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Archive for the ‘The Chills’ Category

Five Dials Number 32: New Zealand (1 June 2014)

Posted in Alice Miller, Art, Ashleigh Young, C.K. Stead, Craig Taylor, Death Cab For Cutie, Doublehappy, Essays, Five Dials, Francis Upritchard, John Ewen, Katherine Mansfield, Look Blue Go Purple, Lynn Jenner, Micah Ferris, New Zealand, Paul Ewen, Paula Morris, Pip Adam, Poetry, Roy Colbert, Sarah Laing, Stella Duffy, The Chills, The Verlaines, Tina Makereti, Tiny Desk Concert on April 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »

5dials32SOUNDTRACK: DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE-Tiny Desk Concert #430 (April 6, 2015).

dcfcIt’s hard for me to believe that Death Cab for Cutie had not been on a Tiny Desk Concert before.  But they are here at last.  Well, three of them anyhow.  It’s simply Ben Gibbard (of course) on vocals, Nick Harmer on bass, and Zac Rae on piano (now that Chris Walla has left).  And what makes this concert so special is that all 4 songs are played on piano–there’s no guitar at all.  It gives all of these songs (familiar and new) a much starker feel.  Not better, but very different.

There are two new song from Kintsugi, “Black Sun,” and “No Room In Frame” which sound so much like Death Cab for Cutie (probably because of Gibbard’s voice), that they fit in perfectly with the other two songs. “Your Heart Is An Empty Room” from Plans and “Passenger Seat” from Transatlanticism.

It’s a little uncomfortable watching Gibbard sing close ups with his eyes closed, but he sounds right on.  He says some nice words about NPR (a station they actually listen to for news) and he gets a nice round of applause when they say they’ll do a fourth song.  And Gibbard can even hit those high notes in this quiet setting.  This is a must hear for any fan of the band.

[READ: April 2, 2015] Five Dials 32

Issue Number 32 is a thematic one–based around the Australia & New Zealand Festival of Literature & Arts.  And so many of the writers and artists are from New Zealand.  There are dozens of paintings by Francis Upritchard: colorful watercolors of monkeys, monocolor paintings of people and colorful masks.  They all look incredibly simple–like first drafts–yet are quite effective in their displays.

A Letter from the Editor:  On New Zealand Issues
Craig Taylor didn’t have a letter last issue.  This time he talks about the issue and about issues in New Zealand. He talks a bit sadly about how the New Zealand writer most often find a home in London even if the writers mostly think about national (New Zealand) issues. (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999)

Posted in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Chris Knox, David Foster Wallace, Demons, Digression, Flash Fiction, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Harper's, Infinite Summer, John Krasinski, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Meta, Record Labels, Sex, Short Story, Smarty Pants, Snapper, Straightjacket Fits, Suicide, Superette, Supernatural, The 3Ds, The Bats, The Believer, The Chills, The Clean, Topless Women Talk About Their Lives, Violence on September 29, 2009| 1 Comment »

hideousSOUNDTRACK: TOPLESS WOMEN TALK ABOUT THEIR LIVES soundtrack (2006).

topI learned about this soundtrack from a very cool article in The Believer (the beginning of which is online here).  In the piece, the author claims to have never seen the film (he was given the soundtrack by a friend) and he doesn’t want  to change his associations with the music by watching the film.  And now, I too can say I have never seen the film, and likely never will.  And I really enjoy the soundtrack too.

The soundtrack is sort of an excuse to showcase a bunch of bands from New Zealand’s Flying Nun record label.  Featured artists are The 3DS, The Bats, The Clean, Superette, Snapper, The Chills, Straightjacket Fits, and Chris Knox.

It’s nigh impossible to give an overarching style to these songs.  Even when the bands have multiple songs on the soundtrack, they are not repetitive at all.  Even trying to represent a genre would be difficult.  The opener “Hey Suess” is almost a surf-punk song, while Chris Knox’s gorgeous “Not Given Lightly” is a stunning ballad.  There’s a cool shoe-gazer song “Saskatchewan,” and some great simple indie rock (a bunch of other tracks).

The only thing these bands have in common is that they’re all from New Zealand.  And as with any large body of land, no two bands are going to sound alike.  Nevertheless, all of the bands fall under the indie rock umbrella.  It’s a great collection of songs that many people probably haven’t heard.  It’s worth tracking down for the great collection of tunes and, if all you know about New Zealand is The Flight of the Conchords.

[READ: September 24, 2009] Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

After finishing Infinite Jest I wasn’t sure just how much more DFW I would want to read right away (of course, seeing as how I have now read almost all of his uncollected work, that is a rather moot point).  But when I saw that John Krasinski (of TV’s The Office) was making a film of this book, I had to jump in and read it again.

Obviously, there are many questions to be asked about this film ().  Is it going to be based on all the stories in the book?  (Surely not, some are completely unrelated).  Is it going to be just the interviews? (Probably, and yet there’s no overall narrative structure there).  And, having seen the trailer, I know structure is present.  I’m quite interested in the film.  In part because I didn’t LOVE the stories.  Well, that’s not quite right.  I enjoyed them very much, but since they weren’t stories per se, just dialogue, I’m not afraid of the stories getting turned into something else.  The text isn’t sacred to me, which may indeed make for the perfect set-up for a film.

Anyhow, onto the stories.

The obvious joke is that the author of Infinite Jest has created a book with “Brief” in the title!  But indeed, many of these stories are quite brief.  Some are only a couple of paragraphs (which true, from DFW that could still be ten pages).  But, indeed, most of the interviews in the book are brief too (except the final one in the book, which is nearly 30 pages).   (more…)

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