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Archive for the ‘NPR/PRI/PBS’ Category

826 NYC Art Show Catalog (2006)

Posted in Art, Gilmore Girls, History, J. Robert Lennon, Marcel Dzama, Mary Gaitskill, McSweeney's, NPR/PRI/PBS, Punks, Short Story, Sonic Youth, WHYY 90.9FM--Philadelphia, PA on April 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH on NPR [interviews and stories] (2006-2009).

While I was finding all of these awesome downloadable shows on NPR, I also found that there are hundreds of downloadable NPR stories about all kinds of bands.  But I was especially interested in the Sonic Youth ones because, well, I’m a fan of the band, but also because it seemed so incongruous to me to hear Peter Sagal introducing a story about Sonic Youth (with noise rock in the background).

The three downloadable shows cover the period from 2006-2008.  It’s no coincidence that this is the Rather Ripped period, where the band is at its most commercial.  And yet it is still pretty neat to hear them play samples of the noisier music as well.

The first one, A 25-Year Experiment in Artful noise (June 12, 2006) appeared on All Things Considered.  It is an interview from WHYY (but with the Peter Sagal intro!).  Joel Rose asks the band about their longevity as well as the history of their sound (this is where Thurston admits that their unusual tunings were because their crappy thrift store guitars sounded very bad in normal tuning).  This interview also revealed to me that Thurston and Kim were married in 1984.  I knew they were an item forever, but didn’t know they were official for that long.  Well done!

The interview also mentions their appearance on the beloved show The Gilmore Girls.  They watched the show with their daughter, Coco and heard Sonic Youth mentioned a few times (by cool chick Lane).  So they got in touch with the producers and were invited on set (I wonder if the actress who played Lane liked them as much as Lane did?).  And they played a fun “troubadour” version of one of their songs on the show (with Coco on bass).

The second download, Story of a ‘Kool thing’ (June 13, 2008) is more of an interview with David Browne, whose book Goodbye 20th Century:  A Biography of Sonic Youth, I have not read (although it sounds good).  This interview delves into their earlier music a bit more (how cool to hear Tom Violence on an NPR show–admittedly this show is The Bryant Park Project, so it’s not quite All Things Considered).  This segment is a general overview of the band’s history and of the book itself (but unlike the book, this offers snippets of music!)

The third one has a rather snarky title: “Turning ‘Sonic Youth’ Fans Into Readers” (January 27, 2009). It’s not so much about the band as it is about a book curated by Peter Wild called Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth.

It’s a brief segment which delves into the inspiration for the book and for Wild’s own story “Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style.”  There’s a strangely credulous tone to the whole piece which makes it seem like they don’t really like the book.  I’m curious about the book as there are a few well-recognized writers on board, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever get around to reading it (although Amazon sells used copies for $2.50).

Contributors include:

Hiag Akmakjian • Christopher Coake • Katherine Dunn • Mary Gaitskill • Rebecca Godfrey • Laird Hunt • Shelley Jackson • J. Robert Lennon • Samuel Ligon • Emily Maguire • Tom McCarthy • Scott Mebus • Eileen Myles • Catherine O’Flynn • Emily Carter Roiphe • Kevin Sampsell • Steven Sherrill • Matt Thorne • Rachel Trezise • Jess Walter • Peter Wild

[READ: April 18, 2011] 826 NYC Art Show Catalog

This item is always for sale pretty cheap at the McSweeney’s site.  It recently was marked down to $3 so I figured I’d check it out.  This is a collection of art prints.  Each one is on a stocky paper just under  8 1/2″ x 11″.  The prints are reproduced beautifully (there’s about an inch and a half border (making them suitable for framing).  The back side of the print has a review of the print.  And, most amusingly, the reviews are by 6 to 8 year olds.

