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Archive for the ‘New Yorker’ Category

Sarah Shun-Lein Bynum–“Yurt” (New Yorker, July 21, 2008)

Posted in Funny (strange), King's X, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Pregnancy, Sarah Shun-lein Bynum, Set at School on September 22, 2008| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X: Dogman (1994).

Dogman follows up King’s X with, to my mind, a much more satisfying collection.  It starts of with the fantastic “Dogman,” a great chance for Doug to show off his vocal range.  “Shoes” has some great gospelish harmonies that lead to a wonderfully chunky riff.  And “Pretend” sounds about as close to early King’s X as this newish King’s X gets: soaring harmonies and a great guitar line.  “Black the Sky” brings back some of those dissonant chords that Ty does so well and it all wraps up in a gorgeous, heavy chorus.  And a song like “Sunshine Rain” has the effect of sounding like the older King’s X harmonies with a difference: it’s more of a minor key harmony.  It’s really beautiful.

The rest of the album is a diverse selection of heavy, heavy rockers (“Complain” and “Human Behavior” which is just heavy and brutal and yet still catchy) and complex, more mellow tunes “Flies and Blue Skies” and “Cigarettes”).  The seriously heavy “Go to Hell” is possibly the most psycho (as opposed to psychedelic)  thing the band has done, but it only lasts for 51 seconds.

This is a fantastic album, and it may be why I like King’s X a little bit less.

[READ: September 8, 2008] “Yurt”

Every time I see this author’s name I think to myself, her name gets harder to say as you go along.  That’s not really relevant but it makes me smile.

Anyhow, this story intrigued me because it was about middle school teachers. (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–“Clara” (New Yorker, August 4, 2008)

Posted in Cancer as plot device, Chris Andrews, King's X, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Roberto Bolaño, Translation on September 22, 2008|

SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X-King’s X (1992).

I was rather disappointed by this album when it came out.  After the glories of Faith Hope Love, this was a return to some pretty straight ahead metal.  And, boy is it heavy–well, the first song is anyway, and it does rather set the tone.  Nevertheless, the rest of the songs have subtleties that I have grown to appreciate.

“Black Flag” was the single from the album.  There has always been something about it that I don’t quite like.  I can’t put my finger on it.  However, the should-have-been single “Lost in Germany” returns stylistically to the sounds of Out of the Silent Planet, and contains a great sing-along chorus and harmonies.  In fact, the bulk of the middle of the disc keeps up those mildly progressive traits.

Overall, however, the disc is quite a bit darker than Faith Hope Love.  It comes as a shock after the previous record, but then King’s X are a much heavier band than I remember.

[READ: September 6, 2008] “Clara”

This is the first story I’ve read by Bolaño (although I have been planning to tread The Savage Detectives).

I know that this story was translated from Spanish, and I can’t help but wonder if I would have guessed it was translated while I was reading it.  There was something just slightly off abut the use of language…not that the translator did a bad job, just something that made me think the author was not writing in the same language that I use. (more…)

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Joshua Ferris–“The Dinner Party” (New Yorker, August 11 & 18, 2008)

Posted in Edward Albee, Eyes Wide Shut, Funny (ha ha), Joshua Ferris, King's X, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Pregnancy, Religion, Short Story on September 13, 2008| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: KINGS’S X: Faith Hope Love (1990).

When Faith Hope Love came out, I was once again blown away by King’s X.  This album actually diverts quite a bit from the heaviness of the previous two albums.  This is their most prog rock sounding release, introducing all kinds of new instrumentation, including Doug’s by now standard 12 string bass guitar (I got to try one of these at Sam Ash a few years back and it sounds amazing).

Overall this album plays with the softer side of King’s X (although this is contrasted by “Moanjam” a six- minute, guitar-wailing freakout, and the great shouting sing along “We Are Finding Who We Are” showing that the band hasn’t lost their hard edge even if they ware willing to play with different textures).  But the diversity of sounds on the record is what really impresses.  You get a song like “The Fine Art of Friendship” which has so many layers of things going on, it’s hard to absorb on the first listen.

I’ve been reading some different reviews of this album, and it’s amazing how people single out songs as being particularly religious.  “Six Broken Soldiers” is mentioned as being Christian.  Now here’s the lyrics, I personally don’t even know what they mean, much less whether they are Christian

i don’t care if you’re sick
what can i possibly do with an American library
and a contract on you
I’ve got six broken soldiers in the trunk of my car
two of them speak; four go to bars
rods in the closet a six shooter in hand
a caged up gorilla and three local bands
fluently the parrot speaks
six languages not known to men
a sixpence and a quarter
as the audience he scan.

