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Archive for the ‘Magazines’ Category

Mark Slouka–“The Hare’s Mask” (Harper’s, January 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Black Prairie, Death, Harper's, Mark Slouka, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Portlandia, The Decemberists on January 30, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE DECEMBERISTS-“The King is Dead Live from Portland” on OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) (2011).

NPR loves The Decemberists, and so do I.  Not only did NPR stream their new album before it came out, they are also showing the audio and the video of this hour-long concert of the band playing The King is Dead start to finish.

I haven’t really had time to digest the whole album yet, but I am quite fond of it.  I’ve listened a few times and it’s very different from their previous releases, it has a much more folk/country feel (with harmonicas!).  And from what I can tell this live set is quite faithful to the recording.

Interestingly, when they played the entirety of The Hazards of Love live (also available from NPR), they played that entire epic album straight through with no chatter in between.  This live set is much more cordial and relaxed (like the disc itself), with some amusing delays and chatter between tracks.  (There’s an amusing reference to the lyrics of the new IFC show Portlandia).  There are tuning and tech malfunctions, and everyone plays along very nicely.  It really shows the difference between the two albums and how adaptable the band is.

Much has been made of the fact that Peter Buck plays on the album, and I have to say that the live mixing of “Down By the Water” makes it sound even more like R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” (that guitar, wow).  But it’s the country and bluegrass really comes out in this setting.  Sara Watkins’ violin really stands out.  They also mention the band’s side project, which I’d not heard of before now.  The band is Black Prairie and features Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee and Nate Query (I guess Colin Meloy is  real taskmaster that they needed to escape?).

The middle of the set is an interview with the OPB DJ (unnamed as far as I can tell) and Colin Meloy.  They talk about Hazards and the new one.  And at the end of the set there’s a Q&A from the audience (hear of Jenny’s wardrobe malfunction!).

But stay until the end because they also play “We Both Go Down Together.”  It’s a great, fun, loose set.

[READ: January 23, 2010] “The Hare’s Mask”

One of the fun things about vacations for me is that I bring all the magazines that have been idling around my house and I read them during down time.  So, I grabbed all of the magazines that were unread or half-read and put them in my suitcase.  After long days at Disney, when the family crashed, I took the time to finish those final pages.

I often find myself falling very far behind on my magazine reading, but I was delighted that after this vacation I was totally caught up (except for the 4 that awaited me when I got home).  This Harper’s story (and the next post) were the only stragglers from the trip.

And I find that I have much more to say about my trip and my magazines than about this story.  I feel like it was meant to be profound, and it certainly had the ingredients for profundity, but it failed to move me.

Perhaps it was the metaphor of tying fishing lures, which I don’t care about. Perhaps it was the rabbit killing, which was heart-string tugging, but was more distasteful than anything else. (more…)

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Amos Oz–“The King of Norway” (New Yorker, January 17, 2011)

Posted in A Serious Man, Amos Oz, Bjork, Death, Dido, Frou Frou, Guy Siggsworth, Heather Nova, James Joyce, New Yorker, Religion, Short Story, Sondra Silverston, Tori Amos, Translation on January 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FROU FROU-Details (2002).

Many years ago I bought Imogen Heap’s debut album because it was described as being similar to Tori Amos’ work.  I think that it’s really closer to someone like Heather Nova, but regardless, it was enjoyable, with her cool voice that had an unexpected falsetto thing that I rather liked.

I promptly forgot about her, although the single “Come Here Boy” stuck with me.  I was recently turned on to Frou Frou somewhere even though this album came out almost ten years ago.  Since a decade is a long time I can’t recall if 2002 was the time of this sort of music or not (well, Dido came out in 1999, so maybe this was the tail end?)

Anyhow, this album plays nicely into the continuum of slightly more complex than normal pop songs sung by a woman with a cool if not unique voice.  Heap provides the vocals, and I suppose the most notable quality is her breathiness.  She seems to be able to sing in a whisper, which is pretty neat and, again, there’s that falsetto which doesn’t seem to get higher so much as otherwordly.

She’s an excellent match for Guy Siggworth who creates music (at least I assume he did the music, I’m not sure how it was divided exactly) that is interesting and electronic but also soft and welcoming.  Despite the fact that the music is obviously a dude with a keyboard, his choices are not electronic and dancey, they are more enchanting (although they are also very catchy and dancey).