The art is hard to summarize, as it covers a lot of ground.  There’s a ton of different styles as well, from straight ahead photography to line and pencil drawing to painting.  These artists each have one page: (more…)

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The Best American Comics 2006 (2006)

Posted in Africa, Alex Robinson, Alison Bechdel, All Songs Considered, Anarchy, Ander Nilson, Ben Katchor, Books about music, Books about writers, Boredom, Bust, Canadian Content, Chris Ware, Collecting, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Culture Shock, David Heatley, David Lasky, Death, Depression, Dreams, Drinking, Drugs, Esther Pearl Watson, Excerpt, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Ghosts, Gilbert Shelton, Graphic Novel, HOB, Ivan Brunetti, Jaime Hernandez, Jesse Reklaw, Joe Sacco, Joel Priddy, John Porcellino, Jonathan Bennett, Justin Hall, Kim Deitch, Kurt Wolfgang, LGBTQ, Lilli Carré, Lloyd Dangle, Lynda Barry, Military, Olivia Schanzer, R. Crumb, Rebecca Dart, Rick Geary, Seth Tobocman, Sex, Short Story, Sonic Youth, Supernatural, Tom Hart, War, World Cafe Live on April 20, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH on World Cafe, August 21, 2006 (2006).

Travelling back even further on the NPR timeline, Sonic Youth appeared on World Cafe in 2006 to promote Rather Ripped.

This is a brief session (only three songs) but as with the interview with Thurston Moore, David Dye does another great interviewing the band here.  Although it must be said that saying the band is once again a four piece (when clearly there are five people in the picture and in the studio and when he later says two guitars, two basses and drums–which I also think is incorrect, as I’m pretty sure Kim switched to guitars at this point, although I don’t know if she did during this set) is not a great way to start the interview.

Facts aside, the interview is informative and interesting and provides a glimpse into the band’s psyche all these years into their career.

The set is also good (although Thurston’s voice sounds a little off on the opener “Incinerate”).  The surprising thing about the set is that even with the five of them, the feeling is one of restraint. True, the songs on Rather Ripped are not as noisy as previous records, but this feels like they are trying not to wake anybody up the NPR folks.  It’s a weird feeling for a Sonic Youth set, but the plus side to it is that you can really hear everything clearly.

The other two songs are sung by Kim: “Jams Run Free” and “What a Waste” (why do they never promote any of Lee’s songs??).  And there’s the very amusing comment that the first time they played “What a Waste” Thurston and Kim’s daughter said it sounded like the theme from Friends.  Ha!

[READ: April 15, 2011] The Best American Comics 2006

I just recently learned about this series from The Best American line of books.  I had known about the Best American Short Stories and Essays and even Non-Required Reading (which I have not yet read).  But once I found out about the best comics, I knew I had to check it out.

The first issue came out in 2006.  The series editor is Anne Elizabeth Moore and the Guest Editor for this volume was Harvey Pekar.  Each of them has an introductory essay in the book.  To me the amazing thing about Pekar”s essay is how aggressively defensive he sounds (a sort of, “you may not like this one, but try this one” attitude) about these comics and comics in general.  I don’t know much about Pekar’s work.  I know he’s a kind of underground icon, but I seem to have missed him.  My impression of him is that this sort of antagonistic/defensive attitude seems to go along quite well with his comics, so I guess that makes sense, but I didn’t find it very welcoming.

But that’s okay, because I really enjoyed the comics.  And quite a few were by artists that I had never read before, which is even better! (more…)

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The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis (2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Anarchy, End of the World, Funny (ha ha), Futurama, Graphic Novel, Matt Groening, Meta, Short Story, Sonic Youth, Supernatural, Technology, The Simpsons, Threats, Thurston Moore, Time Travel, World Cafe Live on April 19, 2011| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: THURSTON MOORE-World Cafe Studio, November 16, 2007 (2007).

This World Cafe set is a nice contrast to the all-acoustic performance mentioned yesterday (even if it was recorded earlier).  Thurston has a full band with him (including Steve Shelly on drums).  Samara Lubelski from the other session is here too.  The band brings new dimensions to what are mostly the same set of songs.  Both sets included “The Shape is in a Trance,” and “Fri/End” but this one also includes “Honest James.”  The contrast is striking though.  The songs are bigger with the band (and allow for more intricacies) but they are still intimate.

  The interview is also interesting.  David Dye is a fantastic interviewer and he gets some great (and funny) answers out of Thurston. The whole description of how the lyrics to “Fri/End” came about is really cool (if unlikely).

