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Archive for the ‘Magazines’ Category

Chuck Klosterman–“The Definitive, One-Size-Fits- All, Accept-No Substitutes, Massively Comprehensive Guide to the Life and Times of Kiss” (Grantland, April 9, 2014)

Posted in Ace Frehley, Chuck Klosterman, Gene Simmons, Grantland, Griffin, Jethro Tull, Kiss, Paul Stanley, Peter Criss, Wicked Lester on April 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

kissSOUNDTRACK: WICKED LESTER-The Original Wicked Lester Sessions (1972).

wicked Wicked Lester was the band that Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley started before they created Kiss. They recorded, but never released, an album (given Gene’s money grubbing needs, I can’t believe he hasn’t released this yet).  This demo version which floats around the internet may or may not be the album.  I’d be surprised if it were because there are four cover songs.  But whatever.

It’s a fun archive.  It has a very 70s vibe (including flutes and keyboards) and is much less heavy than what they would be releasing in just a year’s time.  Two of the songs from the demo made it onto Kiss records (strangely, one not until their third release).

“Love Her All I Can” sounds not too different from the Kiss version.  Paul’s voice is much deeper. The solo is lame and it’s funny to hear “do dooo” backing vocals (and a keyboard section).  “Sweet Ophelia” has a groovy 70s vibe and a feeling that is not too dissimilar to the sound of The Elder.  I love “Keep Me Waiting” has a what, tuba sound? for the riff.  The song also has an entirely new middle section, which is very early Kiss–they liked showing off creative chops back then.  I love this song.   “Simple Type” (the version I heard is lousy qality) is a rock and roll number with (I think) Gene on vocals.  It’s got a lot less of the psychedelic elements that the other songs have.  “She” (one of my favorite Kiss songs) has a wonderfully weird vibe here, (not to mention a flue solo which is very Jethro Tull).

“Too Many Mondays” has Gene on vocals and it is a very delicate song with gentle backing oohs.  It is probably the least Kiss sounding song of the bunch because they didn’t write it.  This is the first of several covers.   “What Happens in the Darkness” has a kind of disco sound (in the backing vocals) and Paul’s lead vocals have an interesting edge to them.  It’s fairly psychedelic, including the middle section sung by Gene and the slide guitar solo.  A band called Griffin has also recorded it (and their version is better).  “When the Bell Rings” is another cover.  Gene seems to be straining a lot on falsetto vocals.  “Molly” is a gentle acoustic ballad by Paul with falsetto and everything,  “Wanna Shout It Out Loud” is another Gene falsetto song.  It’s a cover of the Hollies song and not the “Shout It Out Loud” that Kiss would later record.

I can see them not wanting this released during their heyday or during their heavier moments, but it’s not an embarrassing collection by any means.  Definitely of its time, but some interesting stuff nevertheless.  Check it out:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=busyMPHjKMA&list=PL2B518729242D8887]

[READ: April 9, 2014] “The Definitive, One-Size-Fits- All, Accept-No Substitutes, Massively Comprehensive Guide to the Life and Times of Kiss”

I’ve liked most of Klosterman’s writing.  I especially like his writing about music (although I have never read any of his books–some day).  But imagine my delight when Klosterman decided to write a huge article defending Kiss for all of the right reasons while at the same time loathing them for all the right reasons, too.

Kiss are very easy to dislike if you don’t know them–they are silly, they were costumes, they sing dopey pop metal about sex, and they just keep going even though they are ancient.  Kiss are even easier to dislike if you do know them–Gene Simmons is a greedy bastard who is intent upon taking as much money from his fans as he can (and is proud of that).  They keep releasing greatest hits albums with an extra song or two, they even keep making albums that are nowhere near as good as their best stuff.  As Klosterman puts it:

They inoculate themselves from every avenue of revisionism, forever undercutting anything that could be reimagined as charming. They economically punish the people who care about them most: In the course of my lifetime, I’ve purchased commercial recordings of the song “Rock and Roll All Nite” at least 15 times.