They work wonders as a team, and if you miss this sort of not-pure pop album (circa 2000), this is a great disc to pick up.  Heap’s voice may be one to get used to, but I find it far more engaging than the autotuned voices circa 2010.

A couple of stand out tracks include: “Must Be Dreaming” which has some especially nifty effects that make the song stand out.  The most Björkian song “Psychobabble” also offers cool sound effects which take it well out of the pop realm (her voice is particularly cool on this track).  And “Maddening Shroud” is probably the best poppy song I’ve heard in a long time.

[READ: January 11, 2011] “The King of Norway”

In my mind Amos Oz is a capital-A Author, somehow promising Thoughts.  Maybe it’s because he writes in Hebrew.  Maybe it’s because of the mystical name Oz, but he seems like a Prophet or something.  And in that respect, I suppose I am simply not full of Grace enough to get the Point of this story.

I know that it is utterly unfair to hold this man up to these made up standards, especially since I’ve never actually read him before.  But that’s all moot, because I feel like there’s more to this than meets the eye and I am just not that interested in finding out what.

It’s utterly coincidental that tonight we watched the first half of A Serious Man (which also features Hebrew prominently), but I am suffused with Jewish thought this evening.  (I enjoyed A Serious Man a lot more than this story, by the way). (more…)

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Louise Erdrich–“The Years of My Birth” (New Yorker, January 10, 2011)

Posted in 30 Rock, Daft Punk, LCD Soundsystem, Louise Erdrich, Native Americans, New Yorker, Rafter, Richard Thompson, Short Story, Sufjan Stevens, The Onion on January 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RAFTER: “No Fucking Around” (2010).

This song made one of The Onion’s AV Club voter’s Top Ten lists this year. The  description was interesting enough that I had to go check it out.

Rafter is on Asthmatic Kitty, home of Sufjan Stevens, so I assumed the disc would be intriguing, if nothing else.  The song starts out with an overly autotuned (practically mechanical) voice repeating the title.  From there the song slows down with some interesting lyrics.   As the reviewer said, it strips dance music to its barest essentials.  This trend seems to be kind of popular lately, and I’ve noticed that when it works, the rests are very catchy, (when it doesn’t it’s boring as all get out).

Now, I first listened to the song with the video (see below) which I love.  So I’m not entirely sure how much of my enjoyment of the song is predicated on the video.

However, I’ve now listened to it several times and my enjoyment grows with each listen.

Although I am always more interested in indie rock than dance and pop, occasional a pop song or a dance song will grab me and make me listen. LCD Soundsystem has had that effect, as has Daft Punk.  I’m not sure if this whole album is as interesting, but I certainly enjoy this song.

Shame that I’ll probably never hear it without going to YouTube.

[READ: January 11, 2011] “The Years of My Birth”

This story impressed me both for its unexpected emotional pull and its twist (in a sense) ending.

When the story opens, we learn of the narrator’s birth: she was an undetected twin who was, for lack of a better term, squished by her brother.  When she came out, the doctor said she would likely have birth defects; her mother, when asked if they should try to save the baby, shouted “No!”

But the nurse had already ensured the baby’s survival.  The baby was disfigured, with a misshapen head and twisted legs, but she appeared mentally normal.  And yet, since her mother had already rejected her, (and times were different then), the nurse, a Native American woman, took the baby home and raised her as part  of their family.  She even nursed the baby since she was already nursing a young girl at home.

The Native American family tended to her, working on re-shaping her head (with massages) and mending her legs (with stretching), and she found herself thriving (reasonably).  Her adoptive family was very supportive and although her closest-in-age sister once said she’s never get in trouble because she was white, she formed a very tight bond with all of her adoptive siblings. Her brother even nicknamed her Tuffy because he knew she’d get a nickname eventually and he wanted to give it to her.

Tuffy lives a quiet, modest life, never making to many attachments, for fear of getting hurt.  Nevertheless, she always felt a kind of ghostly presence in her life.  She knew it was her twin, although she didn’t know where her brother was physically, what he looked like, or even what his name was.   But their bond, or whatever it was, was always there.

And then one day out of the blue, she get as a call from her “mother.”  She wants to connect.  So Tuffy meets her for dinner and the truth comes out (just like a recent plot of 30 Rock): her twin needs a kidney.  And your heart goes out to her.  For so many reasons.