Thurston and NPR: perfect together.

[READ: April 15, 2011] The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis.

This was a wonderful Christmas surprise from Sarah this year.  It is a beautifully packaged (slipcase with a cut-away opening) hardcover edition of the 2002 & 2005 Simpson/Futurama crossover comics issues.

Despite all of my fondness for The Simpsons and Futurama, I never really got into the comics (gotta draw a line somewhere).  But they have Matt Groening’s seal of approval, and they play jokes with things that the show never really touches (not to mention, the shows never tries a crossover event–I can’t even imagine how that would work). (more…)

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Jonathan Franzen–“Farther Away” (New Yorker, April 18, 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Birds, Books about writers, Daniel Defoe, David Foster Wallace, Death, Essays, Fears, Guitar Player, Harper's, Jonathan Franzen, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, Memoirs, Nature, New Yorker, Orson Scott Card, Sarah Vowell, Smarty Pants, Sonic Youth, Suicide, Thurston Moore, Travel on April 18, 2011| 4 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: THURSTON MOORE-in studio at KEXP, March 11, 2008 (2008).

This interview was headlined ‘Thurston Moore: Not a “Real Guitar Player”?’ which is pretty funny.  The Sonic Youth guys have been defying conventional guitar playing for years.  And then in 2008 Thurston put out a solo album called Trees Outside the Academy, a beautiful delicate album of acoustic guitar songs.

The interview covers this very subject and concludes that maybe back when they started he wasn’t a guitar player, but now, 25 years later, he certainly is.  Moore is charming and funny and relates a very amusing story about being on the cover of Guitar Player and then embarrassing himself in front of one of his idols.

But this download is all about the songs.  Thurston (and violinist Samara Lubelski–who plays great accompaniment, but doesn’t really get any on air time to speak) play four songs from Trees: “Sliver>Blue,” “The Shape is in a Trance,” “Frozen Gtr” and “Fri/End.”  He sounds great in this setting, especially under close scrutiny.  I’d always assumed that there was a lot of improv in the SY guitar world, so to hear him play these (admittedly not difficult) songs flawlessly is pretty cool.  I actually wondered if he’d be hesitant (he admits the acoustic guitar is a fairly new thing for him), but not at all (although he says he screwed up on a chorus, but I never heard it.

It’s a great set and its fun to hear Thurston so casual.

[READ: April 14, 2011] “Farther Away”

The subtitle of this essay is “‘Robinson Crusoe,’ David Foster Wallace, and the island of solitude.”  As with Franzen’s other recent essays, this one is also about birding.

Franzen explains that he is hot off the work of a book tour (for Freedom) and is looking for some solitude.  He decides to travel by himself to the island of Alejandro Selkirk, a volcanic mass off the coast of Chile.  The island is named after Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish explorer who is considered the basis for Robinson Crusoe.  As such, Franzen decides to travel to the remote island, decompress and read Robinson Crusoe while he’s at it.  The locals call the island Masafuera.

I haven’t read Robinson Crusoe as an adult, so I don’t know the ins and outs of the story.  Franzen has a personal resonance with the story because it was the only novel that meant anything to his father (which must say something about Franzen’s father, no?).  The upshot of what it meant to Franzen’s father was that his father took him and his brother camping a lot as a way to get away from everything.

However, for Franzen, on his first experience of being away from home for a few days (at 16 with a camping group), he had terrible homesickness.  He was only able to deal with the homesickness by writing letters.

When he arrives on Masafuera, Franzen’s writing really takes off.  He has some wonderful prose about this treacherous space.  Although he comes off as something of a yutz for relying on a Google map to learn about the terrain and for bringing an old GPS which has more or less run out of battery. (more…)

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Harry Stephen Keeler–The Riddle of the Traveling Skull (1934) [THE COLLINS LIBRARY No. 4 (2005)]

Posted in Agatha Christie, All Songs Considered, Best Coast, Black Flag, Death, Funny (strange), Harry Stephen Keeler, McSweeney's, Mystery, Poetry, Punks, The Collins Library, Wavves on April 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: WAVVES-Live at the 9:30 Club (2010).