And yet…  And yet… (more…)

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Michael Robbins–“Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives: A poet’s guide to metal” (Harper’s, May 2014)

Posted in Baroness, Carcass, Charles Baudelaire, Chelsey Minnis, Christopher Logue, Converge, Cryptopsy, Deafheaven, Death, Dissection, Essays, Frederick Seidel, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Grave Miasma, Guns n' Roses, Hammers of Misfortune, Harper's, Iron Maiden, James Dickey, Jesus Christ Superstar, John Ashbery, John Milton, Kvelertak, Lord Byron, Manilla Road, Mastodon, Michael Robbins, Ozzy Osbourne, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Pig Destroyer, Poetry, Poets, Poison Idea, Punks, Rainer Maria Rilke, Religion, Repulsion, Slayer, Technology, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Violence, Voivod, William Blake, Yuck! on April 19, 2014| 2 Comments »

may20014SOUNDTRACK: CRYPTOPSY-“Slit Your Guts” (1996).

cryptI had never heard of this band until I saw the song mentioned in the article.  The song is impossibly fast with speeding guitars, super fast (inhuman) drums and an indecipherable growl as vocal.  In other words, a typical cookie monster metal song.  And yet, there is a lot more to it and, indeed it took me several listens before I could even figure out what was happening here, by which time I had really fallen for the song.

There’s a middle section which is just as punishing and fast but which is basically an instrumental break–not for showing off exactly but for showcasing more than the bands pummel.  It has a short guitar solo followed by a faster more traditional solo (each for one measure, each in a different ear). Then the tempo picks up for an extended instrumental section.  The melody is slightly more sinister, but it sounds great.  There’s even a (very short) bass solo that sticks out as a totally unexpected (and fun) surprise.

Then the growls come back in, staying with the new melody.  The vocals are so low and growly that they are almost another distorted instrument rather than a voice.

After that there’s a lengthy proper guitar solo.  As the song comes to a close,  it repeats some previous sections before suddenly halting.  It’s quite a trip. And it definitely makes me want to hear more from them (whatever their name means).

[READ: April 14, 2014] “Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives”

Robbins, who is a poet, but about whom I know little else, takes us on a sort of literary tour of heavy metal.  His tone is interesting–he is clearly into metal, like in a big way (at the end of the article he talks about taking his writing students to see Converge (although he doesn’t exactly say why)), but he’s also not afraid to make fun of the preposterousness of, well, most of the bands–even the ones he likes.  It’s a kind of warts and all appreciation for what metal is and isn’t.  many people have written about metal from many different angles, so there’s not a lot “new” here, but it is interesting to hear the different bands discussed in such a thoughtful (and not just in a fanboy) way.

His first footnote is interesting both for metal followers and metal disdainers: “Genre classification doesn’t interest me.  Listen to Poison Idea’s Feel the Darkness followed by Repulsion’s Horrified and tell me the main difference between hardcore punk and metal isn’t that one has a bullshit positive message and one has a bullshit negative message.”

But since Robbins is a poet, he is interested in metal’s connection to poetry.  And in the article he cites William Blake (of course), but also Rilke and John Ashbery and (naturally) Milton’s Paradise Lost, as well as Shelley, Lord Byron and Charles Baudelaire.  He talks about them not because they are cool poets, but because they have also talked about because of metal’s “most familiar trope…duh, Satanism, which might be silly–okay, its’ definitely silly, but has a distinguished literary pedigree”.  Besides, he notes that Satan has the best lines in Paradise Lost (and I note that just as Judas has the best songs in Jesus Christ Superstar).

But sometimes this Satanism turns into a  form of paganism which then turns into nature worship.  From Voivod’s “Killing Technology” to black metal’s romanticism of nature (sometimes to crazy extremes–but that’s what a band needs to do to stand out sometimes).  Metal is all about the dark and primordial, a”rebuke to our soft lives.”

