an outcast.

Too cute to be that awkward

But hey, maybe cute people have problems too. 

It’s when Obreht moves past that and talks about being made fun of for what she wanted to be that things get interesting.  

Obreht has always wanted to be a writer and when she let her classmates known that, they picked on her (oh are you going to write about that).  But she pressed on.  She was most devastated when the stories she gave to a boy in confidence were soon being read, aloud, by a girl who hated her.

Maybe cute girls are unpopular too. (more…)

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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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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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Kevin Fenton–Merit Badges (2011)

Posted in Claire Denis, Constellation Records, Death, Depression, Drinking, Drugs, Fears, Funny (ha ha), Kevin Fenton, Marriage Trouble, Minnesota, Ping-Pong, Set at School, Tindersticks, Violence, White Material on July 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TINDERSTICKS-Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009: White Material [CST077] (2009).

White Material is the most recent soundtrack that the Tindersticks created for Claire Denis.  It was recorded between their “reunion” album The Hungry Saw and their latest album Falling Down a Mountain.

This is a very moody soundtrack.  The guitars set a brisk but desperate-sounding pace.  There are feedback squalls that echo for even more tension.  The feedback could be any number of things as well: squeaky machines, industrial noise, or simply disconcerting sounds.

There is a repeated motif throughout the score that morphs and blends with the tone.  The overall feel of the soundtrack is unified but it never sounds like you’re listening to the same few notes repeated (which is actually what it is, the songs use a very limited palette).

For such a limited palette of music, they really manage to give a diverse picture of the movie.  The way “Andre’s Death” builds, using those same few notes and feedback is truly amazing.  The tension that has been building throughout the score really comes to a head in those 2 minutes.  Contrarily, the flute that plays over those same notes in “Children’s Theme 2” is a haunting exploration of the theme.

This soundtrack isn’t as industrial/weird as L’intrus, but it is probably more intense and spooky.  It’s amazing how evocative these guys are.

[READ: June 22, 2011] Merit Badges

Sarah brought this book home, but she didn’t read it.  It sounded pretty good (I mean it won the 2009 AWP Award for the Novel), so I decided to give it a go.

The book seemed strange to me in the way it was set up: it seemed to have a very specific structure but it didn’t always follow it exactly. So, there are four main protagonists who write chapters of the book.  But they don’t each get a turn, in fact one, Barbara doesn’t really have much to say until much later when her story becomes very compelling.  It also advanced over the years with no real explanation of pacing or even of when a new narrator has jumped ahead several years.

I assumed this was going to be a story of four people looking back on their high school years.  But indeed, it’s about four people looking back on their whole lives, as they grow together, drift apart, come back into each others lives and then disappear again.  In that way, it was also a bit hard to get my bearings.  It was also hard for me to keep all of the characters straight.  Because even though there are four narrators there are many many more kids introduced in the beginning of the story.

Each chapter opens by stating who the narrator is.  The first few narrators are Chimes Sanborn (Prologue), Quint (Woodwork), Slow Slocum (Cooking), Chimes (Drafting), Barb Carimona (Music), Quint (Mammals), Quint (Crime Prevention) etc.  So it’s not consistent.

But also, as you can see, all of the chapter titles are named after Merit badges (which I liked quite a bit).  The subtitle describes what you have to do to achieve the badge (and the chapter does indeed kind of work within that stricture).

So far so good, but we’re also introduced to ancillary characters who appear quite often: Dickie Burpee, Pooch Labrador, Smash Sarnia, and a psychopath named Tulep.  With all of the nicknames and rotating narrators, I admit to losing track of who was who, which I fear lessened the impact of some of the events.

Of course, that’s all structural.  And while I felt like I probably missed out on moments of impact, the overall storyline was not hard to follow.  And, indeed, complaints aside, the story was pretty intriguing.  It is set in the (fictional) small suburb of Minnisapa, Minnesota.  It feels very true to me (having lived in a small town, myself) as do the choices (bad and good) that the kids make. (more…)

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Zadie Smith Introduces The Burned Children of America (2003)

Posted in A.M. Homes, Aimee Bender, Amanda Davis, Arthur Bradford, Consumerism, Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace, Death, Decadence, Fears, George Saunders, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Safran Foer, Judy Budnitz, Julia Slavin, Ken Kalfus, Matthew Klam, Mogwai, Myla Goldberg, Oddities, Rick Moody, Romance, Sam Lipsyte, Sex, Shelley Jackson, Short Story, Stacey Richter, Technology, The Future, Threats, Zadie Smith on June 30, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MOGWAI: GovernmentCommissions: BBC Sessions 1996-2003 (2005).

