I had seen St Vincent on Austin City Limits, and her juxtaposition of waif-singer with noise mongering guitar player blew me away. So I was a little disappointed when this album opened up with this gentle, practically 1950s sounding vocal and string line in “The Strangers.” It takes two and a half minutes, but the noise eventually comes and it totally changes the texture of the song. Of course now, “make the black hole blacker” is a fun thing to sing along with (and the lyrics in general are pretty great). “Save Me from What I Want” is another quiet song with a catchy chorus. “The Neighbors” has a great melody with interesting strings over the top of it. “Actor Out of Work” brings in some stranger sounds to the album.
There’s something interesting about the songs on this album, like the way “Black Rainbow” has these sweet string sections but for the end half builds a crescendo of tension. I also love that a seemingly delicate song can be called “Laughing with a Mouth of Blood.” Perhaps the strangest song on the disc is “Marrow” which has a strange horn section and the chorus: “H. E. L. P. Help Me Help Me.” “The Bed,” “The Party” and “Just the Same But Brand New” continue in this vein–like a Disney princess song with a horrible threat underneath: “Don’t Mooooove, Don’t Screeeam.” But that sense of princess who are slightly askew really resonates on this record. It’s not as willfully dissonant as her first record, but lyrically it’s a knife covered in cotton candy, it’s still a gem.
[READ: March 20, 2012] McSweeney’s #39
One of the bad things about having a job with actual work is not being able to write complex posts about compilation books. It’s hard to have your book open while bosses walk by. So, its been a while since I read this and I’ll do my best to remember it all. Incidentally, if you’re keeping track I skipped 38, but I’ll get to it.
Issue #39 is a hardcover and a pretty one at that. It has a front cover photo (as well as many interior photos) taken by Tabitha Soren. Yes, forty-somethings, THAT Tabitha Soren, from MTV who has a new career as a photographer.
This issue continues with the recent return of the Letters column (as the magazine and front matter become more serious the return of the Letters adds an air of silliness). (more…)
Although this is not the first Kiss album I heard (that would be Love Gun) it was probably the one I listened to most (it had “Beth” on it after all). It is also full of some of the most over the top theatrical music of any heavy metal band at the time (is it any wonder that I also enjoy Meat Loaf and other over the top bands if I was raised on this?) Kiss has always been about theater, and how much more theatrical do you need? (How about a cartoon of the band standing on a pile of ruins?). But this album is such a classic, it’s hard to even think critically of it
“Detroit Rock City” is, well, it’s “Detroit Rock City.” An amazing, iconic (albeit simple) guitar solo, great effects in the beginning (with Paul (I always assumed) singing along to other Kiss hits on the radio) and an awesome crash at the end. Fill it out with an amazing riff and great work from the whole band. What more need be said? How about the way it leads perfectly into “King of the Night Time World.” This song is overlooked despite its greatness. It opens so loud and full then the verses get awesomely tinny until the galloping chorus kicks back in (Petter Criss plays drum rolls mid-song like no one else). It also has great riffs and a memorable solo. Oh and then a little song called “God of Thunder.” Awesome bombast, creepy kids’ voices (I remember some kind of rumors about who the kids were and how they were held captive by the band or something). It’s a wonderfully memorable song.
“Great Expectations” slows things down but adds the bombast. I’ve always enjoyed this egocentric song, even as a kid singing along in a mirror. Although the extra musical notes (keyboards and such) are kind of wimpy. But it’s followed by the electrifying “Flaming Youth,” a hard-edged guitar song that is pretty simple, but pretty potent. Again, the keyboard bits undermine the heaviness, but the repeated “higher and higher and higher” is pretty bad ass.
“Sweet Pain” is a great dark Gene-sung song (evidently about S&M, although I never knew that quite so specifically–I never understood the first two lines until I looked them up just now: “My leathers fit tight around me/My whip is always beside me”). “Shout It Out Loud” is one of the great Kiss anthems. I actually prefer it to “Rock and Roll All Nite” although that could be just because of the over exposure of “RaRAN.” Of course, “Beth” is next and it is impossible for any Kiss fan to say anything about “Beth”. This was the first song I ever memorized the lyrics to, and I sang it to my no doubt confused grandmother when I was 9 years old–my first and only live performance until college.