Wavves opened for Best Coast (what a great double bill).  Wavves play a raucous, rowdy set of bratty punk.  Unlike Best Coast, the lead singer seems like he might be something of a jerk.  But it played pretty well into the personality of the music (sloppy, abrasive).  And I wonder just how many times he said he was drunk?

Personalities aside, the was a really fun set.  I have the newest Wavves album, but I think their live show was more engaging.  For all of their sloppiness, the band was always together, with no missed notes (except when the drummer was apparently not paying attention).

They play 16 songs, including a cover of Black Flag’s “Nervous Breakdown” (which the play very well).  And even if you’re not won over by the singer’s personality (which is kind of funny), you’ll be won over by the simple, punky music.  You can listen here.

[READ: March 29, 2011] The Riddle of the Traveling Skull

This is the 4th book in McSweeney’s Collins Library Series.  It’s the final book in the series that I’ve read and I have to say that once again, Paul Collins has blown me away with this selection.  Collins apparently stopped his library after 6 volumes.  I wondered if there were more coming, but the Collins Library website is rather confusing.  There’s an almanac with updates as recent as March 1st, and yet the Biography of Paul Collins says: Paul Collins is currently on tour in support of his memoir, Sixpence House, which recounts his time spent living in the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye, known as the “Town of Books.”  But Sixpence House came out in 2003 (and it sounds awesome!).

Anyhow, back to this book, which was my favorite of the bunch.  It is a genuine mystery from 1939.  Indeed, Harry Stephen Keeler was even more prolific than Agatha Christie (they were born in the same year).  The thing about Keeler though is that his stories are, well, crazy.  Many of his stories were just his attempts to meld disparate ideas into one story.  He includes crazy dialect.  He seems to have no concern for conventional storytelling.  Indeed, he has little concern for conventional mystery storytelling (in one of his stories, he introduced the murderer on the last page).

And this story has similar improbable elements.

In sum: Clay Calthorpe, a salesman returning from the Philipines picks up the wrong bag on the trolley.  When he gets home he finds a skull inside it.  The skull has a name plate affixed to it, a bullet inside it and, in the wads of paper that are keeping the bullet from rattling around, he finds the carbon copy of a poem. (more…)

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Ransom Riggs–Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2011) [prepub]

Posted in All Songs Considered, Anachronisms, Culture Shock, Death, Demons, Dreams, Fears, Fleet Foxes, Ghosts, History, Mental Floss, Nazis, Oddities, Photo Essays, Quirk Books, Ransom Riggs, Supernatural, Time Travel on April 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FLEET FOXES-Live at The Black Cat, Washington, DC, July 7, 2008 (2008).

I still love the Fleet Foxes debut album, and I listen to it quite often.  One of the most impressive aspects of the band is their amazing harmonies.  So how does a band that is so vocal-centric perform live?

In an interview included with the concert, Bob Boilen asks that question.  They explain that the bigger venues are a bit harder because they have to crank up their monitors.  They also try to stay close to each other to be able to hear the harmonies clearly.  Well, they did something right because the harmonies sound very impressive here.

The main problem comes because lead singer Robin Pecknold is sick.  As in, just getting over a major cold, sick. As in, he admits that their last few shows were something of a rip off for the attendees.  Tonight’s show, he says is half a ripoff.  And that is most evident in my favorite Fleet Foxes song, “Mykonos” in which Pecknold’s voice cracks with abandon.  I would feel bad for the audience if the band wasn’t so personable and friendly and generally cool.  They make the best of a rough situation, and again, the backing vocals sound fantastic.

There are also a ton of delays in this show.  Most of them seem technical, although there seems to be a lot of tending to Pecknold’s voice, too.  But as I said, the band is engaged with the audience, telling stories (someone in the band is from DC and he asks if anyone went to high school there), and generally keeping everyone entertained.  It’s probably not their best show ever, but it still sounds great.  You can listen and download at NPR.

[READ: March 27, 2011] Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Quirk Books, publishers of mash-ups like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (as well as many other, well, quirky, titles) has published this fantastically exciting novel.

