SOUNDTRACK: NADA SURF-The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy (2012).
Nada Surf continues to put out poppy guitar rock. I tend to link them with Guster, in that they write really catchy pop songs about unexpected things. The songs are usually fast, but they also writes some slower songs too. They would make a good double bill.
This album with the wonderful title is 38 minutes long, a perfect light summer album. If you don’t get “Waiting for Something” (which I agree is repeated waaay too often in the chorus) stuck in your head, then you haven’t been listening to this record.
All ten songs feature bouncy guitars (except “When I Was Young” which opens as a slow ballad), although even this song, after about 2 minutes, calls forth loud electric guitars. There are some elements that show the band “maturing”–strings on “When I Was Young” horns on “Let the Fight Do the Fighting.” But one of the songs references Gilligan’s Island, so they’re not maturing too much.
And some of the songs sound like throwbacks to other eras too, the 60s guitar intro of “Jules and Jim,” the R.E.M. ish intro of “Waiting for Something.” It’s a great album, fun, catchy and perfect for driving.
[READ: July 24, 2012] Emmaus
I had no idea who Alessandro Baricco was when I got this book as part of my Book of the Month deal with McSweeney’s. But I’ve never been disappointed by one of their new books before, so it was worth checking out.
The book is short–134 pages–and is novella length, which is the perfect length for this story. [I had just read about Jim Harrison and his novellas, and I believe that there needs to be more novellas published]. This book was originally written in Italian and was translated by Ann Goldstein.
There is a prologue which is completely exciting and absolutely wonderful. It’s only a page and a half, but it is intriguing, funny, deep and, most of all, really surprising.
The opening of the book doesn’t quite match the excitement of the prologue, but that’s because this novella has two aspects–deep, thoughtful introspection and base, animal instinct. And Baricco/Goldstein does an excellent job keeping the flow and continuity going between these two very different writing extremes.
The book reminds me of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides for two reasons. One: it is written about a group of boys and is written in the second person plural (at least the beginning is) and two: they are all watching a girl who is beyond their ken–someone of their world but not, someone who is en route to hurt herself. And there’s nothing they can do about it.
But this book is entirely its own. There are four boys who make up the initial “we” (and when it diverges from plural to singular, you really feel the loss of the other boys). And so the book starts: “We’re all sixteen or seventeen years old, but we aren’t really aware of it.” The four boys are good boys–Catholic (and believers, at that), who play in the church band, who volunteer removing catheters at the poor person’s hospital and who plan to not have sex before marriage (heavy petting is okay but it never goes too far). The four boys are: the narrator, whose name is never given I don’t think; Luca, whose father is rumored to be suicidal; Bobby, the most outgoing of the bunch and The Saint, a very pious young man who has designed for the priesthood and who is not afraid to be seen as more pious than you. (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: MO PHILLIPS-“Big Red Truck” (2012).
This track was number two on the OWTK March 2012 playlist. This song has a kind of late X, or maybe The Knitters kind of feel–male and female vocals with a heavy bassline and a slightly ominous feel–although it is just about a big red truck. I like t he song a lot, but I’m not sure if my kids would.
I Just Read About That... 