But aside from that, the album isn’t preachy about its beliefs, and frankly, it’s easy enough to forget what the songs are about, since the melodies are so infectious.  And, I didn’t even mention one of the greatest alt-rock singles of the 1990s: “It’s Love.”  It’s an amazingly catchy and infectiously happy song.  The harmonies are just stellar.

This is the last King’s X album to dabble in these prog-stylings.  The next bunch are really heavy affairs, quite a departure from this one.

[READ: September 07, 2008] “The Dinner Party”

I enjoyed this story very much.  It felt like a contemporary update of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with a twist. (more…)

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Alice Munro–“Face” (New Yorker, September 8, 2008)

Posted in Alice Munro, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Canadian Content, King's X, New Yorker, Short Story on September 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X-Gretchen Goes to Nebraska (1989).

I loved Out of the Silent Planet and never thought there’d be anything better.  But then just a year later, King’s X put out Gretchen Goes to Nebraska.  It ranks up there with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in terms of weird titles the belie how wonderful the contents really are.  I still have no idea what the title actually means, but that’s okay.  I put on the disc, and relish the music.

The opening is as otherworldly as the cover.  It starts with a sitar chord that plays long and slowly fades…into a great high pitched bass line.  And, then comes the dissonance once again.  The dissonance isn’t quite as harsh this time around, but it plays off the other instruments even more.  And just as the dissonance ends, you get the harmonies.  All of the elements of King’s X are back, and even better!

The next song, “Over My Head” is just an amazing bit of music.  It incorporates everything: gospel sing- alongs, great guitar riffs, he even mentions his grandma!  Fabulous.  “Summerland” may even top “Goldilox” in terms of fantastic ballads.  The harmonies on it are simply through the roof.

I’m going through the song list and there’s not a bad song to be found.  There’s still overtones of Christian rock in evidence, but the message becomes even more about spirituality than simple Christianity as on “Mission”: “What’s the mission of the preacher man, some are true, some do lie.”  There’s also the great “Pleaides” a song not sung by Doug Pinnick, which allows Ty to let his voice shine through.  The disc ends with “The Burning Down” a song that encapsulates the mellower side of King’s X, including an extended instrumental denouement which plays more with fun instrumentation (and shouts of Ow Sigh Planet).

Brilliant.

[READ: September 7, 2008] “Face”

I’ve talked about Alice Munro a few times lately, so I’ll skip any introduction and get to the heart of the matter.  This story concerns a young man born with an enormous birthmark on his face: the entire side of his face is covered with the  purplish mark.  His father is utterly repulsed by him, and as far as the narrator can recall, only looked him in the eye once when he was born, and that was it.  His mother tried to protect him by home schooling him until he was old enough to go to college.  By the time he went to school, he felt he was old enough to withstand any of the abuses that would be hurled at him.  Although, frankly, the disdain of his father was worse than anything the kids could dole out. (more…)

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David Owen–“Call Me Loyd” (New Yorker, February 11 & 18 2008)

Posted in David Owen, Memoirs, New Yorker, Set at School, The Fratellis, TiVo on August 27, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE FRATELLIS-Here We Stand (2008).

Because I TiVo, and since I don’t have an iPod, I never heard the Fratelli’s smash hit when it was a smash hit.  However, when I saw them on the Brit Awards, I was impressed enough to check them out.  And I really liked the debut a lot.  Costello Music was brash and snotty and a whole lot of fun.

The follow up, Here We Stand, shows the Fratellis maturing somewhat.  And by maturing that means mostly, slowing down a little and, unfortunately, making their songs a little bit longer.  Now, as anyone who has heard “Flathead” knows, the Fratellils write a great pop song.  Short and to the point.  The songs are simple, concise and very good.  However, on the more mature version, the songs aren’t any more complex, but they are a little longer.  And that’s not really a good thing. Longer songs are good when they have different parts, but just repeating the same parts MORE doesn’t make the song any more dynamic.

Having said that, the album overall is pretty good.  The songs are solid, if a little less catchy than Costello.  When I listened to it as background music I enjoyed it very much, for multiple listens.  (It was only under closer scrutiny that i didn’t like the longer song format).