The last section of the story, though, reveals the depth of the character that Erdrich has created in Tuffy.  Because even though she knows that this family has done nothing for her, she has this connection to her twin.  Her family discourages her from contact with her “mother,” but Tuffy feels drawn to help.  Even though she knows she owes them literally nothing, she starts to think that maybe she got the better deal in life.

And then we find out why he needs the kidney, and our feelings gets even more complicated.  And when she finally meets her twin, things go in another direction altogether.

I was really surprised at how complex this short (4 page) story was.  I was riveted, and as I mentioned, emotionally torn.  It’s a great piece.

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Deb Olin Unferth–“Radical Will” [excerpt from Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War] (Harper’s, January 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Culture Shock, Deb Olin Unferth, Essays, Harper's, Ludicra, Memoirs, Travel on January 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LUDICRA-“A Larger Silence” (2010).

Ludicra’s The Tenant came in at #9 on Viking’s Top Ten.  Ludicra was the first band they played in the (downloadable) show and I knew that this was going to be a different Top Ten list as soon as it started.  Ludicra plays pounding black metal but they have a real difference: both of their singers are women.  True, they use the same growling screaming vocals (and I first thought it was a guy with a higher pitched voice) until the two-minute mark hits and both women harmonize beautifully.  Suddenly the song jumps several notches ahead of its peers.

It’s quite disconcerting to hear thudding double-bass drums and pounding snares behind two women who are harmonizing (a little creepily) over extended notes.  At the end of the track (about 5 minutes in) the song shifts gears into an acoustic guitar and drum thumping near-folk song.  It doesn’t last long, but the respite prepares you for the wailing end which features a really catchy guitar solo.

This is band I’d like to watch a live video of to see how they do their singing and harmonizing (oh, here ya go–wow, the singer looks inSANE!).  Man, I’d be afraid to see them live.

[READ: January 5, 2011] “Radical Will”

I’ve enjoyed Unferth’s fiction quite a bit.  And fortunately, this memoir uses her distinct writing style to huge advantage.  At age 18 (in 1987), Unferth ran away from college and traveled to Central America with her boyfriend to be in a revolutionary movement.

In this excerpt, Unferth and “George” travel to San Salvador.  Unlike other stories where the young, innocent Americans are stopped at gunpoint and left to endure excruciating torments, for the most part these two seem to be ignored.  By almost everyone. (more…)

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Steven Millhauser–“Getting Closer” (New Yorker, January 3, 2011)

Posted in Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, My Bloody Valentine, New Yorker, Short Story, Steven Millhauser, Summer on January 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JEFRE CANTU-LEDESMA-“Stained Glass Body” (2010).

This album, Love is a Stream, came in at #8 on Viking’s Top Ten albums.  Viking references My Bloody Valentine in his description of this song, and it is an excellent frame of reference.

This song sounds like My Bloody Valentine if you removed the songs.  Take away the drums and the vocals and just leave the swirling, mesmerizing washes of sound, and you get this really cool and captivating song.

As you might expect, this is background music, and yet it is background music that draws you into it.  It has texture and depth and you can feel yourself getting enveloped in the music.

Often it seems like music like this is simple, almost inconsequential, yet there’s something about the way Cantu-Ledesma manipulates these simple washes of sound that make them something more than just notes on a keyboard. Cranking this up very loud in a snug room on a cold sunny day would be pretty awesome.

[READ: January 2, 2011] “Getting Closer”

This is a simple story about a boy trying to make a grand statement.  In fact, there’s very little to the story plotwise except for a boy psyching himself up to begin the summer.

Jimmy is nine, going on ten.  It’s summer time and his family has gone to Indian Cove for a summer vacation.  He has made a deal with himself that summer, or perhaps something more nebulous like “fun” would not begin until a certain point was reached.  He is excited at knowing that “this is it” and willfully wants to put that off as long as possible.

He inches closer and closer, metaphorically and literally, willing himself not to reach that moment when the day, the excitement, the summer, begins. (more…)

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Jim Gavin–“Costello” (New Yorker, December 6, 2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Ô Paon, Canadian Music, Drinking, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Jim Gavin, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Work on January 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: Ô PAON-“Courses” (2010).

