Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Spoon’ Category

Vladimir Nabokov–“Signs and Symbols” (New Yorker, May 15, 1948)

Posted in Divine Fits, Handsome Furs, Lorrie Moore, Marriage (Happy), Neurotics, New Bomb Turks, New Yorker, Spoon, Today's Top Tune on KCRW, Vladimir Nabokov, Wolf Parade on September 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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…)

Read Full Post »

D.B.S. Maxwell–“Beer Cans: A Guide for the Archaeologist” (Historical Archaeology, Vol 27, No. 1 1993)

Posted in Austin City Limits, Band of Horses, Beer, Broken Bells, D.B.S. Maxwell, Essays, Gogol Bordello, Historical Archaeology, History, LCD Soundsystem, Muse, Scholarship, Sonic Youth, Spoon, The Flaming Lips, Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer on November 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: AUSTIN CITY LIMITS FESTIVAL 2010 (on Palladia TV 2011).

Recently Palladia broadcast some highlights from the Austin City Limits Festival in 2010.  The bands they showed were Phish, The Flaming Lips, Vampire Weekend, Muse, LCD Soundsystem, Sonic Youth, Spoon and Slightly Stoopid.

There were so many good bands at this festival (why is Richard Thompson in such small print?) that I won’t really complain about the inclusion of Slightly Stoopid and LCD Soundsystem on this best of (but they could have included Band of Horses, Yeasayer, Broken Bells, Gogol Bordello (the list goes on!).  (I’d never heard of Slightly Stoopid and although I like LCD Soundsystem, live they were less than stellar).  Although I am glad they didn’t include the Eagles, thank you very much.

I’m trying to get actual set lists of these airings (they mentioned the song titles during the show but I didn’t write them down).

This was a 2-hour broadcast and it was really good.  If they re-air the episode, it’s worth watching.  The quality of the broadcast is excellent (even if the HD format does take up way too much space on a TiVo).

[READ: November 6, 2011] “Beer Cans: A Guide for the Archaeologist”

A while back I read a few old articles that I got from JSTOR, the online archiving resource.  This month, I received some links to three new old articles that are available on JSTOR.  So, since it’s the holiday weekend, I thought it would be fun to mention them now.

And to start of the holidays, I present you with this–a loving history of the beer can (for archaeologists).

This is a fairly fascinating look at the development of the beer can from 1935 to the present.  The selling point of the article is that archeologists could use beer cans to date the timeframe of an excavation.  I agree with this; however, since they only date back to 1935, I’m not entirely convinced of its long-term usefulness.

The problem with the article is that page two shows a chronological timeline.  This in itself is not a problem (although it is odd that it goes from present to 1935 instead of chronologically forward); the problem is that the article itself more or less sates exactly the same thing as the timeline.  For although this article is 20 pages long, there are tons of photos and very little in the way of text beyond what was in that (very thorough) time line.

Nevertheless, you can see the morphing of beer cans from ones that you had to pop open with a can opener to ones that finally had self opening cans.  See the switch from tin to aluminum, and even learn why the tops of cans are a little narrower than the sides (called a neck-in chime, it evidently saves a lot of money). (more…)

Read Full Post »

Pseudonymous Bosch–This Isn’t What It Looks Like (2010)

Posted in Adventure, Anachronisms, Children's Books, Fears, Marriage Trouble, Mystery, Peter, Bjorn & John, Pseudonymous Bosch, Smarty Pants, Spoon, Supernatural, Time Travel on December 22, 2010| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: SPOON-Transference (2010).

The first thing I think of when I think of this disc is staccato.  I’ve read that the disc sounds like a demo, which I don’t quite agree with, although it does sound very raw and spare (in the way the Peter, Bjorn and John’s Living Thing does).

Although the opener “Before Destruction” has a lot of guitars washing around, the dominant sound is a loud short chord and drum combination.  And from the second song on pretty much, things get very chunky.

“Is Love Forever?” has a riff based on tight military beat with guitar chords that match.  There’s very little in the way of extended notes or washes of sound.  “Mystery Zone,” an insanely catchy little ditty, has a similar staccato/spare sound.  Britt Daniel’s voice is pretty much the only instrument that holds a note for more than a beat.  (That’s not literally true, but it seems like it).  Meanwhile, “Who Makes  Your Money” is all drum beats and single keyboard notes.

It’s surprising that this spare musical accompaniment works so effectively, but it does.  Especially on “Written in Reverse” a predominantly pizzicato piano track that rocks in a maniacally-echoed fashion.  Or even more so on the 5 minute “I Saw the Light” which is basically drums and a propulsive bass.  There’s occasional guitar chords which build until the 2 minute mark, when a  3 minute minor chord piano & drum coda takes over.