Unlike most albums, I found that the last few songs were much stringer than the rest.  The first half simply doesn’t resonate.  It’s not bad to listen to, and can be quite enjoyable, it’s just doesn’t stick.  Starting with “Mistress Mabel” (the 6th song!) the album perks up a bit and the songs become more fun.  “Acid Jazz Singer” and “Lupe Brown” are the two real highlights of the album for me.  On these songs their raunchy/ silly/devilmaycare attitude really comes out.  It’s a shame it was hidden for much of the rest of the disc.

I hate to be part of the bandwagon that dislikes 2nd albums by bands.  It must be hard to know if you should repeat yourself or branch out, but I think a bit more repeating and a bit less branching would have served them well.

[READ: July 10, 2008] “Call Me Lloyd”

I don’t write about every article that I read in magazines, because honestly, that’d be ridiculous. However, this piece, a memoir, read enough like a story that it would be fun to include here. (more…)

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Adam Gopnik–“The Real Work” (New Yorker, March 17, 2008)

Posted in Adam Gopnik, Alex Stone, Arrested Development, Bullshit!, Essays, Harper's, Illusion, Led Zeppelin, Magic, Magicians, Matt Pinfield, New Yorker, Paul Quarrington, Penn & Teller, Pink Floyd, Plasmatics, Radio, Set in New Jersey!, Smarty Pants, Supernatural, WRXP 101.9 FM--New York on August 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: WRXP, 101.9 FM, New York City (45 days later).

The past two weeks I have been listening to this station more because I have been doing work in the garage (building a chicken coop).  Without going into my neurotic music listening, I’ll just say that I listen to the radio rather than CDs when I do noisy work.  And so, WRXP.

I haven’t listened that much since my last post, but the most dramatic difference to me is that they seem to have real commercials now.  Wal-Mart seemed to be advertised a lot, and there were one or two other name brand items (with effective ads obviously).  They still have all of those weird ads for services rather than products (in fact if you need full term life insurance, just listen in for 20 minutes and you’ll hear that one).  But I guess they must be doing well if the real companies are showing up.

They still play way too many commercials.  But heck, that’s commercial radio for you.

They also seem to rely a lot on a few bands that surprise me: Dave Matthews in particular.  I’m not a big fan of his, so I’m surprised to hear him so much; however, overall I think their selection is quite good.  They seem to be off Pink Floyd and on to Zeppelin now, which, frankly would be a neat idea for this station: pick a classic rock artist that you will overplay for a week, and then move on.   What a cool thing: you could do all kinds of back catalog stuff, and less popular songs and then, just as people got sick of them, switch to someone else, and repeat.  Genius!

Anyhow, the other thing I wanted to mention is that the only person with any credibility to ever be on MTV, Matt Pinfield, is a morning DJ on the station.  He and his co-jock do a bit too much DJ banter for my liking, but mostly he’s just a dude who loves music and will tell you more or less fascinating stories about whoever he’s going to play, and then play good stuff.  I heard a fun interview with Supergrass the other morning, which was good.  Pinfield also knows his music enough to ask good questions and still be fun.

Hilariously, he also committed the hilarious gaffe that I used to commit in high school: pronouncing the Police album: “Outlandos DE Amoor” rather than the more accurate Outlandos Damoor (surely he must know that by NOW).  (Like pronouncing the Plasmatics album COOP DE AY-TAT, rather then Coo DAY TAH (I’m guilty of that too).  And, I found out that he grew up in East Brunswick, NJ, merely a few miles from where I now work.  So, Matt, if you ever used the North Brunswick Library, well, you should come back and see how nice we look now.

[READ: August 13, 2008] “The Real Work”

This piece was recommended by two people who commented on my post about Alex Stone in Harper‘s Magazine. They both said that this was a far better, far more appreciative article about magic.  And they were right.  I won’t really compare it to Stone’s except to say that Stone’s piece (whatever his credibility may be) was designed as a suspenseful tale following the events and the winner of “The Magic Olympics.” He also gave away some secrets to some of the tricks he did and saw there.

Gopnik’s piece is more of a loving appreciation for magicians and their work. (more…)

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Julie Hecht–Do the Windows Open? (1998)

Posted in Consumerism, Frank Zappa, Funny (ha ha), John Zorn, Julie Hecht, Neurotics, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Ornette Coleman, Short Story, The Mars Volta, Unlikable main character, Unreliable narrator on August 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MARS VOLTA-The Bedlam in Goliath (2008).

