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Archive for the ‘Drug Church’ Category

Jhumpa Lahiri–“Brotherly Love” (New Yorker, June 10 & 17, 2013)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Arranged Marriage, Death, Drug Church, Excerpt, Jhumpa Lahiri, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Pregnancy, Racism, Short Story, Soundgarden, Travel, War on July 9, 2013| 1 Comment »

CV1_TNY_06_10_13Schossow.inddSOUNDTRACK: DRUG CHURCH-“Deconstructing Snapcase” (2013).

drugchurchYesterday I commented about another Drug Church song by saying I liked this one better.  What’s interesting is that this one is thirty seconds longer but seems shorter.

The song opens with big loud aggressive guitars (kind of early Soundgarden), but the vocals, which are screamed, are brighter that their other song, providing a  nice contrast.  But the thing that made me like this song more than “YouTube” is the fast bright guitar bridge, in which the guitars ring out in contrast to the heavy opening chords–it gives the song a lot of dynamics.

There’s a guitar solo, which surprised me for some reason, but it breaks up the song and reintroduces some of the earlier riffs.  It’s a good heavy song.

[READ: June 18, 2013] “Brotherly Love”

Lahiri has the last and longest story in this New Yorker issue that’s chock full of stories.  This one is some fifteen pages and is part of a novel.

I was gripped instantly by the story.  But I am glad that it is part of a novel as I feel there were parts of the beginning that seemed extraneous without more story to follow.  Or should I say, if it was just a short story, it could have been shorter.  The story is about two brothers, Subhash and Udayan.  Subhash is older by fifteen months but Udayan is the far more daring one.  Subhash is cautious and does everything his parents say, while Udayan flouts the rules at every opportunity.

The first transgression we see is when they climb the wall into the country club, where locals are pretty much excluded.  They were told they could get golf balls, so they hopped the fence and took what they could.  They also marveled at the manicured lawns and the beauty around them.  They returned regularly until they were caught–but luckily for them they were not turned in. (more…)

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Julie Hecht–“May I Touch Your Hair?” (Harper’s, July 2013)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Consumerism, Drug Church, Funny (ha ha), Harper's, Julie Hecht, Neurotics, NPR/PRI/PBS, Short Story, Summer, Unlikable main character, Unreliable narrator on July 8, 2013| Leave a Comment »

julySOUNDTRACK:DRUG CHURCH-“Reading YouTube Comments” (2013).

drugchurchI enjoyed the really noisy chaos of another Drug Church song that NPR played (“Deconstructing Snapcase”), but I really like the name of this one (although I can’t tell if it has anything to do with the lyrics–as the lyrics talk about walking with canes and using wheelchairs).

The song starts with thudding drums and angry vocals which are all about the singer’s ailments.  The chorus is fast and kind of repetitive, but fun to sing along to (decline, decline).  I enjoy the song for its aggressive, distorted sound–not quite metal, although I think it needs a bit more…something.

[READ: July 2, 2013] “May I Touch Your Hair?”

I recognized the name Julie Hecht but I couldn’t place her.  It was only after I read this whole story that I looked back at a review of something else I had read by her and I was pleased to see that I felt the exact same way about her narrator then as I did this time.

Hecht writes fiction with that seems like non-fiction.  Her narrator is first person and everything that she writes about seems very real–opinionated enough that you think she’s telling non-fiction.  Indeed, at times I had to confirm that it wasn’t simply an essay.

This story looks back at the narrator’s childhood.  Much of the story spends time at their beach house looking at all of the families who lived around them there.

There is not a lot to this story except really the narrator’s tone.  Little things come through like “Elinor was in her own upper-teenage world of grown-up girls in college.  She was studious as well as boy-crazy.”  That “boy-crazy” note is a bit of a judgment.  The narrator is very judgmental.  Like: “she got married at a young age, then made the mistake of having a baby right away.”  Or, “My mother told us she’d heard that Elinor had said to her three-year old child, ‘Your parents are young and want to go out, and you can’t expect us to be with you all the time.  We have our own lives.’  This was thought to be a bad thing to say to a child.”  I love that last line. (more…)

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