And yet, as a poet, Robbins has some quibbles with metal: (more…)

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Laura Miller–“A Study in Sherlock: How the detective escaped his creator” (Harper’s, May 2014)

Posted in Arthur Conan Doyle, Bob Dorough, Elementary, Harper's, LGBTQ, Mystery, Nicholas Meyer, School House Rock, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes on April 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »

may20014SOUNDTRACK: “Elementary, My Dear” (1973).

elemYou have to have a particularly cruel heart if you don’t love School House Rock.

All of the songs, well, most of the songs, are super catchy and by golly if you don’t learn a lot.

And they attack problems in an interesting way.  The premise of using Noah’s Ark to show how to multiply by 2 is genius.

You’ll get that “elementary, my dear” section stuck in your head.  But I’m also impressed at the way the song goes into unexpected chords for “you get an even number.” And I love the way Bob Dorough really gets into it (whooping it up at the end).

Few people would think that the 2 times table is hard, but man is it fun to sing along to.

This song is not as popular as some of the other ones, but it’s still great

[READ: April 14, 2014] “A Study in Sherlock”

A while back I wrote a post about Sherlock Holmes on TV (Sherlock and Elementary) and in the movies (Sherlock Holmes).  I had read a few stories and so I did a brief comparison of the shows.  Since then while I have continued to believe that Sherlock is the better show, I have really grown to appreciate Elementary a lot more.  They almost seem incomparable because they are so very different in structure and intent.  Elementary has actually been a little more satisfying lately because it has so many more episodes that it allows the characters to develop and fail in interesting ways–something that the three episodes of Sherlock simply won’t do.

Laura Miller has done a similar thing with this article.  Although in fairness she did a lot more research than I did and talks a lot more about the original books and stage and early film adaptations, and she talks a lot less about the TV shows.  And no she doesn’t cite my post.

This was an enjoyable piece because it goes beyond the commonly known elements of Conan Doyle–how he did not like Holmes and tried to kill him off twice, that he wanted to write more important fiction–and into what Holmes was like after Doyle was finished with him.  Holmes has entered the public domain in both England and America, and so he is basically free for everyone to use, much like a classic myth or a fairy tale.  The big difference is that we know his origins.

What I especially enjoyed was that so many things that we think of as quintessential Holmes are actually not from Doyle.  His deerstalker hat was added by a book illustrator but is never mentioned in the text.  The calabash pipe came a decade later when a stage actor used it so that the audience could still see his face.  Conan Doyle was still alive while these changes were being made.  Indeed, when a play of Sherlock Holmes was written, the playwrite called and asked if he could give the man a love interest and Conan Doyle replied, “Marry him, murder him or do what you like with him.” (more…)

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Antonya Nelson–“The There There” (Harper’s, May 2014)

Posted in Antonya Nelson, Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Drinking, Exhaust, Harper's, Marriage Trouble, Negativland, Portishead, Short Story on April 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »

may20014SOUNDTRACK: EXHAUST-Enregistreur [CST021] (2002).

exhaust2While Exhaust’s debut was a mixed affair, their follow up really showed some great improvement.  The band feels more unified, there aren’t any single songs that were remixed (which stand out in a bad way), rather the remixing was done throughout the songs.  And, best of all there’s a lot more of that spooky bass clarinet.

The album feels more organic, “Gauss” opens with waves of music setting a mood until about a minute into track 2 “Behind The Water Tower” when the drums kick in the atmospherics gains urgency. “Voiceboxed” has a feeling of contemporary Portsihead which is neat from an album that came out almost a decade earlier.  This one has some samples of commercials , but they’re a little low in the mix so its hard to make them out. Although the spoken word part that swirls around your head is very cool and a little startling. (Headphones are a must for this album). There’s also a funny standup routine (yes, in the middle of the song)—wonder who it is.