I’ve liked Mars Volta more in theory than in actuality for their first few albums. I enjoyed them, but they didn’t make me want to listen all the time. I had heard good things about this new one, so I gave it a shot and WOW. The Bedlam in Goliath is off the charts in its craziness and its masterfulness.

Bedlam has most of the same components of a Mars Volta disc: chaos, noise, fantastic instrumentation, bizarre lyrics, jazz-like elements and metal, sweet metal. But for some reason, Bedlam seems to cohere into a masterful project. I haven’t listened to the first two discs in a while (but I’m sure going to check them out again), and I never got the third one, so I can’t really compare them. This one just seems to have something special to it.

The overall sound makes me think of someone tuning in a radio. Some parts are (deliberately) fuzzy, some are crystal clear. As the sound of one segment fades out a new, entirely different section blares in. Anyone who channel surfs can appreciate the sound of this.

All of the literature about this record talks about their use of a Ouija board during their tour and while recording. They bought it in Jerusalem and they say it had a horrible impact on the recording process. (Check out this NPR story…yeah, that’s right, I said NPR.) And, in many respects, rather than a radio, you could think of the album as the voices and sounds from the Ouija board coming through. Some are crystal clear and other are mechanized and ghostly. Spooky, eh?

But what of the music? It is fast, fast, fast. Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s voice is a powerhouse of high-pitched, operatic notes. And the music keeps pace. And yet, despite the speed the album isn’t thrash metal or speed metal necessarily. It doesn’t all have that heaviness, it just has a lot of speed. It lets up once in a while, but for the most part in every song something is going fast: drums, bass, voice, something.

One of the perplexing things about the record is how each song seems to have multiple parts that are unrelated to each other…some songs even have longer breaks within the track than between them. For instance, tracks one and two, the nearly 6 minute “Abernikula” and the over 8 minute “Metatron” blend seamlessly into one long track. However, midway through “Metatron” the song stops for a good second or two and then begins with a brand new, wonderfully catchy riff, which runs through the rest of the song. Truly masterful, and yet impossible to know what track you’re on, half the time.

The album is about an hour long, and it’s such a roller coaster of rocking guitars and high speed chases.  And yet it doesn’t wear out it’s welcome, because the catchy bits are so incredibly catchy. I was amused to see that there is a “single” on the record called “Wax Simulacra.”  It’s the shortest song, possibly that MV has ever done at under 3 minutes, which makes it an ideal single.  Except that the last twenty or thirty seconds are taken up with a mind blowing saxophone solo that could be lifted from Ornette Coleman or John Zorn (and this is a single?).  In fact, the horns come into play a lot on the record.  There’s one or two motifs that sound like they could be taken from a Zappa piece (the Zappa song “Sofa” kept popping into my head during this record. And you can’t ask more from a record than to make you enjoy it while it makes you think of other great music too.

[READ: July 20, 2008] Do the Windows Open?

I read an interview with Julie Hecht in The Believer (some of which is available here). And boy did she come across as an unlikable person. (more…)

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Simon Rich–“Animal Tales” (New Yorker, June 30, 2008)

Posted in Funny (ha ha), LCD Soundsystem, New Yorker, Simon Rich, Smarty Pants on July 17, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LCD SOUNDSYSTEM-Sound of Silver (2007).

When this album came out it was hyped as a great dance record. I ordered it on Amazon, but there was some kind of problem (I ordered the import by mistake) and it wasn’t going to be shipped for months. So, I ordered their first album instead (and reviewed it way back when). I finally got this one, and even though I liked quite a few of the songs, I’m not sure that I’d need another LCD record. But we’ll see.

As for this one. The songs are typically dance in style (lots of repeated beats, perfect for dancing, and quite long…7 or 8 minutes). So, really it’s the lyrics that you want to listen for. And for the most part they are surprisingly good. I’ll mention this first as an example and an exception: the title song’s entire lyrics are “Sound of silver, talk to me, makes you want to feel like a teenager, until you remember the feelings of a real live emotional teenager. Then you think again.” Pretty funny stuff. And yet it’s 7 minutes of the same thing over and over. Phew.

“North American Scum” on the other hand, has great, funny, diverse lyrics. And, “All My Friends” is another single-worthy song. “Watch the Tapes” has a fun shouted chorus of “read all the pamphlets and watch the tapes.”  Depending on your mood and/or your current situation, the repetition is either fun to sing along to or tedious. Let’s hope it catches you in the right mood.

