SOUNDTRACK: DANKO JONES-Never Too Loud (2008).
Danko Jones is a hard and fast rock band, with a one track mind and a straightforward sound. They deal in excessive cliches (album titles include: Sleep is the Enemy, We Sweat Blood, Never Too Loud, etc) and play mostly short songs. And despite all that apparent negativity, I enjoy them beyond reason.
Their first full length was a compilation of their early EPs, and it was full of outrageously short songs about big dumb sex (a bunch of the tracks were under two minutes). Danko’s voice sounds a but like Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy, to give a frame of reference.
Never Too Loud, despite the name, actually changes their style a little bit. He throws in a ballad (!), and he’s got one song “Take Me Home” which reminds me an awful lot of Kid Rock. And songs like “King of Magazines” and “Forest for the Trees” similarly slow the pace down (Forest for the Trees is even 6 minutes long!). But despite all that, Danko still rocks hard.
And yes, I admit that lyrically the disc isn’t ground breaking (“Still in High School” tends to sum up a lot of the themes here), but I don’t care. Sometimes it’s fun to just rock out. And Danko rocks with the best of them.
[READ: October 14, 2009] City of Glass
Douglas Coupland is from Vancouver. And this book (and the revised edition) is like a love letter to the city (although he describes it as a personalized guide book).
When he first published this in 2000, Coupland had been experimenting with things other than novels, but this was the first book he released that was primarily photography (not his own, mind you). He mixes photos of Vancouver landmarks as well as stock photos to illustrate the varied and multicultural life of Vancouver.
He also includes alphabetically titled texts in which he writes about a paragraph or two or three about the topic. Most of these are personal insights into the city. It’s not a work of fiction or even a collection of essays. It’s more like love notes about this city. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 