The cover depicts a creepy girl who is hovering off the ground.  But the girl herself is SO creepy that I didn’t even notice the hovering part.  She is just one of the peculiar children within the book.  And this picture is one of 50 included within the book (I’m only bummed that two pictures were not available in my copy).

So the story opens with Jacob Portman talking about his grandfather.  His grandfather (Abe) was a young boy in Poland during the 1940s.  When the Nazi’s invaded, his family was killed and he was sent to Wales, to the titular Miss Peregrine’s Orphanage (not widely known as a home for peculiar children).  But as details emerge from his grandfather’s version of the tale, things seem not right.

Abe talks about the monsters that chased him out of Poland–but he wasn’t describing Nazis, he was describing actual monsters, with multiple tongues and horrifying faces.  They followed him to Wales and were actually chasing him to that very day, in America.  And when he talked about Miss Peregrine’s house, he talked about the special kids who live there: the girl who could call forth fire out of thin air, the girl who could levitate, and the boy who had bees living inside of him.

Of course, that was all nonsense, just post traumatic stress from being attacked by Nazis, right?

That explanation works until the night that Abe is murdered.  He calls Jacob for help (they think he is going senile).  When Jacob gets to his house, he finds the screen door torn open and Abe missing.  The follow a trail and find Abe, bleeding in the woods.  Jacob thinks he can see the same kind of monster that Abe had always described lurking right nearby in the woods.  Although Jacob’s friend (who drove them to Abe’s house), didn’t see anything.

And now, Jacob’s dreams are plagued by scary monsters.  And he can’t get his grandfather’s cryptic last words out of his head.  Time to see a therapist, obviously. (more…)

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Darin Strauss–Half a Life (2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Black Mountain, Black Sabbath, Canadian Music, Darin Strauss, Death, Diamanda Galas, McSweeney's, Memoirs, Short Books on April 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BLACK MOUNTAIN-Live at the Rock n Roll Hotel, Washington DC, February 19, 2008 (From NPR) (2008).

I’ve really enjoyed the two Black Mountain CDs that I have (I’ve yet to hear their debut). Their blend of psychedelia and Black Sabbath is always interesting, especially when singer Amber Webber adds her great harmonies (and leads) to the proceedings.

So it’s astonishing that Webber herself is the sole reason that I can’t listen to this show.

The band sounds great.  The musicians are right on, and the energy is good. But I can’t imagine what possessed Webber to sing the way she does.  At the end of every sung line, she ends with a vibrato that is not so much vibrato as it is staccato.  I thought it was an odd affectation to increase the psychedelicness of the first song, but she does it on every track, even when she sings lead!

Holy cow, is it ever annoyin-in-in-in-in-ing.

There are tracks when she doesn’t participate, and those are fine.  There’s also a song that is mostly instrumental and that sounds great.  But as soon as she starts singing, the whole thing goes downhill.  She doesn’t sing like that on the records, so what ever made her think that was a wise choice for a live show?   To add a really obscure reference, she sounds not unlike Diamanda Galás during her Plague Mask recordings–but that was an operatic style befitting her over the top recording.  It simply doesn’t work here.

Even Bob Boilen, normally an ecstatic reviewer of the shows he hosts seems put out by them.  He says that the band never set up a rapport with the audience.  That’s not exactly true as they do thank everyone for coming out on a Tuesday night.  But there didn’t seem to be a lot of warmth shared between everyone.

Stick to the studio albums!

[READ: March 19, 2011] Half a Life

This book is a memoir by novelist Darin Strauss.  And it opens with the fairly shocking revelation: when he was 18, he killed a girl.  She was a fellow classmate in the grade below his.

He and some friends were driving to a of social event (they were all sober).  She was riding her bike with some friends on the same road.  He saw her, but he was in the left lane, so he wasn’t too concerned and then suddenly she swerved over two lanes and into his windshield.  She died soon after.

He was completely absolved of all blame: police, eyewitnesses, even her family (oh my god, her family), everyone agreed that it was not his fault at all, there was nothing he could have done.  And yet, as he puts it, because of where he was, a girl is now dead.

