SOUNDTRACK: DIVINE FITS-“Would That Not Be Nice” (2012).
This song was KCRW’s Today’s Top Tune on August 13, 2012. Divine Fits are a supergroup of sorts with Spoon’s Britt Daniels, New Bomb Turks drummer Sam Brown and Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs member Dan Boeckner. When I heard who was in the band, I was pretty excited to hear the track. But I have to say that this sounds kind of like a over-polished Spoon song with keyboards. Daniels’ voice and musical style are individual enough that he pretty much dominates whatever he does. But at the same time, I feel like the jagged edges that make Spoon so interesting have been removed.
I assume that Boeckner is responsible for the keyboards and the interesting echo effect on the vocals. They add an interesting balance to Daniels, but this doesn’t excite me the way Spoon does.
[READ: August 10, 2012] “Signs and Symbols”
I discovered this story because in my post of Lorrie Moore’s “Referential” someone commented that her story was plagiarized from this one. I had intended to read this Nabokov story immediately so Moore’s would be fresh and I could lay down the “J’accuse.” It’s been a couple of months but I can say that while her story is obviously inspired by this Nabokov–to the point where she uses elements from this story in her own, it’s a different take on the same idea.
But before we do any comparison, let’s look at this story. The story begins by stating that for the fourth time in as many years, a young man’s parents don’t know what to take him for his birthday. The problem is that he is in an institution and many things are forbidden. And also, for their son man-made objects are either hives of evil or gross comforts–more on that shortly. They knew they couldn’t get him a gadget of any kind, so they settled on a basket with a set of colorful jellies. When they travel to him with the gift, everything goes wrong–the train breaks down, there are no busses, and when they finally get there, the nurses inform them that there has been an incident and he cannot see them now. So they return home with the jellies.
The story describes what is wrong with their son as referential mania. It’s an interesting situation, and an article about him had appeared in a scientific monthly. It says that the patient believes that everything happening around him is somehow related to himself. So clouds transmit details about him, trees talk about him, etc. And this was driving him crazy (obviously). He had even tried to kill himself via, what the doctor described as “a masterpiece of inventiveness.” (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: WOLF PARADE-At Mount Zoomer (2008).
This album made many best of lists of 2008. It is considered a side project of both Spencer Krug (of Sunset Rubdown) and Dan Boeckner (of Handsome Furs). I’d not heard of either band, but I was very intrigued by this disc and I’m so glad I got it.
I Just Read About That... 