“Ice Storm” opens with a sampled piano & a lot of static.  It morphs into a lengthy play/commercial/PSA by Heathrow Wimbledon and is called “The Maternal Habitat.”  I can’t find anything else about it online.  It’s rather fun to listen to, although when the skit is done, the music becomes strangely slow and the last two minutes (of 9) go on too long.  It bleeds into “Dither” which is mostly sampled voices and more commercials.  I love this Negativland kind of pastiche

“Behind the Paint Factory” mirrors “Water Tower” in that the drums kick in after 2 minutes and the song sounds great.  “My Country is Winter” is mostly tape manipulations including a screaming guitar solo that runs around your head.  “Silence Sur la Plateau” returns to that sort of ominous Portishead vibe with the sound of loud crinkling plastic as its main “music.”  There’ also a lengthy silence in the track which seems rather pointless to me.  The album ends much like it began with “Degauss” which is mostly clarinet solo and atmospheric sounds

It’s much better than their debut but still feels like they could have made a tighter album if they’d gotten rid of some (but not all) of the nonsense.

[READ: December 1, 2012] “The There There”

I have enjoyed Nelson’s stories in the past, and I feel like it’s time to find a collection of hers (and I see she has a lot, too).

What I especially enjoyed about this one was the way the title was used in the story and also the way it encompassed the main character in a way that was unrelated to the way it was used in the story.  In the first instance, the family is on vacation and they overhear some tourists asking “Where the hell are we?” while standing in front of the Colosseum.  The son explains that’s “like not seeing the Grand Canyon until you fell in it, like it’s the there there.”

The story is about a family–a mother, a father, and two sons.   It opens with the sons and the mother discussing the perfect murder.  The husband disapproves of the discussion but only indicates this with a cleared throat.  We see that Caroline, the mother, was imagining her husband when she was describing her murder.

While the story is basically about the mother (although told in third person), it flits back and forth to the other family members and how their behavior affects her.  First we see that their oldest son, having gone off to college, has fallen in love with his landlady–a woman with children older than him.  Caroline is appalled at this especially when Drew reveals that she’s not all that pretty, that he would have chosen one of those daughters. (more…)

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Mark Twain–“Humor” (Harper’s, May 2014) [originally appeared in December 1958]

Posted in 1-Speed Bike, Andy Kaufman, Constellation Records, Exhaust, Funny (ha ha), Godspeed You Black Emperor, Harper's, Mark Twain on April 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

may20014SOUNDTRACK: EXHAUST-Exhaust [CST004] (1998).

exhaustExhaust’s self titled album was another early release from Constellation (disc number 4).  At this point Godspeed You Black Emperor had not defined the label’s sound yet (correctly or incorrectly), so we get Exhaust.  Aidan, who is 1-Speed Bike, which did not have very good drums, is the drummer for Exhaust.  And man, the drums are awesome here.  The drums are again, loud, and they have a great live feel to them–the beats are funky and different and while they anchor what’s going on they in no way keep things settled.

The rest of the band includes a bass, a guitar, a bass clarinet and samples.  The samples just aren’t loud enough anywhere on the album.  It’s a shame–you simply can’t really hear them, which I guess is the point, but then what’s the point of having them?  So the first song, “A History of Guerrilla Warfare” is interesting (again, those drums!), but it’s in song two “Metro Mile End” when that bass clarinet comes out that it totally rules. The third song “Homemade Maggot Beer” is a 20 second hardcore song with just drums and feedback.  Song 4 “We Support Iran in Their Bid to Win the 1998 World Cup” is a remix by 1-Speed Bike, and after listening to the full length 1-Speed Bike, it sounds like it– a little dull, a little slow and nowhere near as dynamic as the album.  And it has such a good title too.

“Two Years On Welfare” has louder samples–you can hear a kind of political rant going on, but it seems like it could have been used better.  But around 1;30 the sounds get really interesting.  Track six, “This Is Our (Borrowed) Equipment” is another 1-Speed Bike remix, and it is mostly drums again.  “Wool Fever” makes good use of harmonics and drums although it goes on a bit too long.  The 8th song, “A Medley Of Late Night Buffet Commercials” is the final 1-Speed Bike remix.  Unlike the others I really like this one.  True, I wish the song was more akin to what the title says, but the drums are funky and hammering and sound great.  “Winterlude” is 40 seconds of squealing radio sounds before the final track reintroduces us to that great clarinet.  “The Black Horns Of H2T” reminds us how good this album can sound.