The rest of the book details how, at 18, one can learn to cope (or not) with the unthinkable.   He has to finish school and prom with all of the kids in his small Long Island town who know that he killed a classmate.  He also can’t stop thinking about her and wonders how he can go on with his life when she won’t be able to do the same.

It’s an emotionally riveting story and I was utterly empathetic.  Not that I’ve had any kind of experience like that, but (especially) now that I have children, I can’t imagine how I would react to such news.  And since Strauss is a sensitive individual I can imagine at how that would eat away at you forever.

By the second half of the book, something newly unthinkable has happened; her family is suing him for $1 million.  Which he obviously doesn’t have.  This trial–and remember he has been exonerated by everyone–lasts on and off for 5 years, all during his college.  And, of course, this isn’t something you tell people–he doesn’t want anyone at college to think of him as a killer–so there’s pretty much no one he can talk to.

The events of the story happened in the 80s.  Strauss has gone on to be a succesful novelist (although I hadn’t heard of him before this book). He also has a family of his own.  Writing this book was his way of trying to cope with this incident that really defined his life.

It’s hard to say much more about the book.  It is really powerful and a simply horrifying thing to consider.  Strauss is a very good writer who never plays for sympathy (he even sides with her family in the beginning). The book is also a remarkably fast read.  Many of his chapters are one or two paragraphs, and you can finish it in a couple of hours.  But that’s also because the story is so gripping.

For ease of searching I include: Diamanda Galas

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Mary Gaitskill–“The Other Place” (New Yorker, February 14 & 21, 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Butthole Surfers, Death, Drinking, Fears, Mary Gaitskill, Mayyors, New Yorker, Pregnancy, Short Story, The Jesus Lizard, Threats, Unlikable main character, Violence on March 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MAYYORS: 3 EPs (online only) (2008-2009).

I learned about Mayyors from the NPR’s Best Metal and Outer Sounds releases of 2009 on All Songs Considered.  I enjoyed Viking’s picks for 2010 quite a bit so I thought I’d investigate his previous years’ selections.  I’d never heard of Mayyors before, but he makes the band sound so intriguing (and dirty).

The write up is so wonderfully enigmatic that I had to find the tracks online.  I mean, how can you pass up this:

This is a plea to Mayyors: If you’re going to release one of the ugliest pieces of noise rock this side of The Jesus Lizard, please start issuing your music in editions bigger than David Yow’s beer gut. After a couple of ripped 7″ singles made the rounds on blogs last year, those seeking the puss-popping skronk of Mayyors scavenged message boards and listservs to get their hands on the next limited affair. (After all, these Sacramento-based dudes don’t have a Web site or any known email addresses. Punk rock, I guess.) The Deads 12″ EP significantly dirties the rock gene pool with nauseating feedback and power chords dumber than the actual mud driven over the orange covers. Once again, Google is your friend.

That link to Google is the only way I was able to find these songs.

So Mayyors have released three EPs since 2008.  Each had a pressing of about ten copies, apparently.  You really can’t find any information about them online.  I don’t even understand how the band plays shows since their total recorded output is about 2o minutes long.  But I was able to get all 9 songs.

Having said all, that I don’t always like the music.  It hurts your head. The general sound is really downtuned sludge rock.  It’s not squealy feedbacky noise, it’s just distorted guitars played very loud and fast with vocals that are pretty incomprehensible (with lots of echo!). I have no idea what he’s singing about.  I’m sure it’s not very nice.  But I feel like their music would be even more subversive if they sang about love and kindness (or like the cover of Megan’s LOLZ: unicorns and rainbows).

The first EP: Marines Dot Com has two tracks “Metro” (3:08) and “Fatigure” (3:35).  “Metro” reminds me a lot of early Butthole Surfers.  “Fatigure” has a discernible riff (which is of course very downtuned.  It’s entirely possible they have only a guitar and a bass.  About half way through, the song changes into a noise-fest.  Of course, nearly 4 minutes of noise is pretty tough to handle.  Especially since the noise is sludgy and loud loud loud.

The middle EP, Megan’s LOLZ, is my favorite.  Three songs: “Intro” (0:59), “Airplanes” (3:23), “White Jeep” (2:18).  The noise and sludge is still there, but you can actually hear nascent riffs under all the noise. It also seems a little crisper (or something), which makes the tracks stand out a little more.

“Intro” actually plays around with different kinds of noise, suggesting they’re in for something new on this EP (of course, it’s still buried under noise and sludge).  “Airplanes” has another discernible riff, although it does sound like it’s recorded in an airplane hangar.  “White Jeep” has a similar (if not the same) riff, but it plays a bit more with feedback and genuinely piecing noises.  (There’s even a  kind of guitar solo).

The latest EP, the one that Viking likes, is called Deads.  It has four songs: “The Crawl” (1:41), “Ghost Punch” (1:41) “Clicks (2:42) and “Deads” (2:53).  And as he describes above, the cover does appear to have been driven over by a muddy truck.

This album is a bit more “polished” (how dare anyone use that word).  In fact the sludge doesn’t really get put onto “The Crawl” until about 50 seconds in.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a sludgy mess, but you can sort of tell what instruments there are and that there’s a guy singing.   “Ghost Punch” sounds a bit more death metal-like than their other songs, although it’s so tinny, it sort of transcends the genre somewhat.  “Clicks” seems to be the song of choice for examples of what Mayyors can do.  It’s got intense delay, squealing noises and a vocal melody! (Do I hear screams of sellout?).  Hear it and “The Crawl” here.  “Deads” actually has staccato notes in the opening, but it’s all sludge from there.

And then there’s silence.  Blissful silence.  Mayyors: Not for the sensitive.

[READ: March 5, 2011] “The Other Place”

Mary Gaitskill is generally acknowledged as a master short story writer.  I haven’t read all that much by her.

I’m not sure if her stories are all as dark as this one, but man this is quite dark, indeed.  It’s about a man and his son.  Well, actually it begins with the son.  He is into guns. Like really into guns. He draws them, he makes stories about them, he plays guns outside even if they don’t have guns.  He also loves violence on TV, especially if it’s funny.  The boy is thirteen.

When I read the story, I initially thought that the father was upset or worried about this gun fascination, because he opens the story with “How did this happen?”  But he seems to know how this happened: “The way everything does, of course.  One thing follows another, naturally.”

And so, with the wrong impression, I couldn’t quite understand why the father was so surprised by the son’s behavior because as the father relates his own past, it’s pretty full of violence itself.  Indeed, as it progresses, it seems like the son inherited all of his father’s traits. (more…)

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Peter Lerangis–The Sword Thief [The 39 Clues, Book Three] (2009)

Posted in Adventure, Airlines, All Songs Considered, Children's Books, Culture Shock, Eoin Colfer, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Peter Lerangis, Short Books, Technology, The Head and the Heart, Threats, Travel, TSA, Violence on March 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE HEAD AND THE HEART-“Winter Song” (2010).

Sarah intended to get this disc for me for Christmas.  But evidently Sub Pop bought out the disc and put it out of print.  It’s now available as a download.  But a personal email from Sub Pop headquarters said they’d be releasing the disc in physical format sometime in April.  (Yay!)

This is a beautiful folk song which features wonderful harmonies.  It’s a simple guitar-picked song.  It opens with a male vocalist who sounds very familiar (I can’t quite place who he sounds like), but the end of the verse has a beautiful, brief blast of multi-part harmony.  The second verse is by a different vocalist (he sounds close to the first, I only noticed he was different after a few listens). The final verse is by a female vocalist which comes as a wonderful surprise as her voice brings a whole new shape to the sound.

The harmonies continue throughout the song and really flesh it out.  There’s not a lot to the song itself: a simple verse/chorus structure, but the execution and vocals are really lovely.

[READ: February 21, 2011] The Sword Thief

I can’t believe it has been five months since I read Book Two of this series.  It wasn’t for lack of enjoyment, sometimes other books get in the way!  But now that I’ve jumped back in, I’m in for a while (I’ve already started book 4).