“Good Night Laura” is a simple piano ballad (again with pizzicato piano chords), while the final song “Nobody Gets Me But You” is full of cacophonous piano runs, most of which sounding precariously on the verge of being random and out of tune, but which always manage to be weird and cool.

Spoon’s last album had a pretty big hit with “Don’t Make Me a Target” which was similar in style to these songs but which had more orchestration.  These songs feel like an attempt to strip away as much as possible and see what remains.  And I guess it’s a testament to the quality of the songs that it works.

[READ: December 1, 2010] This Isn’t What It Looks Like

Is it the nature of children’s books in the 21st century that they are all parts of a series?  Do authors write singular books with no plan of a sequel?  I don’t know.  And I’m not sure that I mind all that much.

This is the fourth book in the “Secret” series, and Bosch hasn’t lost any steam or quality for this part of the saga.  When we last left our heroes, Cass was in a “coma,” induced from eating a time traveling chocolate bar.  Max-Ernest has more or less given up speaking (which is impossible for him) because he feels so guilty about encouraging Cass to eat the chocolate.  And, Yo-Yoji, their erstwhile third member, is off in Japan with his family.  What is M-E to do?

Luckily for M-E, an old friend has returned to school, and he’s causing quite a stir.  Benjamin Blake (the awkward synesthetic artist from the first book) has returned from his finishing school.  He is polished and refined, he uses words like “chum,” and people seem to be well, interested, in him.  And most interesting of all (as only M-E knows), he seems to be able to read people’s minds!  And that’s just what M-E was hoping to do with Cass while she’s in the coma.

For Cass, you see, is “living” in the past.  In our time, she is in the coma, but her mind has traveled back in time to meet The Jester, the man who holds “The Secret” and the man who is her great- great- great- (etc) grandfather.  She is fully conscious in Renaissance times.  The big difference, though, is that she is invisible!  And, in a wonderful publishing joke (the kind of thing that Bosch does so well) all of the chapters that are about Cass are listed as negative (so the book starts with Chapter “-Ten”).  M-E’s chapters start at one, mind you, so you have positive and negative chapters which all converge at a hilarious interlude called Chapter Zero.

The bit about the Renaissance also works very well because their school is having its annual Renaissance Faire (I wish I went to THAT school!) which is sponsored by a theme restaurant which features jousting and medieval times (but which is not Medieval Times, ha ha–I love that everyone says how bad the burgers are but they love the experience).  The Ren Faire is a wonderful plot set-up because with Cass lost in “real” Renaissance, the parallels to the Ren Faire are very clever and often very funny.  (I also love that M-E keeps trying to explain that there is a big difference between Renaissance and Medieval but no one will listen).

And, indeed, cleverness is the word of the book (and the series).  Bosch is having continued great fun with word play (and footnotes!).  He also has some clever puzzles to solve.  The biggest one is the “Hint to the Secret” that the Jester leaves for Cass (and which even a fortune teller tells her about).  I was convinced I had the puzzle sorted out but I was wrong (and it was so obvious when it was revealed!).  And, there’s also a revelation as to the true identity of Pseudonymous Bosch (not the real life author, but the “author” of the books).  I had put a little of this together myself when reading the dialogue in M-E’s head.  But I won’t spoil the revelation of that.

The only secret I will reveal is to say that this is not the final book in the series.  For awhile it seemed like it was heading towards a conclusion.  But as we dramatically learn, there will be more adventures to come.  And that’s pretty cool.

I love an exciting series, but I especially love an exciting series that doesn’t talk down to its readers.  The footnotes and clever games are very fun and thought-provoking (there’s even two emails that are written in code that you need to decipher (unless you cheat and look in the appendix).  And speaking of the Appendix, there’s also a one-way staring contest and directions on how to make a camera obscura (which features in the book and seems like a fun project).

I honestly have no idea how nay books Bosch plans to write in this series (and I have no idea who Pseudonymous Bosch (the author) is for real.  It’s all part of the mystery that I enjoy quite a lot.

Read Full Post »

J. Torres & Eric Kim–Love as a Foreign Language Volume 2 (2007)

Posted in Arcade Fire, Beirut, Belle and Sebastian, Blonde Redhead, Cat Power, Conor Oberst, Culture Shock, Eric Kim, Foreign Books, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Graphic Novel, J. Torres, My Morning Jacket, Oni Press, Paul Westerberg, Riceboy Sleeps, Romance, Set at School, Sigur Rós, Spoon, Stuart Murdoch, The New Pornographers, The Replacements, TV on the Radio on January 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DARK WAS THE NIGHT-That Disc (2009).

The second disc in this set is a somewhat more raucous affair than the first (which was pretty much all acoustic performances).  On the surface, this seemed like the better disc of the two.  I like so many bands on this disc: Spoon, Arcade Fire, My Morning Jacket, The New Pornographers, Stuart Murdoch, Blonde Redhead.