This album, Sainte Patronne De Rien Pantoutemade ranked #7 on Viking’s Top Ten list and it is very different from the other albums on the list.

This is a simple song with a gentle guitar motif repeated over and over.  There also appears to be some looped vocals.  The singer, Geneviéve Castrée, sings in Quebecois-French and is assisted by Godspeed You Black Emperor mainstay Thierry Amar.

As with many of the songs on this list, the song builds and builds as it repeats itself.  But unlike the other songs, this one never grows menacing or dark.  Rather, it builds, layer upon layer of instrument or voice until the song (whatever it’s about) reaches its climax.

Viking says that there are English liner notes on the disc, but you ‘ll have to buy the disc to get them.  I liked this track more with each listen, and would like to hear more from her.

[READ: January 4, 2011] “Costello”

This is a story of perseverance.  Costello is a middle-aged man with two kids.  When the story opens, we see him floating on a raft in his pool. The pool is overgrown with grossness and, down in the filter, there is a dead lizard.  But Costello seems, if not exactly content, then at least not unhappy.  He has everything he needs nearby: a newspaper, a Zippo and smokes.

Costello is a plumbing salesman, and he has been nominated as salesman of the year (you can read about it in Pipeline!).  It’s pretty much the only exciting news he’s received recently, especially since his beloved Dodgers are middling at best.  Although even he likes being able to watch the Disney fireworks from his roof.

Costello seems like a decent guy.  He also seems liked by others: his coworkers like him, his neighbor likes him (although Costello hasn’t accepted a dinner invitation from him in almost a year).  Through the course of the story we wonder why his wife isn’t there with him.  The answer to this is revealed slowly throughout the story. (more…)

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Zadie Smith–“Sweet Charity” (New Yorker, October 11, 2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Deathspell Omega, Essays, New Yorker, Pregnancy, Zadie Smith on January 21, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DEATHSPELL OMEGA-“Abscission” (2010).

This album, Paracletus, came in at number 6 on Viking’s Top Ten album list.  The song is pretty straight ahead black metal.  It is noisy and growly and everything you might expect from the genre.  The first  surprise here is that the band is French.  The bigger surprise is how after a bout two minutes of pounding noise, a melody comes out of the darkness and brings a real structure to the bludgeoning.

Although I enjoyed the sing as far as black metal goes, I feel like the praise that he heaps on the album doesn’t seem deserved by this track. It’s a strong black metal song but it doesn’t seem either brilliant or confounding to me.

[READ: December 30, 2010] “Sweet Charity”

This is the fifth and final Something Borrowed story in this issue of The New Yorker.  I felt like this story provided a lot of personal background information about Zadie Smith.  The other short articles were certainly personal, but I feel like this one revealed things about her that I don’t know about most authors.

It seems that as a young lady, Smith was a total geek, playing the cello, dressing crazily (relatively) and often not really appropriate for her body size.  She also admits that she was financially very lucky, more so than many of the girls she went to school with.

In Zadie’s account, it is a friend who borrows money from her.  The friend is a fellow cello geek from school.  They agreed to be strong and not fall to the stereotypes of black teenage girls.  But their pledge to not get pregnant was not kept  by the friend.  She had the child and had to work very hard to make ends meet.   Finally, as she is about to be kicked out of her flat, she swallows her pride and asks Zadie for a loan. (more…)

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Jonathan Franzen–“Hissing of Summer Lawns” (New Yorker, October 11, 2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Jonathan Franzen, New Yorker, Summer, The Fun Years on January 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE FUN YEARS-“Breech on the Bowstring” (2010).

This album (with the awesome title), God Was Like, No came in at number 5 on Viking’s Top Ten.  It is a kind of ambient music, except that the notes are a fast staccato instead of long-held notes.  According to the radio show, the band consists of just guitar effects and turntables (another duo!).  In the beginning of the song, it’s impossible to tell which is which with these noises.

The music is quite pretty if slightly unsettling.  Over the 7 minutes of the track, you can feel it building and building, getting louder and louder, without really changing the dynamic all that much (except you can hear more and more details in the music).  Although by the 6 minute mark, the noise tends to overpower the nicer earlier music and the wall of sound become more and more ominous.

It takes a couple of listens, but it gets better and better with each one.