I’m saving the last song for its own review, as it is so different. “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” is a beautiful piano ballad sung with a mournful, cracking voice. It lists valid complaints about the state of New York City these days. The lyrics are here. It’s a weird song to end a dance disk with, but it’s really great and ratchets the whole proceedings up to a new plateau.

[READ: June 31, 2008] “Animal Tales”

I loved Simon Rich’s Ant Farm. He does comedy in short burst that never overstay their welcome. This piece is a really fun, short collection. It is about how animals see the world. He could have easily included 100s of animals, and who knows maybe he will, or maybe he exahusted the topic. In this one he has three animals: (more…)

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Alice Munro–“Free Radicals” (New Yorker, February 11 & 18, 2008)

Posted in Alice Munro, Canadian Content, Cancer as plot device, Elf, M. Ward, New Yorker, She & Him, Short Story, Threats, Zooey Deschanel on July 14, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SHE & HIM-Volume One (2008).

If you’ve seen Elf, and I’m sure you have, then you know that Zooey Deschanel has a beautiful voice. This record is a collection of her songs, sung by her with instrumentation by M. Ward, whose music I don’t know. The thing I learned about her voice is that it comes across as a very naked sound. It’s a little bit disconcerting in this day of vibrato and AutoTune, to hear someone singing so purely and with no affectation. That was evident in Elf, but it is really brought to the front here, where she sings an a capella track as well as some songs with limited instrumentation.

The bulk of the record is done in a style like 50s & 60s girl groups–The Ronettes, The Shirelles, and the Phil Spector wall of sound style. Her voice is suited perfectly to this kind of material. Even the recording style is very clean–one or two tracks sound like they could be from that era, just recently rediscovered. The rest of the songs have a country feel, a stripped down heartbreaky feel. And once again, her voice sounds great.

The whole collection just seems so sweet and unaffected, it’s almost impossible to believe that it was all written and recorded in 2008.

The only problem for me is that I don’t really like 60s girl groups, and I don’t really like country that much. So, really, I don’t like the CD all that much. I’ve given it a couple of spins, and it definitely overcomes the things that I don’t like about those styles. I even found myself singing two of the songs to myself this morning. It definitely deserves the great press, I just wish it was more my thing.

[READ: July 1, 2008] “Free Radicals”

The second Munro story in two days for me. And many of the elements are in place: idyllic, Canadian life, female protagonist, and a fairly unspeakable horror. (more…)

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George Saunders–“Antiheroes” (New Yorker, June 23, 2008)

Posted in Bad Religion, Funny (ha ha), George Saunders, New Yorker, Short Story, Supernatural on July 11, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BAD RELIGION-The Empire Strikes First (2004).

I’ve been a fan of Bad Religion for ages. And then a few years back they reissued all of their old CDs, and I got BR overload. I didn’t listen to them for a while. Then recently, I decided to check out their newest CD, and was delighted to find that I’d only missed this one in the interim.

So, Bad Religion writes eloquent, fast punk songs. They are typically political, anti-religion, anti-war, anti-Republican. And main lyricist Greg Graffin has a PhD in what is essentially evolutionary biology. So, basically, Graffin is well-read (the lyrics have footnotes!) and knows big words. All of this in a two minute punk song.

And it’s the poppiness that surprises. BR have always given credit to the “oozin ah’s” on the records, and there are always lots of ooh’s and ah’s in the background. The choruses are catchy as all get out. And the songs are over in under three minutes. Actually, it’s when the songs go past 3 minutes that they tend to get into trouble. Fortunately that doesn’t happen too often. I’m not sure why, but the record seems to be lined up almost in order from short to long songs. So you get suckered into these great under two minute songs and then they pile up the long ones at the end. But that’s okay too, as some of the longer ones do add nice complexities to their arrangements.

There’s not a lot one can say about Bad Religion albums from one to another. Either you like the style or you don’t. However, for a bunch of old men, they rock pretty hard and they rock pretty well. And yet for all of their aggression (“Social Suicide” “Atheist Peace” “Sinister Rouge”) they are often uplifting and get you to sing along (“Live Again”). With a little less guitar these might even be chart toppers (perish the thought!).

[READ: June 30, 2008] “Antiheroes”

I recently flew to California. I brought all of the back issues of magazines that have been piling up in my house. For some magazines it was four or five months! I didn’t finish them all but I knocked a good three or four pounds off of my carry on luggage by the time I arrived. (more…)

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