One thing that I wanted to point out before talking about the book itself, was the way the various destinations are described in the book.  While I haven’t been to all (or really any) of the locations described, I have seen enough (in books and online) to know that the authors aren’t simply placing the kids in a generic location that pretends to be a city.  They really try to give each environment a full-bodied realism.  And I hope that young readers can really appreciate the sights and smells of the different countries.  It’s especially effective in Egypt (in book 4), but Tokyo really comes to life and Korea, although not fully explored, really shows the rural regions well.  Maybe this will encourage people to travel, but if not at least it’s instructive that not every place looks the same.

What I especially liked about this book is that the kids form a (brief) alliance (or two).  The first two books emphasized how all of the different family lines were in such competition with each other for the clues.  And, obviously that is the point of the books.  But it would be very tedious to simply have them run from place to place being chased by the different families.  So in this one, the kids form an alliance with Alistair Oh.  Better than that though is that Lerangis gives a detailed background of Alistair which makes him a more sympathetic, human character (even if we don’t fully trust him). (more…)

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Zadie Smith–3 book reviews (Harper’s, March 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Beck, Blur, Book Reviews, Cornershop, Harper's, Harvey Danger, Javier Marias, Jeff Buckley, Johnny Cash, Lauren Hill, Missy Elliot, My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Portlandia, Sebadoh, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Smashing Pumpkins, Thomas Bernhard, Zadie Smith on March 9, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: The 90’s Are Back, Or Whatever… NPR.  (2011).

This is a 90 minute podcast about the music of the 90s.  And, of course, it opens with “The Dream of the 90s” from Portlandia.

I don’t listen to too many full discussions on the All Songs Considered site, but since the 90s were definitely my favorite era of music, I thought it was worth a listen.  Incidentally, it’s funny that the 90s are so meaningful to me when, really I should be a child of the 80s.  But in reality, my 80s music was mostly heavy metal, because I hated all pop radio then.

This radio show (available for free download here) features four NPR music geeks talking about the music they loved during the 90s.  There are some obvious points (“Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “1979,” “Song 2,” “Loser”), but some unexpected songs as well: “Grace” (Jeff Buckley), “Long Snake Moan” (PJ Harvey).  And of course, probably the biggest surprise: Sebadoh’s “Soul and Fire as “song of the decade.”

The hosts have a lot of fun with bad songs (severe bashing on Collective Soul or hilariously cueing up “Can’t Touch This” to punk one of the speakers when they are talking about Missy Elliot–yup, it’s not all alt rock, Missy Elliott and Lauren Hill crop up along with Johnny Cash and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan).

But let’s not forget my perennial favorite from Cornershop: “Brimful of Asha.”  And, yes, My Bloody Valentine.

These days, when I do listen to the radio, I find that the stations I prefer tend to play a lot of 90s songs, but it’s surprising to me how infrequently they play some of these really big artists (I hear a lot of Harvey Danger, but no My Bloody Valentine).  It’s funny that one of the songs they talk about, Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” I actually heard coming out of a radio at a pool while on vacation in Florida this past January (!?!).

It’s a fun segment and makes me think that although I do like a lot of new music, I’m a gonna hafta retire to Portland.

P.S. Stay till the end of the show for the hilarious impersonation of Trent Reznor.

[READ: February 17, 2011] 3 book reviews

Zadie Smith is an author whose output I fully intend to ingest one of these days.  So I figured why not read a few of her book reviews, too.

Smith reviews three new titles: Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America, by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts; My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard; and While the Women are Sleeping by Javier Marías.

I’m intrigued by her review of Harlem is Nowhere.  She seemed to be rather critical of the author, especially of her mannerisms: like calling James Baldwin’s “habit of speaking to Harlem folk, having experiences, and deriving from these encounters “a metaphor about all of black existence”–“The Jimmy.”  (where others might have simply called it “writing”).  Or the fact that the author describes herself as a “single girl” as if that has anything to do with anything.

The second half of the review concedes that once you abandon wanting to known anything precise about historical Harlem, it’s a lovely book.  Smith revels in learning about James VanDerZee, Raven Chanticleer and Alexander Gumby (and her enthusiasm makes me want to investigate this book, if not their own works).

So, despite initial criticisms, she ends the review very positively and gives a thumbs up to the work. (more…)

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