So it’s a mixed bag, but the highs are definitely high.

[READ: April 14, 2014] “Humor”

This article appeared in the December 1958 issue of Harper’s magazine.  Mark Twain made over 100 contributions to the magazine (geez).  I have often thought that Twain is an author I need to read more of.  But when I hear he has contributed over 100 articles to Harper’s alone, my mind reels at the output.

Anyhow, this is an article about repetition in the art of humor.  Interestingly, he relates a story that happened forty years before writing this.  So the occasions of the joke he tells was in 1918!  Woah.

The article talks about the first and second lectures that he ever gave.  The first was a success but he was concerned about the second as he had very little in the way of humor to warm up the audience.  He decided to make use of an anecdote that everyone in San Francisco had heard many times and were undoubtedly sick of.  It had been overdone as long as five years ago.  But he decided that he would simply tells the very overdone story over and over until people started to laugh (the precursor of Saturday Night Live, obviously). (more…)

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Grantland Quarterly, Number 9 (2014)

Posted in Advice, Alex Pappademas, Andrew Sharp, Andy Greenwald, Andy Kaufman, Baseball, Basketball, Bill Simmons, Books about music, Books about writers, Breaking Bad, Brian Phillips, Chris Ryan, Counting Crows, Daniel Kellison, Dave McKenna, David Shoemaker, Emily Yoshida, Essays, Football, Fruitvale, Grand Theft Auto V, Grantland, Harris Wittels, Hockey, Jay Caspian Kang, Jonathan Abrams, Jordan Conn, Mark Harris, Mark Lisanti, McSweeney's, Miley Cyrus, Molly Lambert, Myst, Nirvana, Nostalgia, Rany Jazayerli, Rembert Browne, Sean McIndoe, Shane Ryan, Shea Serrano, Soccer, Surfing, Tennis, The Eagles, The O.C., The Office, The X Files, Tom Bissell, Tom Carson, Univore, Violence, Wesley Morris, Wrestling, Zach Lowe on April 9, 2014| Leave a Comment »

  9SOUNDTRACK: UNIVORE-“Vampire” (2013).

univoreI never watch the ads that come before Youtube videos.  But this came on as an ad and I was utterly mesmerized by it.

I didn’t even know what it was for.  Turns out that Univore is a band and “Vampire” is one of their songs.  The 1 minute ad video was actually the whole thing.

It’s got a simple buzzy synthesized riff, backing vocalists singing “Oh yea” when appropriate and an occasional deep voiced man saying “vampire.”  The video is of an older gentleman (who a little research suggests is Marco Casale) dressed like a vampire running around a small green space on a campus.  The whole video looks like it took 15 minutes to film.  It is weird and wonderful.

I still know nothing about Univore, which may be for the better, but I did enjoy this video.

[READ: April 6, 2014] Grantland #9

I’m surprised that there aren’t better cover images online for these books.  For #8 i had to use one with a big flash in the middle of it and this one is the illustration from the Grantland website.  The books are quite pretty so why uses these pale imitations?

So this issue proved to be a lot better about weird typos and “we just took this from the web and pasted it and never bothered to check to see if there was anything weird” problems.  So thanks for at least running it through Spellcheck.  The only other thing left is to either remove the lines that talk about attached links/images if they are not there or to include the url or make up a tiny url (but that would be actual work!).  Oh, and please make sure all of the footnotes are included.

I have given up on ever finding out how these things turned out several months after the fact–I’ll just happily live in ignorance of reality there.

This issue was taken from during basketball’s downtime which was a nice change (even though the still managed to talk about basketball).  There was more pop culture and some wonderful articles about team nicknames and mascots–something I absolutely love.  So this is one of my favorite issues overall.  (more…)

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Norman Rush–“On Nudity” & Barbara Ehrenreich–“The Trees Step Out of the Forest” (Harper’s, March 2014)

Posted in A Zed and Two Naughts, Alternate Reality, Barbara Ehrenreich, Carrington, Drowning By Numbers, Essays, Funny (strange), Gattaca, Harper's, Man with a Movie Camera, Memoirs, Michael Nyman, Morality, Norman Rush, Poker, Sunshine and Health, The Claim, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Draughtman's Contract, The End of The, The Piano, Valentina Lisitsa on April 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

march2014SOUNDTRACK: VALENTINA LISITSA-Chasing Pianos: The Piano Music of Michael Nyman (2014).

Inym,an don’t listen to a lot of classical music, but I do like it. I also enjoy some modern composers, in particular I have a strong fondness for Michael Nyman. Yes, yes, he’s a soundtrack composer, blah blah, but I find his music to be very pretty and often delightfully eccentric.   His music reminds me of Phillip Glass, in its repetitive nature, but he goes beyond the minimalism that Glass was trying to create by implementing inventive melodies and expansive sounds.

 Valentina Lisitsa is a 44 year old Ukrainian pianist and she tackles music from throughout Nymans’ soundtrack career.  Nyman came to prominence with The Piano, which is a beautiful score.  And this is where this album starts out.

I’m not going to talk about each piece.  Rather, the album overall has a consistent feel–piano versions of Nyman’s music.  Nyman isn’t the most difficult composer, but he has his own style and so the entire album has a nice flow (although it does get a little slow by the end).

She plays songs from eleven of his soundtracks (which I’ve listed at the end).  Many of them get only one track, but Wonderland gets two and The Diary of Anne Frank gets 5 cuts.  I actually don’t know either of those two scores.  The bulk of the disc is, unsurprisingly, from The Piano which has ten cuts here.

I actually know his older soundtracks a lot better, so it was interesting to hear these piano versions of many of these familiar tracks.  Like “Time Lapse” from A Zed & Two Naughts and “Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds” (ne of my favorite pieces by him) from The Draughtman’s Contract.

Stripping down Nyman has an interesting effect because you can really hear how pretty the melodies are.  Although the real pleasure I get from his songs is the weird embellishments he puts on them, like the interesting sounds (horn and didgeridoo?) in “Here to There” from the Piano (which are absent here).

Although it has the feeling of a piano concerto the end (with several songs from The Piano in a row) is a bit samey.  It was smart to end the disc with a reprise of the opening.

There’s also songs from Drowning By Numbers, Carrington, The End of The, Man with a Movie Camera, The Claim and Gattaca

[READ: April 3, 2014] “On Nudity” and “The Trees Step Out of the Forest”

I am linking these two essays because I read them very close to each other and they are almost diametrically opposed in their content. And I thought it would be an interesting contrast.

“On Nudity” is a very simple essay about nudity. When Norman Rush was a kid–9 or 10–his father was really into nudism. He always wanted to go to nude beaches, he was very lax with nudity around the house and he tried to get his wife to join him. She was reluctant. Indeed, she didn’t really seem to like her husband very much and it seems they only got married because she was pregnant (and he may not have thought that was a good enough reason, to be honest).  She tried her best to make him unhappy because of this, and that seemed to involve declining his nudity bug.

So there were copies of Sunshine and Health (the premiere nudist magazine) hidden in the house (although Norman knew where they were), and yet, despite this access, he couldn’t get enough.  Rather than sating his needs, he was more obsessed than ever.  He wanted the real thing, whether it was getting his cousin to play strip poker or trying to spy on women in changing rooms.  He talks about the various hings he did just to get a peek of flesh.  And as the essay comes to close he apologizes to the two women whose privacy he invaded by spying on them.  The guilt about what he did to these women made him stop, although the women likely never knew what had happened to them. (more…)

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Salvador Plascencia–The People of Paper (2005)

Posted in Beck, Books about writers, Bookslut, Death, Gangsters, Gods, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Meta, Nashville Review, Neil Young, Salvador Plascencia, Sex, Surreal, Travel on April 7, 2014| Leave a Comment »

salSOUNDTRACK: BECK-Morning Phase (2014).

morningThe release of Beck’s latest album is what got me investigating Beck’s back catalog–just to see how Beck arrived at this mellow chillout place.