I always liked “Do You Love Me” (I think these Kiss fantasy songs were pretty big for me). I was always confused by the tinny voice in the final verse of the song. It was very strange to my young mind, but it really stands out in the song–as does Paul’s ending rant. The overall sentiment of the song is kind of funny coming from the guys who would soon be singing “Love Em Leave Em” but it is nice that they feel insecure once in a while too.
My LP of this album (or maybe it was an 8 track?) did not have the “bonus” track, which is just 90 seconds of a crazily processed version of “Great Expectations” with some lifted vocals of Paul in concert. Apparently even though it is untitled, it is called “Rock and Roll Party” by most fans. It appears to be a joke about all of the backwards masking that was supposedly on Kiss records. Huh.
This is still one of my favorite albums of all time.
[READ: September 30, 2011] “The Russian professor”
Nabokov did not secure the teaching position at Wellesley where he had been creative writing professor the year before (Lolita would not come out for a nother 13 years, so he was working via his Russian book reputation). So instead, he went on a several-month speaking tour of Unites States colleges, many of them in the South. These (excerpts from) letters to his wife detail some of the indignities that he suffered and reiterate his love for her and his son.
On his way to Coker University in South Carolina, his train car was double booked, his taxi didn’t show up and he wound up going to the wrong hotel. When he finally was picked up: “Feeling that I wouldn’t have time to shave before the lecture…I went in search of a barber” [what kind of time management is that??]. Nabokov writes of the shave:
He shaved me horribly, leaving my Adam’s apple all bristly, and since in the next chair a wildly screaming five-year-old child was grappling with the barber who was trying to touch up the back of his head with the clippers, the old man shaving me was nervous, hushed the child, and finally cut me slightly under the nose.
SOUNDTRACK: THE KOPECKY FAMILY BAND-Tiny Desk Concert #131 (June 6, 2011).
I’d never heard of The Kopecky Family Band, but the write-up about them was pretty interesting, so I decided to give the Tiny Desk concert a listen. The band (all 7 of them) play a great collective of music: two guitars (acoustic & electic) bass, cello, violin, drums and keyboard. They play a sort of traditional folk with a very full sound.
Indeed, they remind me an awful lot of The Head and the Heart (the singer’s voice in particular), although they are from different edges of the continent and have been playing music about as long as each other (indeed, The Kopecky Family Band released an EP in 2008 whereas Head and the Heart formed in 2009).
And the Kopecky website offers lots of free music (which is very cool).
“Howlin’ at the Moon” is a full acoustic sounding track. “Birds” has a simply gorgeous whistle/xylophone melody that is as beautiful as it is catchy. “Disaster” is a tender ballad with wonderful harmonies. And “Red Devil” is a somewhat more rocking song, which really helps to demonstrate the bands’ diversity.
And the band is charming. Keyboardist/singer Kelsey admits to having left a trinket of some kind of the office bookshelves (which are littered with things). It’s a wonderful set, and because of it, I downloaded the band’s first EP from their site.
[READ: June 5, 2011] Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love
Shaffer was signing books at BEA this year. My coworker told me that he was very funny and that he signed her book in an amusing way. He happened to be signing at the table next to the line I was on. Sadly, he finished before I was able to get to him. But I was pretty close to the beginning of the line, so I asked if I could grab a copy of his book, which I did (although no autograph for me).
This is a silly book of nonfiction. It looks at thirty-seven philosopher or thinkers and their utter failure at love. Each man (and occasional woman) has had some distinguishing characteristic that made them pretty lousy in the emotional range.
The title of the book is funny and is meant to be kind of surprising: these smart folks were terrible at love. Of course, spending a minute or two thinking about who these people were and what they did, it’s not surprising that they were lousy at love. These were intellectuals, people who spend most of their time in their own mind. Of course they couldn’t have a serious relationship.
Nevertheless, these stories are all more or less amusing (Louis Althusser accidentally strangled his wife to death(!) which isn’t amusing per se, but the story of it is, kind of). Shaffer does a great job at keeping each entry brief but really retaining the salient points of the thinker’s philosophy and a cogent example of his or her lousiness at love. He also throws in some amusingly snarky comments of his own as he goes along.
I was delighted that the book order was done alphabetically rather than chronologically. A chronological list would have been a little too samey in terms of each person’s context. The alphabetical list allows for jumping around from say Plato to Ayn Rand which keeps the stories interesting and fresh.
At the end of each person’s piece, there’s an “In His Own Words” which offers a quote that details his or her written philosophy regarding love.
Dare I say that this is an ideal bathroom book? It certainly is. And it makes you feel a little better about yourself (if you haven’t for instance, adopted your mistress as your daughter (Sartre)).
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…)
SOUNDTRACK: PJ HARVEY-Live at the Warfield Theater, San Francisco, April 14, 2011 (2011).
NPR was given permission to share this PJ Harvey concert. However, they were only allowed to share about half of it. The show is fairly short to begin with (about 75 minutes) but the downloadable portion is barely 40 minutes. It turns out that NPR was given the rights to all of the songs from the new album, Let England Shake.
Now, I have no idea how things like this work, why they are only given access to these songs as opposed to the other ones, or why an artist (or management) would not let her fans hear the ten or so other songs she played that night. Legal restrictions are weird and usually stupid. But as I’ve mentioned before, you shouldn’t complain about free stuff.
So, what we get here is a spliced together concert (it sounds seamless, although they have removed all of the banter (if there was any)). The album is played in its entirety (although we were not given “Written on the Forehead” which happens to be the song they are playing the most on the radio here), but it’s not played in order. It was also interspersed with older songs “The Devil” and “Silence” from White Chalk, “The Sky Lit Up” and Angeline” from Is This Desire, “Pocket Knife” from Uh Huh Her, “Down by the Water” and “C’mon Billy” from To Bring Her My Love, (I’d like to hear how she handles the older songs, now that’s she’s singing primarily in the higher register). And, “Big Exit” from Stories from the City.
It’s pretty clear that Harvey is no longer the young woman who made those first couple albums. And she sounds strong and confident here. It’s a great set; the autoharp never sounded better.
[READ: April 20, 2011] Five Dials Number 5
I have been enjoying all of the Five Dials, but this issue is easily my favorite so far. The “theme” of this issue is translation. Translators are the unheralded workers in literature, and while I have been trying to give them credit in my posts, I don’t always pay them enough attention (except when a translation is awkward or clunky).
But in addition to the theme (and the really cool interviews with some translators, I thought the fiction was outstanding and I loved Alain de Botton’s Advice column. The whole issue was great. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: KANYE WEST-My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010).
Before buying this album I really only knew of Kanye West as a loudmouthed guy who tweeted a lot and told off George Bush. But then everyone was raving about this album (Pitchfork gave it a 10 out of 10!). So I decided to check it out. And I can’t get over how great an album it is.
Now I’m going to start this review by mentioning a few things I dislike about rap as a genre. 1) I dislike all of the “guests” that appear on a record–I bought the album because for you, not your friends. 2) I dislike excessive use of “unh” and “yeah” at the beginning of a track; when you have nothing to say–let the backing music flow, save your voice for actual words. 3) Rap is still terribly misogynist and vulgar–I’ve nothing against vulgarity per se (I do have something against misogyny) but excessive use is lazy, and it stands out much more in a rap song since you’re saying the words not singing them.
The Kanye West album is guilty of all three of these things, and yet I still think it’s fantastic. The first reason is because it goes beyond a lot of rap by introducing real musical content into the songs. This is not an “all rap is just a beatbox” dismissal of rap, it’s an observation that rap tends to be more about the lyrics and the musical accompaniment can get kind of lazy. West’s songs have (beautiful) choruses, strings, and samples that augment the rest of the song, as opposed to samples that ARE the song. And Kanye West’s voice is great. His delivery is weird and twisted, a little cocky but more funny, with a twisted attitude that is really cool–and to my rather limited palate of rappers, it’s original.
The opening of the disc “Dark Fantasy” has a chorus singing “Can we get much higher” which is catchy and cool (and is used in the promo for The Hangover 2). The switch from this opening to the rapping works well (aside from the FOUR “yea”s). Although I don’t love the yeahs, I love his delivery, and that he occasionally ends lines with these weird “hunh” sounds, that are wonderfully emphatic.
The guests start showing up on track 2, but even the guests can’t detract from the excellent guitars of the song (and the cool solo). And I’ll say about the guests that I like some of them, but for the most part I’d rather hear Kanye.
“Power” samples King Crimson’s, “21st Century Schizoid Man”; anyone who samples King Crimson is alright with me. But to use it so perfectly, to make it part of your song is real genius. It works musically as well as within the overall concept of the album.
“All of the Lights” (with the pretty piano intro) features scads of guests including John Legend, The-Dream, Elly Jackson, Alicia Keys, Fergie, Kid Cudi, Elton John (!), and Rihanna. I can hear some of these people but not Elton John (why would he agree to be on a track where you can’t even hear him?). It is a beautiful pop track nevertheless.
“Monster” is a monster of tracks with yet more guests (I like that some of these guests break with the typical guest, like Bon Iver (!)). And I really like Nicki Minaj’s verse. [I’m not familiar with her work at all (in fact I keep wanting to say Minja instead of Minaj) but her verse with the wonderfully crazy vocal styling she displays is weird and cool and very powerful–I would like to check out her solo album, but the samples I heard weren’t that interesting]. It also has a great repeated chorus of being a “motherfucking monster.”
It’s followed by the even more catchy “So Appalled” (with FIVE guest rappers–some of whom I’ve never heard of but who do a good job. I love Cyhi da Prince’s lyrics: “I am so outrageous, I wear my pride on my sleeve like a bracelet, if God had an iPod, I’d be on his playlist” or “So call my lady Rosa Parks/I am nothing like them niggas baby those are marks/I met this girl on Valentine’s Day/fucked her in May/she found out about April so she chose to March” or this line, “y’all just some major haters and some math minors.”
“Devil in a New Dress” opens with a bunch of “unhs” (which I dislike) but this is nice ballad in the midst of all of the noise (and it has some clever lyrics). It morphs right into “Runaway” one of the more audacious singles I can think of. The piano melody is so simple (a single note to start) and the lyrics show Kanye as a loser in relationships. It’s a surprisingly thoughtful song for a song with a chorus that goes: “Lets have a toast for the douchebags, let’s have a toast for the asshole; a toast for the scumbags every one of them that I know. You been putting up with my shit for way too long…runaway fast as you can.” It gets even more audacious when you realize the last 4 minutes of the song are a solo with distorted voice. And the video…the video is 35 minutes long!
The sentiment of that song is erased by the next one, “Hell of a Life”. It opens with a great distorted guitar riff and lyrics about sex with a porn star. “Blame Game” is a surprisingly honest song about being nasty to your girlfriend (“I’d rather argue with you than be with someone else”). It features a sample of Aphex Twin’s (!) “Avril 14th”. And it’s quite a sad but lovely track. It ends with a very long skit by Chris Rock. I like Chris Rock, but this dialogue is kind of creepy because the woman who Rock is talking to (about the great sex she gave him) seems to be a robotic sample–why not have an actual woman talk to him?
The final track, “Lost in the World” has a lengthy intro by an auto-tuned Bon Iver. It’s one of my favorite tracks on the disc, especially the end, where the processed vocals get even weirder but accent the beat wonderfully. This track morphs into what is the actual final track, “Who Will Survive in America” which is basically a long recitation from Gil-Scot Heron. It works great as an album closer.