It’s unlikely that Mogwai will ever release a greatest hits (well, someone probably will, but the band themselves don’t seem likely to do so).  As such, this compilation of BBC Recordings will certainly work well as one.

As I’ve mentioned many times, the BBC recordings are universally superb.  The quality of the recordings is unmatched.  And, typically the band takes the sessions very seriously.  The major different between these sessions and the official studio release is that the band is playing these songs live.  They are mixed well and sound great but they are live, so you can catch occasional subtle differences.

Mogwai, despite their seemingly improvised sound (all those noises and such) can recreate everything they do perfectly, and their live shows are tight and deliberate (except for the occasional moments where they really let loose).

The ten songs here span their career and are not played in chronological order.  This allows all of these wonderful songs to play off the tensions of each other.  And it shows that their later songs, which are less intense than their earlier ones, are still quite awesome and in a live setting don’t really lack for intensity after all.

The highlight of this disc is the scorching eighteen minute version of “Like Herod.”  The original is intense and amazing, and this live version allows them to play with the original in small ways, including allowing the quietness to really stretch out before they blow the speakers off the wall with the noise section of the track.

Even though I’m a fan of Mogwai, I don’t hear a radical difference between these versions and the originals.  Or should I say, it’s obvious which song they are playing.  There are some obvious subtleties and differences as befitting a live album, but unlike some live discs you don’t immediately notice that this version is “live.”

And that works well for both fans of the band (because as you listen and you hear the subtleties) and for newcomers–(because you’re not listening to weird, poorly recorded versions or versions that are for fans only).  And so, you get ten great Mogwai tracks.  Just enough to make you want to get some more.

[READ: June 11, 2011] The Burned Children of America

I found this book when I was looking for other publications by Zadie Smith.  This book kept cropping up in searches, but I could never really narrow down exactly what it was.  As best as I can tell, it is a British version of a collection of American authors that was originally published in Italy (!).  Editors Marco Cassini and Martina Testa work for minimum fax, an Italian independent publisher.  In 2001, they somehow managed to collect stories from these young, fresh American authors into an Italian anthology (I can’t tell if the stories were translated into Italian or not).

Then, Hamish Hamilton (publisher of Five Dials) decided to release a British version of the book.  They got Zadie Smith to write the introduction (and apparently appended a story by Jonathan Safran Foer (which was not in the original, but which is in the Italian re-publication).  This led to the new rather unwieldy title.  It was not published in America, (all of the stories have appeared in some form–magazine or anthology–in America), but it’s cool to have them all in one place.

The title must come from the David Foster Wallace story contained within: “Incarnations of Burned Children,” which is one of his most horrific stories, but it sets a kind of tone for the work that’s included within (something which Zadie addresses in her introduction): why are these young successful American writers so sad?  So be prepared, this is not a feel good anthology (although the stories are very good).
Oh, and if you care about this kind of thing, the male to female ratio is actually quite good (for an anthology like this): 11 men and 8 women.

ZADIE SMITH-Introduction
Zadie Smith was a fan of David Foster Wallace (she wrote a  lengthy review of the ten-year anniversary of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men which is republished in her book Changing My Mind), so she is an ideal choice to introduce this book.  Especially when she provides a quote from DFW’s interview in 1995 about how living in America in the late 90s has a kind of “lostness” to it.  With this in mind, she sets out the concerns of this collection of great stories: fear of death and advertising.

Zadie gives some wonderful insight into each of these stories. The introduction was designed to be read after the book, and I’m glad I waited because while she doesn’t exactly spoil anything, she provides a wonderful perspective on each piece and also offers some ideas about the stories that I hadn’t considered.  And it’s funny, too. (more…)

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Five Dials Number 9: The Fiction Issue (2009)

Posted in Advice, Alain de Botton, Alice Hoffman, Anna Kelly, B.S. Johnson, Bao Ninh, Books about writers, Chloe Aridjis, Craig Taylor, Daniel Kehlmann, David Shields, David Vann, Death, Essays, Fears, Five Dials, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Harper's, Helen Oyeyemi, James Kelman, Language, Letters, Marriage Trouble, Philip Langeskov, Philip Roth, Poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke, Shane Jones, Short Story, Simon Prosser, Summer, Teenage Fanclub, Translation, William S. Burroughs on June 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TEENAGE FANCLUB-Shadows (2010).