I read a lot about this album when it came out and, even hearing Beck discuss it, I feared it would be a little too slow and mopey for my tastes.  It is slow, but it’s not really mopey.  It’s quite pretty, in fact.  And as I’ve come to learn by going through Beck’s back catalog, he likes to experiment in all sorts of ways, but at his core, he is just a really good songwriter.

So it opens with 40 seconds of strings that act as  nice introduction to the tone of the album, but don’t prepare you for the pretty acoustic song “Morning.”  Lyrically it’s pretty dark, although with his falsetto, it’s kind of hard to realize that.  The melody and vocal line are really lovely (especially the weird echo they put on his voice).  And it has a surprisingly big sounding chorus–redemption even in sadness.  “Heart is a Drum” has piano and an acoustic guitar with swelling strings–once again, the chorus is big and (relatively) fun.  “Say Goodbye” is a sad song, and yet it is still catchy (which is nice), with a simple acoustic guitar.   “Blue Moon” has a wonderfully catchy verse structure and it picks up the tempo somewhat with beautiful swells of music.  And the chorus is dynamite too–it is a worthy single.

“Unforgiven” slows things down even more, making one of the moodiest Beck songs.  And then comes “Wave,” perhaps Beck’s darkest and moodiest song–just waves of strings with no drums and Beck’s longing voice over the top.  “Don’t Let It Go” has some very nice singing from Beck.  His voice has always been good, but he sounds like his voice is maturing somewhat here.

“Blackbird Chain” is the prettiest melody on the record, and it feels especially light after the downcast last few songs.  It has a great chorus and really strong verse melodies. My only gripe is the very brief string accompaniment in the middle of the song which feels like overkill–the piano solo is nice, bit the strings are too much.  But they’re very brief and don’t ruin the song.  “Phase” is a 1 minute instrumental that leads into “Turn Away.”  “Turn” has Beck’s layered vocals and a wonderful easy guitar sound.  The whole song has a sixties acoustic vibe, an again, the melody is great.  “Country Down” has a, yes, country feel (including harmonica solo ala Neil Young), and Beck’s lower, more powerful voice.  It’s a strange turn on this album, but it keeps with the mellow vibe.  The disc ends with “Waking Light” a slow, building song with more great vocals and a wonderful chorus, that makes good use of loud and soft.  It’s a very strong ending to an album.

Unlike other Beck albums this one is definitely a “have to be in the mood” for it.  There’s no pop singles, no dancey hits.  It’s all very mellow.  But it’s very pretty.

[READ: April 2, 2014] The People of Paper

An excerpt from this book was published in McSweeney’s #12.   Here’s what I thought of the excerpt:

This is an excerpt from Plascencia’s novel of the same name, a novel that I own but have not read yet.  And wow is this crazy.  There is, indeed a person made of paper and there are people made of meat, and there are different narrators.  Federico de la Fe is a grown man who wets the bed–as the story begins he and his wife (who tolerates the wet spot) are going to the water’s edge to fill it with new straw.  His wife has gotten used to it (ew), but once their young daughter is potty trained and her husband isn’t, she gets quite cross.  It is only after his wife has died that he learns of a cure–sticking his hand in the fire.  See, crazy–and we haven’t even gotten to the lady of paper yet.  I’m assuming that actually reading the full novel will bring some clarity to this story.

I included this as an introduction because this story is very very unusual, even after reading the whole thing.

In addition to the story being unusual (and, as it turns out, completely metafictional), even the physical product is unusual.

The story is broken into several styles, which are distinguished at the front of each chapter by either three lines, three dots or one dot.  In the three lines chapters, each page is broken into 3 columns–each column is about a character.  In the three dots section, the chapter is formatted normally, but different characters are written about.  And in the one dot section, the small chapter is about one person (you can read more about this in the interviews below). (more…)

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Lorrie Moore–“Subject to Search” (Harper’s, January 2014)

Posted in Beck, Drinking, Frog in boiling water, Harper's, Lorrie Moore, Marriage Trouble, Short Story, War on April 5, 2014| Leave a Comment »

harperjanSOUNDTRACK: BECK-“Gimme” (2013).

gimmeThis was the final of the three singles that Beck released in 2013.