[READ: December 30, 2010] “Hissing of Summer Lawns”

Just when I think I’m done with Franzen, he drags me back in.

This one page anecdote in the Something Borrowed category is actually the shortest of all of them.  It continues with my favorite aspect of Franzen’s writing: his young adulthood.

In this case, he talks about his struggling years, when he would borrow people’s houses.  He house sat for a professor who was on vacation and wanted someone to make sure their son didn’t party while they were away.  The son, who showed up after a couple of days, put Franzen in his place with a blistering stare.

But the main part of the story comes when he agrees to house sit for friends.  His only real duty was to mow their lawn which he immediately neglects to do.  Soon the lawn is out of control.  And worse, when he finally goes to cut the jungle, the lawn had been infected by earth-burrowing hornets. (more…)

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Jennifer Egan–”Dealing with the Dead” (New Yorker, October 11, 2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Death, Essays, Jennifer Egan, New Yorker, The Body on January 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE BODY-“Empty Heath” (2010).

This is Viking’s fourth pick for album of the year.  (I skipped number three because it is an acoustic finger picked-instrumental album which I liked fine but which wasn’t anything special to me).  The Body is a fascinating band, and they are hard to learn anything definitive about online.   But if you’re looking for the album, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood, you can get it on Amazon, or (cheaper) from At a Loss Recordings.

This song opens quietly with a person saying “together.”   It’s followed by a fascinating chorus singing what sounds like possibly Peruvian throat singing.  And then the guitars bash in.  Heavy droning guitars (with a screaming “lead” vocalist buried in the mix).  The song often stutters to a halt only to pick up the doom and mysterious gloom.

The notes about this album say that it is a duo (why is some of the heaviest, most menacing music made by duos?)  At some point in the song, the music stops and you hear just the chanting (which now sounds like it’s reversed vocals).  I have no idea what to make of this song or if the rest of the disc sounds like this, but I’m really intrigued by it.  Viking calls it “the most surreal doom-metal record of 2010” and I agree.

[READ: December 30, 2010] ”Dealing with the Dead”

Jenifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad is on my short list of books to read this January so I was intrigued to read this little piece by her.

Her Something Borrowed article (the third in the series) is quite different from the others.  It begins with a fairly shocking account of her mother’s robbery at gunpoint. She had been working in a gallery and the robbers thought they would have cash on hand (they didn’t).  There was talk of shooting them until they were inadvertently rescued by a delivery man.

This rather exciting story mellows out pretty quickly in to a far more reflective and mellow story. (more…)

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Rohinton Mistry–“Empire Records” (New Yorker, October 11, 2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Books about music, Harvey Milk, New Yorker, Rohinton Mistry, Swans, The Beatles, The Melvins, Travel on January 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: HARVEY MILK-“I Did Not Call Out” (2010).

This album is #2 on Viking’s Metal and Outer Sound list of 2010 CDs (from NPR).  During the radio show when Viking revealed his Top Ten albums, he mentioned that Harvey Milk is his favoirte band of all time.  I’d never heard them before, so this was eye opening (confusing them with Harvey Danger is a big mistake).  This song comes from the album A Small Turn of Human Kindness.

The melody is dark (pretty but in a bleak sort of way), but the instrumentation is sludgy and menacing.  It is very slow-paced with occasional “riffs” that run through the “verses.”  It has a sort of Melvins meets Swans kind of vibe, but run through the menace of a black metal band.

The lyrics are sung/growled, but unlike a lot of growled vocals, there are only a few words and they are stretched and held for several beats.  It’s a weird thing to hear the demon voice hold notes and actually sound like it is singing!

Interspersed within the ponderous heaviness are some beautiful if not uplifting guitar melodies and soaring solos.  Until, that is, the very end when the song slows to a crawl… deep notes and ambient noise stretch out and the track ends with crackling silence.

It’s menacing, but after several listens, I’m hooked.

[READ: December 30, 2010] “Empire Records”

This is the second of the one page articles labelled “Something Borrowed.”  I have also never read anything by Mistry before.

A few months before leaving Bombay for Toronto, Mistry loaned a friend his LP of A Hard Day’s Night (this was circa 1975).  Albums were very important to him because his father ritualized the playing of the gramophone.  When they eventually progressed to 45s and LPs the family got into pop music and from there, obviously, The Beatles. (more…)

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