And the disc starts out really great. The Spoon track, “Well Alright” may just be my favorite song on the whole compilation.  The Arcade Fire are typically great.  Beirut, whom I’d not heard before have a great track and My Morning Jacket’s song is very good, in a mellow sort of way.

From there, though, the disc kind of goes downhill. The Sharon Jones track is okay.  Dave Sitek’s (of TV on the Radio whom I love) track is fine.  It’s very basic, especially for him.  It has grown on me somewhat, but it’s nothing too exciting.  The New Pornographers track is catchy but nothing amazing.  Even the Stuart Murdoch (who has never done a bad track) song is mild at best.

But Riceboy Sleeps, which is a side project from the amazing Sigur Rós just kills the disc in its tracks.  The thing about Sigur Rós is that if you’re not in the mood for them, they are too ponderous by half.  So, in the midst of these kind of rocking songs, this 9 minutes ambient instrumental is just death.  And, it’s followed by a dreadful version of “amazing Grace” by the usually delightful Cat Power.

And then comes the Conor Oberst song.  This is the second song by him that I’ve listened to in a short period of time (the other was on Future Soundtrack of America).  And I just don’t get this guy’s appeal.  I feel like I must be a crotchety old man thinking this but I’ll say it: he sounds like a total knockoff of Paul Westerberg.  And the weird thing is, he sounds like a 19 year old P.W. singing the songs of the middle-aged P.W.  “Lua,” the track on here has some clever wordplay, but the melody of the song is pretty much note for note of The Replacements “Sadly Beautiful.”

And at this point in the disc I never even give Blonde Redhead and Kevin Drew a fair chance.

Track sequence means a lot, and I fear they do a disservice to the disc on this one.  I’m still a fan of Disc One and there’s a number of great tracks on Disc Two, but I was rather disappointed by this one.

[READ: December 22, 2009] Love as a Foreign Language Vol. 2

This volume concludes this engaging romance from Oni Press.

I was a little concerned as the volume opened because the Joel-Hana budding romance is derailed by a couple of silly misunderstandings.  (I was afraid we were heading towards TV-slapstick territory).  But, they proved to be just a few moments of comic relief in what was heading into a pretty emotional conclusion.

There’s also the sudden realization/crisis that his fellow teacher, the fun and flirty British woman also has a thing for Joel (what’s a guy to do with two women into him?  And realistically a British romance seems more feasible than a Korean one). (more…)

Read Full Post »

Michael J. Nelson–Mike Nelson’s Movie Megacheese (2000)

Posted in Boston, MA, Essays, Film & TV, Michael J. Nelson, MST3K, Spoon, Wilco on November 10, 2007| Leave a Comment »

megacheese.jpgSOUNDTRACK: SPOON-Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007).

gagaga.jpgThis record was heralded as the greatest thing ever when it was released. Every review I read tried to outdo the other reviews with praise for this record. I can be swayed by reviews, especially if everyone is in consensus of a CD. And, I had put Spoon on my short list of bands to check out, so why not check out the best record of the year?

Well, as it turned out I was really unimpressed with it when I put it on. The first song, “Don’t Make Me a Target” was really solid, but the rest sort of drifted away into a mist of meaninglessness. In fact, the repetitive riff of “The Ghost of You Lingers” made it impossible for me to think of anything but Bon Jovi’s “Runaway,” and I will forever curse them for that.

Usually, if I’m not that impressed with an album, I don’t listen to it that much. I try to give everything 3 or 4 listens to make sure, but if nothing clicks, then that’s it. For reasons that I won’t go into, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga got multiple airings in my house, and then, sometime around the 12th listen, it really clicked, and I got it. What’s especially weird about this is that it’s not even a very complicated album (usually some of those prog rock records take lots of listens to really get it), in fact many of the songs are downright minimalist. So what was the hold up? I have no idea.

I’m not willing to say it’s the best record of the year, or even that it’s my favorite recent record. But now that I found the key to it, I really do enjoy it, and I’m listening to it with new ears. It reminds me of a more commercial Wilco (the harder, rockier Wilco of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot). So if you’ve been put off by the hype of this record and aren’t impressed, let it sink in, maybe you’ll find it enjoyable too.

[READ: November 8, 2007] Movie Megacheese.

The most exciting thing that happened to me when I went to Boston College was that my cable TV selection improved vastly. I was exposed to the Comedy Channel or Ha! or whatever it was called before it turned into Comedy Central. And the best thing I had ever seen was Mystery Science Theater 3000. It had everything–cheesy movies, snarky comments, puppets, a silhouette on the bottom of the screen! It was amazing. My only regret was that I had missed so many seasons of it. Well, of course, silly me, Comedy Central is king of the reruns and soon, I too was circulating the tapes with the rest of them. (more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts