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Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category

Nell Zink–“Make Me Live” (Harper’s, March 2015)

Posted in Canadian Music, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Excerpt, Harper's, Huh?, Joe Jackson, LGBTQ, Meatloaf, Nell Zink, Poetry, Poets, Rheostatics, Rush, Set at School, tagged on March 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »

harp marchSOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Ted’s Wrecking Yard Toronto, ON, (March 25, 2000).

tedsThis was the sixth and final night of Green Sprouts Music Week–the band’s annual residency at Ted’s Wrecking Yard.  Sadly this is the only night that is up on the site, but man, is it a good one.  The band played for over two and a half hours and they cover nearly every album.  There are guests galore, there’s on stage hijinks and a great sense of fun for band and fans alike.

 I don’t know what they played on other nights but there is a still a focus on Harmelodia. Things are a little different this night from previous shows on the tour.  “Song of the Garden” and “Sweet Rich Beautiful Mine” are really rocking. When they call in a female vocalist up, a fans shouts out “we could use a little estrogen” and they get it with her lead vocals.

Kevin Hearn joins them on keyboards.  He ges a verse in “Four Little Songs.”  He also adds piano to “Queer” which sounds extra jaunty  And he puts accordion in “I Fab Thee.”  There’s even the unexpected Kevin song “Yellow Days Under a Lemon Sun” which originally appears on the Group of 7 disc.

The most fun is had during “My First Rock Show, in which several “guests” appear during the song.  Meatloaf (Kevin) plays a bit of “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” Geddy, Alex and Neil (Martin) show up to play a verse of “Closer to the Heart” with Martin screeching “salesmen!” There’s a brief jam of Walk This Way (although no one can remember the words).  And there’s some fun with Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Goin Out with Him.”  Look over there.  Where?  That’s called a hook.  There’s also a funny joke about playing “Harvest X-1, Rush Never Sleeps.”

There’s some real guests too, Karmen from Sheks? sings “One More Colour” and sounds awful, like she can’t hear what the band is doing.  Julia Pietrus guests on “Home Again.”  She sings her verse in Polish (and is part of a Polish Rheos tribute band!).

There’s a drum solo (!) on “Dope Fiends and Booze Hounds.”  The set and the night ends with “A Midwinter Nights Dream.”  Martin sounds in great voice even if he cant hit all th ehigh notes which is undetsnable after nearly 2 and a half hours of playing

They also mention that their next show is Canada Day and that is our next show as well

[READ: March 4, 2015] “Make Me Live”

I am always intrigued by the fiction that appears in the front section of each Harper’s issue.  It is typically not an author I have heard of and is often a translation.  It’s also usually really short (often excerpted) so that if it’s not so good, you’re not stuck with a long read and if it is good it whets your appetite for a longer piece.

This excerpt is a definite appetite whetter.

I genuinely can’t imagine how long Mislaid (the full novel) is, because this story just seems to fly through time in a real hurry 9and feels rather complete).

It opens with Peggy Vaillancourt’s birth in 1948 in Virginia.  Her family was educated and rather reserved.  Her mother had hoped to send her to Bryn Mawr, but Peggy wanted to go to Stillwater, a former plantation and current finishing school.  It was considered a mecca for lesbians.

I’m confused about the transformative event in Peggy’s life in which a gym teacher, Miss Miller,  readjusts her gym shorts and Peggy assumes she was meant to be a boy.  The story seems to bulldoze forward whether you can keep up or not.  So I have no idea if an average female reader would “get” what happened here (it doesn’t seem to be sexual to me). It also seems odd that one incident should affect her so profoundly, but there ya go. (more…)

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Bob Odenkirk–A Load of Hooey (2014)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Funny (ha ha), McSweeney's, Poetry, Political Humor, Religion, Unreliable narrator on November 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »

hooeySOUNDTRACK: Songs for Stuffing: A Thanksgiving Mix (2011).

turkey_wide-5d9e8a59bec66b4815045e86e4267da98ecc9263-s1900-c85There are not too many Thanksgiving songs.  But our friends at NPR created this Thanksgiving mix back in 2011.  It seems to lie dormant for much of the year but they bring it back at a seasonally appropriate time.

I have to admit I have not actually listened to it (at least not yet).  But it includes this rather broad selection of artists (designed to please or alienate everyone on Thanksgiving).

A Band of Bees • Amadou & Mariam • The Andrews Sisters • Louis Armstrong • The B-52’s • The Beatles • Ludwig von Beethoven • William Billings • Willie Bobo • Bow Wow Wow • Greg Brown • Cab Calloway • Cyrus Chestnut • Guy Clark • Nat King Cole • Joe Craven • Joseph Curiale • Guy Davis • Champion Jack Dupree • Bob Dylan • The Flaming Lips • Dave Frishberg • William DeVaughn • Rick Gallagher • Dizzy Gillespie • Johnny Griffin • Patty Griffin • Golden Smog • Benny Goodman • Arlo Guthrie • Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass feat. Ozomatli • Herbie Hancock • Bill Heid • David Holt • The JB’s • Jay & The Techniques • Louis Jordan • Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan • Paul Lingle • Lyle Lovett • Eric “Two Scoops” Moore • New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble • Harry Nilsson • Tim O’Brien • Lee “Scratch” Perry • Michelle Shocked • Dmitri Shostakovich • Southern Culture on the Skids • Spearhead • Still on the Hill • Rufus Thomas • Traffic • Bobby Troup • Jay Ungar & Molly Mason • Warrant • Ethel Waters • The Wiyos • “Weird Al” Yankovic

You can hear the mix streaming on NPR.

[READ: November 27, 2014] A Load of Hooey

Just in time for Thanksgiving, McSweeney’s has sent us A Load of Hooey.

Bob Odenkirk has been cropping up a lot lately (not as much as erstwhile partner and financially secure comedian, David Cross, mind you), and that’s a good thing.  There’s something about Odenkirk’s persona (crotchety, uptight, white guy) that is usually really funny.  He often elevates crappy sitcoms just by yelling at one of the characters.

This book is a collection of short pieces (most are 1-3 pages), including “unabridged quotations” and poems.  They cover a variety of subjects, but pretty much all upend expectations.  And, as one might expect from Odenkirk, there’s a lot of religious and political jokes as well.

The “unabridged quotations” allow Odenkirk to append something that removes the pomp from some famous quotations.  The poems are usually funny, twisted barbs at some subject or another.

But the main targets are religions and politicians. (more…)

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Carl Adamshick–Saint Friend (2014)

Posted in Amelia Earhart, Barenaked Ladies, Carl Adamshick, McSweeney's, Poetry, Poets on October 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »

friend hand SOUNDTRACK: BARENAKED LADIES-Talk to the Hand: Live in Michigan (2007).

I have seen Barenaked Ladies live a number of times.  At this point I think I have seen them without Steven Page more than when he was with them.  After listening to his solo album I remembered how much I loved Page with the band.  And even though they still do a great show, this CD/DVD combo reminded me how much…more fun…they were when Page was in the band (and how sad it is that a reunion seems impossible).

I had heard that the other guys in the band (notably Jim and Kevin) wanted more songwriting opportunities.  And whether or not that is true, it seems like they might since this is completely the Steven and Ed show.  They split lead vocals duties exactly in half (with two songs in which they share lead vocals).  Indeed, Kevin wrote “Sound of Your Voice” but Steven sings lead.  Although I have to say that Kevin Hearn absolutely shines with all of the instruments he plays here (he’s quite remarkable).

So this concert came on the Barenaked Ladies Are Me/Men tour in one of their biggest American fan locations–Clarkston, Michigan.

The CD is a collection of lots of older hits and a few newer songs.  I recall not loving this period of BNL as much, but the songs that are picked for this show from these albums are great: “Bank Job” one of my favorite new(ish) songs sounds great here.  And “Easy” is another great song from these two albums.  “Adrift” a pretty, slow song (which is here played on the banjo) and “Wind It Up” is fun because we get to see Jim Creeggan come down away from the upright bass and wander around with an electric bass.

They have the most fun with “Angry People” since they do a lengthy “skit/dance” at the end of the song in which they beat each other up (to a disconcerting prerecorded version of the song).  This is included in the audio CD with no explanation–the DVD clarifies the weird sound effects in the song).  Perhaps the most unexpected addition is the song “Powder Blue” which is a B-side to the “Pinch me” single.  It’s a bit of a slow down in the set, but it get s a pretty big reaction.

There’s some very funny fan interaction, like teasing the lady in the front row who is talking on her phone and point out (and singing about ) the guy who uses beer bottles as maracas.  (I also enjoyed seeing a guy with a Rush shirt near the front row).

They also do “For You” from Everything to Everyone.  This version is an interesting acoustic version with Kevin Hearn on mandolin and everyone gathered around the center mic.  They do “Be My Yoko Ono” in this format as well, which is quite fun (Hearn on accordion and Tyler on bongos).

No matter how often I hear “Brian Wilson,” I never get tired of it.  And while I’ve heard them live with not Steven Page singing it, it’s great to have his original voice doing it (and as always Creeggan’s bass is amazing).

The one thing that’s a bummer is that the DVD and the CD contain the same songs–in other words the DVD is pretty short for a concert.  According to Wikipedia, songs played at the show, but not included in Talk to the Hand include: “Maybe Katie”, “In The Car”, “Running out of Ink”, “Get In Line”, “Tonight is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel” [acoustic], “Alcohol”, “It’s All Been Done”, “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” and “Call and Answer.”  The DVD also falls a little short because there’s no crazy wacky end song where Tyler sings some crazy nonsense.

The bonus features include the five guys sitting in a room with an interview.  They talk about how Steve and Ed first started playing together.  And there’s a funny story about a guy with an ass on his head.  I also appreciated them talking about the greening of their tour.

But really, the saddest thing is that in the bonus features the five of them talk about how much fun they are having in the and and how long they’ve been together and other things that make Page’s split seem so much sadder.

[READ: October 10, 2014] Saint Friend

Saint Friend is the latest book in the McSweeney’s poetry series. This collection of poems features largely longer poems.  And I admit to not really enjoying longer poems–they often seem to lose either the plot or my attention.  Which I know is more likely my fault than the writer’s but so be it.

“Pacific” is evidently about Amelia Earhart.  It has a epigram from Earhart, but I didn’t realize it was about her (which is certainly my fault as I know really no details about her).  Each page is a part of a longer poem (there’s a black diamond at the bottom of each page making it seem like the end of a section or so).  The fourth section (about fog and being  at 8000 feet) sure makes sense as an Earhart poem.

“Near Real-Time” is a series of small poems–each one dated a day in February (except the last one).  I wish I knew context for these poems (was he doing a write a poem a day challenge or something?).  Also, not every day of the month is represented. (more…)

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Mark Callanan–“Part of the Main” & Alexander Oliver–“Watching the Cop Show in Bed” (The Walrus, July/August 2014)

Posted in Alexander Oliver, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Death, Disease, Environmentalism, Film & TV, Lou Reed, Mark Callanan, Poetry, Poets, Sloan, The Beach Boys, The Walrus, Violence, Word usage on October 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

2014-07SOUNDTRACK: SLOAN-Commonwealth [Spade Side–Andrew Scott] (2014).

commonFor Sloan’s 11th album, the four members of the band each wrote the songs of a side.  I originally thought that they recorded all of the music alone, but that seems to be wrong–and would hardly be a Sloan album).  In conjunction with the album, each guy was given a suit of cards (and an actual deck was made as well).  While this doesn’t necessarily mean the album is very different from their others (it still sounds very Sloan), it seems to have given the guys a bit more room to experiment.

The final side of Commonwealth is by drummer Andrew Scott.  Scott has written three singles for Sloan over the years: “500 Up”, “People of the Sky”, and “I’ve Gotta Try.”  But for this album, he has created a 17 minute and 49 second epic called “Forty-Eight Portraits.” This makes it seem like it could be 48 small songs which it isn’t.  But it also isn’t one long song exactly.  There are, by my count 15 sections–although there could be more or fewer depending on how you break it up.

So my demarcations:

  1. The song opens with a dog barking.  There’s complex percussion and a smattering of piano seemingly searching for a melody.
  2. At 3 minutes the first real song proper starts.  We’ll call it “You say you’re going with me.” There’s acoustic guitars and a bouncy melody.  It’s a great song with a neat guitar riff that overlays around 4 minutes in.  But
  3. At 4:23 the song changes dramatically.  It grinds to a slow pensive section, call it the “Don’t ask for a second chance.”  But it doesn’t last long,
  4. At 5:16, the next part jumps in, it’s a bit faster and feels like it could be an extension of the previous section.  Call it the “Do the things I do” section.  It speeds up
  5. At 5:41, to a similar style as the “first song.”  It has a sing along starting “How Does It Feel?”  It’s got one verse before a time signature change and instrumental break.
  6. At 6:40 the next section comes in.  Aggressive guitars and spoken word lyrics “There’s something happening here.”  It also has one of the few uses of the word “fucking” in a Sloan song.
  7. At 7:25 it shifts to a falsetto style and higher pitched guitars.  It’s vaguely Beach Boys-like for a verse “Do you think she loves you?” until
  8. At 7:48 it’s back to a reprise of the “How does it feel” section.
  9. At 8:15 it shifts to a new slow piano section.  This feels like the most fully realized song section of the epic.  “I can’t believe you never told me the truth.”   It leads into a big chorus sounding section (two lines) around 8:40 (“What it is us unsustainable”).  There’s even a repeat of this “verse” and  “chorus” as well.
  10. At 10:26 a new guitar section is introduced.  It works as a transition “You said you’re coming with me.” It morphs
  11. At 10:52 into a very cool slowed down section “I asked for a proper glass.”  And then
  12. At 11:22 the song again returns to the “How did it feel” section.
  13. At 12 minutes the song transitions with a “ba ba ba” and horns which move into the “Sometimes I feel like I’m slipping away” section.  The song feels like it might end at 13 minutes as the last notes seem to ring out.  But
  14. At 13:21, the song rebuilds again with the “inside a cloud” section.  This feels like the final section of the song is built around a similar construct. It’s a guitar riff that introduces a children’s chorus at around the 14 minute mark.  There’s a slow guitar solo and pizzicato strings that keep this section from being to easy, but that guitar riff and children’s section reunite the end which concludes with the spoken “W.W.L.R.D.?” (which I assume the L.R. refers to Lou Reed).
  15. At 16 minutes, the chaos of the beginning returns with a dog bark, but the concluding riff is strong and seems to really draw out the end.

I really haven’t listened to the lyrics that carefully to know exactly what’s going on, but I really enjoy the “choruses.”  While a 17 minute song is not everyone’s cup of tea, there are so many parts and so many interesting and catchy sections, that it feels like a whole collection of short songs rather than one long song.  It’s a cool experiment and one that I find myself singling out as I try to parse it a bit more.

[READ: October 11, 2014] “Part of the Main” and “Watching the Cop Show in Bed”

The Walrus’ summer reading issue presents three stories and two poems in which: “The Walrus presents fresh takes on old crimes.”  Each story is about a crime of some kind, but seemed from an unexpected way.  I rather enjoyed the way the writers played around with the crime genre to make them something very different.  These were two poems.

I’ve don’t normally review the poetry in The Walrus, but since I had four sides and only three stories it seemed worthwhile to throw the two poems in as well 9especially since the finally song was so unusual).

The first one “Part of the Main” is written with wonderfully evocative language as it talks about something so base.

The first stanza talks about the inevitability of the tide, of life.  With beautiful language like: “the contours of the and effaced by the saintly patience of the tide.”  But the second stanza shifts gears.  In it, the narrator says that you can show him dire things on the television: “bloated bellies…bomb blasts” and he will weep and clench his fists “but otherwise do nothing.”  It is sadly an uncomfortably relatable attitude. (more…)

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Karen Green–Bough Down (2013)

Posted in Art, Books about writers, Death, Dogs, Karen Green, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Parick Hamilton, Poetry, Poets, Protomartyr, Punks, Suicide on September 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »

boughSOUNDTRACK: PROTOMARTYR-Under Cover of Official Right (2014).

martyrMy favorite description of Protomartyr is that the three younger guys ran into their old high school math teacher at a bar and asked if he wanted to sing with their band.  Protomartyr are a heavy band from Detroit (and none of the above is true about them, but check out the picture below for how true that seems).

The lyrics are dark, literary and sometime quite funny.  The music is a sort of post punk.  The drums are amazing with all manner of complex patterns.  The guitar is angular and precise, eking out notes and then blasting away on gorgeous ringing chords.  The bass plays patterns–not simple notes.  His is a great counterpoint to the guitar.  And then there’s the voice.  Gruff, worldly, knowledgeable and occasionally angry.  But mostly he sings in a kind of spoken word style, telling of his distrust with…well, whaddya got?

My CD did not come with a lyrics sheet (although I believe the LP does), so I don’t exactly know the words to these songs.  I can certainly guess though.

The disc opens with a sinister chord that slowly rises, only to be replaced by a jangly open guitar chord and then a very lengthy riff.  And then the deadpan vocals comes in.   “Shade goes up shade goes down, one of my dead moves.” And that sets the tone (that song along with many other is a reference to a novel: in this case Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square). I love the way the second song “Ain’t So Simple” opens with an interesting drum rhythm and these great lyrics, “Hello there, you are all witnesses to a kind of confrontation between me and these three men.”  The lyrics are basically an attack on the other guys in the band: “this thing that sits behind me: jumped up homunculus, and yet he sings so sweetly.”  The guitar is quiet and complex with an interesting riff.  Then the bridge bursts forth with all kinds of chaos and noise and a faster riff.  The song ends somewhat positively, “guess I will keep him around, until the next song.”  And it ends with the same drums that opened the song.

Most of the songs are just over 2 minutes.  “Want Remover” is pummeling rock, heavy and distorted.  “Trust Me Billy” reintroduces a spiralling riff but with a heavier drum.  “Pagans” is only 1:11, with a very sparse sound.  “What the Wall Said” slows things down (it clocks in at 3:11).  It has a slow intro that is mostly bass.  When the chiming guitars come in, the drums follow and the songs picks up speed.  It has one of my favorite lyrics: “What will you miss? Alice in Chains played on repeat–not feeling great, you’re 20%.”  Followed by morning ringing guitars.

“Tarpeian Rock” is set to a cool bass line.  It’s basically a list of people who should be “thrown from the rock” “greedy bastards, emotional cripples, gluten fascists” etc.  “Bad Advice” opens with a smacking drum sequence and ringing guitars.  It’s angular and prickly until about half way through when it suddenly slows down with the simple “bad advice” chorus.  “Son of Dis” is a blistering punk song.  Barely over a minute, it is a relentless blast.