So, despite several things I don’t like about the disc, overall, it’s really an amazing release. And I can overlook the few things I dislike because the rest is so solid. I can’t decide if it’s worth looking for his earlier releases. How can they live up to this one?
[READ: May 6, 2011] McSweeney’s #37
This is the first McSweeney’s book where I’ve had to complain about the binding. The glue peeled off pretty quickly from the center cover. Fortunately, the back cover held up well. I’m guessing it’s because there’s an extra book tucked into the front cover which prevents the book from closing nicely when it’s removed.
But aside from that, the design of the cover is very cool. It is meant to look like a book (duh), but actually like a 3-D book, so the bottom right and top left corners are cut on diagonals (this makes for a very disconcerting-looking book inside–with triangles cut across the top). The artwork inside is also cool. In keeping with this appearance, each two page spread looks like a book with a spine drawing in the gutter of the pages). And the bottom of each page has lines making it look like the bottom of a book. (The illustrated margins are by SOPHIA CARA FRYDMAN and HENRY JAMES and there are interior paintings by JONATHAN RUNCIO).
The front matter is wonderful. Although it gives the usual publishing information, the bulk of this small print section is devoted to counteracting all the claims that the book is dead. It offers plenty of statistics to show that not only are the public reading, they are reading more than ever. The introduction also goes a long way towards arguing against the idea that people are reading less now than in the past. When was this “golden age” of readers? There’s also the wonderfully encouraging news that 98% of American are considered literate.
SOUNDTRACK: PETER BJORN AND JOHN-SXSW May 26, 2009 (2009).
This brief set at SXSW (available from NPR & KEXP) showcases the band’s (then) new record Living Thing. The album was just about to be released, so these are all previews of the album (“New music is the best music”). The album itself is very sparse and these live songs are equally sparse, but are slightly different in construction (some songs have different instrumentation live than on record).
The crowd is very responsive, and the band is really funny. During “Just the Past” there’s a section where the song sounds like it ends, but it is just a pause, and the band tsk tsks the audience for applauding too early. There’s also a joke about John being Joaquin Phoenix and taking up a career in rap.
It’s a wonderfully lively set, even if it is a bit short (the gripe with almost every SXSW download). It’s a good introduction to the album and a great introduction to a band who has been around for ten years and just started making inroads into American consciousness a few years ago.
[READ: April 16, 2011] Five Dials #1
Five Dials is an online magazine. It is free to subscribe (and to download). All previous issues are available on the site in PDF format. I learned about it because they printed the eulogies for David Foster Wallace in Issue 10. But the magazine looked interesting in itself, so I decided to go back and read the whole run (the most recent issue is #18).
The only real complaint I have with the magazine is that they don’t put a publication date anywhere on it. Which is a shame if you’re anal retentive like me. According to Wikipedia, the inaugural issue came out in June of 2008. It’s a monthly (ish) publication and, although I originally thought it would be a literary magazine, it proves to be very much of a magazine-magazine. And a good one at that.
There’s a letter from the editor, there’s Current-ish Events, there’s essays, reviews and even fiction. There’s also a “classic” letter from a “classic” author. The magazine also has some very cool black and white art in it. The style is very crisp and one that I find quite agreeable. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: ST. VINCENT-Actor (2009).
I had seen St Vincent on Austin City Limits, and her juxtaposition of waif-singer with noise mongering guitar player blew me away. So I was a little disappointed when this album opened up with this gentle, practically 1950s sounding vocal and string line in “The Strangers.” It takes two and a half minutes, but the noise eventually comes and it totally changes the texture of the song. Of course now, “make the black hole blacker” is a fun thing to sing along with (and the lyrics in general are pretty great). “Save Me from What I Want” is another quiet song with a catchy chorus. “The Neighbors” has a great melody with interesting strings over the top of it. “Actor Out of Work” brings in some stranger sounds to the album.
I Just Read About That... 