Back in the 90s, Teenage Fanclub released a few noisy, feedbacky records that were quintessential 90s alt rock.

Since then they have mellowed considerably, and this album is one of their most mellow to date. Usually for me this kind of mellowing is a sign that I’m done with a band; however, Teenage Fanclub’s songwriting gets better with every disc.  And these folky tracks are all fantastic.

What’s neat about the arrangement of the album is that each of the three members of the band writes four songs.  They are collated so that you cycle through each singer before repeating. You get maximum diversity–and it’s easy to tell which songwriter is your favorite.

The opening two songs, “Sometimes I Don’t Need to Believe in Anything” and “Baby Lee” are two wonderful upbeat pop confections.  They sound very different and yet both are infused with wonderful pop chops.

It seems that Blake is my favorite songwriter on this disc. He did “Baby Lee”, “Dark Clouds” (a pretty piano based number) and by far the prettiest song on the disc “When I Still Have Thee.”  It’s an amazingly catchy folk song that sounds timeless (and even has the great couplet: “The Rolling Stones wrote a song for me/It’s a minor song in a major key.”

That’s not to dismiss the other songwriters at all.  In fact, hearing their different takes on pop music is really pretty amazing.  It’s a shame that it takes them so long to put albums out (about 5 years these days).

[READ: June 10, 2011] Five Dials Number 9

Five Dials Number 8, The Paris Issue, was pretty big (45 pages), but it had a lot of pictures.  Five Dials Number 9 is also pretty big (41 pages) and it’s (almost) all text.  For this is the Fiction Issue, and there are a lot of short stories in here.

CRAIG TAYLOR-A Letter from the Editor: On ‘Summer Reading’ and Fiction Issues.
Since most of what I talk about in the introduction to these posts is covered in Taylor’s Letter from the Editor, I figured I’d switch formats and start talking about his letter right away.  In this letter, Taylor talks about the serious pitfalls of  ‘Summer Reading’: We pledge to read mammoth books over the summer, but really we never finish War and Peace over the summer, do we? (except those of us who finished Infinite Summer, am I right?).  And so, this Fiction Issue was released in December (finally, a date is given to a Five Dials!).  Taylor briefly talks about all of the authors who contributed (including a pat on the back to Five Dials for securing the rights to a Philip Roth contribution in its first year of publication).  He also talks about the essay from David Shields that is decidedly anti-fiction.   And the final note is that Taylor’s own father has a piece in this issue (nepotism is alive and well!) (more…)

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Steven Heighton–“The Dead Are More Visible” (The Walrus, December 2007)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Beck, Boredom, Canadian Content, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Death, Fears, Hockey, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, Short Story, Steven Heighton, Threats, Violence, Yuck! on June 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG-KEXP in studio May 11, 2010 (2010).

Charlotte Gainsbourg is a fascinating individual.  Between her acting and her singing, she’s had quite a life.  And even moreso since she had a near fatal accident.

That accident formed the nexus of her album IRM.  And this interview and performance is done in support of that disc.  IRM was made with Beck.  Beck’s not here, and the songs are more stripped down, but they sound really good in this format.

Gainsbourg sings the Beck-sung-on-IRM “Heaven Can Wait” and really makes it her own.  The other three songs here work very well in this more acoustic setting.  “Me and Jane Doe” is practically acoustic already and “Time of the Assassins” and “Trick Pony” are reworked very well.  And Charlotte is a charming interviewee as well.

It’s another excellent in-studio performance from KEXP.

[READ: March 31, 2011] “The Dead Are More Visible”

I read all of The Walrus stories when I received the magazines.  I wondered when I would completely recognize a story when re-reading them now.  Well, this was the first one that I remembered parts of vividly.  And why not–there’s a search for a missing eye on an ice hockey rink.  That’s hard to forget.  However, I didn’t remember the ending and in fact, my memory added many more details than actually occurred in the story.

The beginning of the story, which is very different from what I just described, was less memorable but perhaps more interesting.  The story opens with a woman reflecting about her graveyard shift job.  In this case the job is literally a graveyard shift, because the park she works in has a graveyard within it. However, her job is not really scary–she is there to make the ice for the upcoming skating season.  It takes several nights of very cold weather and she must go out in all her gear and fill up the rink, several tousand litres of water at a time.

While the ice settles, her time is her own–to listen to music and read. She gets a few hundred pages read a night (dream job!)  She prefers romance and horror novels.  The introduction of horror novels into the story foreshadows a bit about the scene ewith the eye later on, although for this is not a horror story. (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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