It is by far the weirdest of the three, and seems the most experimental.

The song is only 2 and a half minutes long.  It starts with vibraphone-like sounds. The vocals are layered and processed with random voices shouting “Gimme” throughout the track.  I have no idea what the lyrics are.

It is noisy and cluttered, although there is a melody under all of that.  And then it ends just as suddenly as it began.  This song may some end of the year lists, but it’s certainly not easy listening.

[READ: April 1, 2014] “Subject to Search”

Sarah recently brought home a copy of Lorrie Moore’s Bark, and I’ve put it on my to-read list (somewhere near the top).  So browsing through this back issue of Harper’s I saw this story and figured it was probably in Bark (it is), but I decided to read it anyhow.

The story begins with an amusing exchange.  A man sits down and says “I have to leave.”  He and the woman are in a restaurant and she wonders if he has time to eat.  He tells her to order lamb couscous and she worries about her pronunciation.  It turns out they are in France and her French is passable at best.  She worries that there is a distinction between lamb to eat and lamb as a pet (like between pork and pig) in French and that she may end up with something totally unacceptable.

When the man returns he explains to her that he has to fly back to the States, and to us that he is in “the intelligence game.”

As the story unfold we learn more about him from the way she has perceived him (she assumed he was a drug runner from his story about driving cars in Holland).  He escaped from Iran just before the hostage situation broke out in the 70s.  And he paid for everything in cash.  But we also learn that she has known him for years. (more…)

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Gordon Lish–“The Boys on the Block: My personal memoir” (Harper’s, January 2014)

Posted in Beck, Gordon Lish, Harper's, Memoirs, Short Story on April 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

harperjanSOUNDTRACK: BECK-“I Won’t Be Long” (2013).

iwontbelongThis was Beck’s second single in 2013.  I did not like this at first as you can see here, but as I predicted, it grew I me. Interestingly, listening to it now, after having heard it a few dozen times, my observations about the song are the same, I just find it more appealing.  And listening with headphones showed me that there’s more to it than the radio listens showed me.

The verses are actually kind of fun and while I initially found the chorus to be way too slow, it has really grown on me. And there’s a lot more music in the track than I initially realized. It’s quite a full and satisfying song. Including a very noisy guitar solo at the end which makes this song less soporific.  In fact, some of the guitar notes hearken back to 80s guitar sounds very nicely.

So, yes I’ve become a fan of this song.  And having listened through his catalog I find that it’s not as out of place as I initially thought.

[READ: April 1, 2014] “The Boys on the Block”

The only other thing I’ve read by Gordon Lish was in Harper’s in January 2013 (perhaps this is an annual thing).  That story was a tale in which Lish was the narrator and the main character and it was halting and complicated but generally enjoyable.

This story is actually listed as a memoir, so the self-referential nature is to be expected.  What is not expected (although maybe that is how Lish writes) is the halting, stumbling narrator.  In this piece, Lish looks back at the kids on his block and the games of one-upmanship they would play.  And it’s funny that he can spend several paragraphs correcting himself and addenduming himself all to talk about the boys on his block playing paddle ball

the paddle and the ball and the string–are you with me?–the paddle and the ball and the string, which the whole idea of the game was for you to grab the paddle in your hand and see if you could toss the little red ball up a little bit and then smack it with the paddle and then keep on smacking it with the paddle until you missed it altogether or, you know, you just didn’t smack it right and it went all crazy in the wrong direction and then it was the other boy’s turn… [the sentence continues for longer than I have written so far].

Naturally there were boys who were good at it–Gordon was not one of them, but the Stanleys were–they were two boys named Stanley.  But Gordon, oh Jesus, did he fear taking his turn, especially after the Stanleys were so good at it.  But at least there was Bobby–he was the worst at everything.  Gordon couldn’t wait for Bobby to take a turn.  But lo, Bobby was amazing at it, almost as good as the Stanley’s and that could not be. (more…)

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