There’s something about the guitar sound on “Scum, Rise” that is so unguitar-like, I’m totally intrigued by it.  And the repeated simple chorus of “scum…rise” is pretty hard not to sing/speak along to.  “I Stare at Floors” is another fast rocker.  “Come and See” has more great weird chords (with a vibrato put on them for extra weirdness.”  It’s another fantastic song, with the chorus introducing a brand new drum sequence and a super catchy but dark chorus: “And I’ll try to live defeated, come and see the good in everything.”  I can’t decide which section of the song I like better.  Well, maybe it’s the repeated third part where the drums come bashing alive to really emphasize that section.

“Violent” is another slower song, with a lonesome riff and sparse drums.  The vocals are so almost-flat that it makes the lyrics “if it’s violent…good” seem even more dark than they might otherwise.  “I’ll Take That Applause” opens with a sample of someone singing something, maybe?  Garbled, rather creepy sounding voices introduce a big ringing chord.  The song introduces a piano buried under the chorus of “nothing ever after.”  And then you press play again and listen to the whole thing again.

I simply can’t stop listening to this album.

proto

[READ: September 15, 2014] Bough Down

Karen Green is a visual artist and poet.  She was married to a man who hung himself, and this collection address that horrific incident almost exclusively.

Green’s poems aren’t structured like poems (meaning that they are blocks of text and have no concern for line breaks or rhyme scheme).  Nevertheless the words she has used are quite powerful and evocative and do everything that good poetry should do.

Interspersed within the poems are small images.  Most of the images are cut up pieces of text arranged but also obfuscated by what looks like a gauzy white paint (in the same way that the book has a gauzy white slip cover (nicely done)).  I don’t know what the actual size of her prints is, but I wish they were bigger in the book.  It’s really hard to see the details that are clearly there.  And I know that hiding is part of the point, but if it were bigger it would certainly be easier to understand.  I’m fascinated by her use of dollar bills as well as other tiny objects (fingerprints? stamps? boxes?).

Most of her poems are untitled; those which are titled have “jazz standards” as titles.  Like “summertime and the living” or “let’s call the whole thing off.”  This jibes nicely with one of the “characters” in the poems, a woman called “the jazz lady.”  For indeed, although I’m reading this as a series of poem, there is so much continuity between poems, that it almost reads like a novel as well.  If nothing else, there seems to be time passing between the poems.  And while the story itself is unfinished, it does imply that things will be moving forward.

The pieces about the jazz lady are interspersed with the stories about “you.”  The jazz lady “is in first or third person.  She is keeping secrets and everyone who loves her is tired of them.”  In “Black and blue and” it begins “No one knows how the jazz lady ended up in the hospital again.”  I took the jazz lady to be Green, or perhaps just someone else Green knew. (more…)

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Michael Robbins–“Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives: A poet’s guide to metal” (Harper’s, May 2014)

Posted in Baroness, Carcass, Charles Baudelaire, Chelsey Minnis, Christopher Logue, Converge, Cryptopsy, Deafheaven, Death, Dissection, Essays, Frederick Seidel, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Grave Miasma, Guns n' Roses, Hammers of Misfortune, Harper's, Iron Maiden, James Dickey, Jesus Christ Superstar, John Ashbery, John Milton, Kvelertak, Lord Byron, Manilla Road, Mastodon, Michael Robbins, Ozzy Osbourne, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Pig Destroyer, Poetry, Poets, Poison Idea, Punks, Rainer Maria Rilke, Religion, Repulsion, Slayer, Technology, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Violence, Voivod, William Blake, Yuck! on April 19, 2014| 2 Comments »

may20014SOUNDTRACK: CRYPTOPSY-“Slit Your Guts” (1996).

cryptI had never heard of this band until I saw the song mentioned in the article.  The song is impossibly fast with speeding guitars, super fast (inhuman) drums and an indecipherable growl as vocal.  In other words, a typical cookie monster metal song.  And yet, there is a lot more to it and, indeed it took me several listens before I could even figure out what was happening here, by which time I had really fallen for the song.

There’s a middle section which is just as punishing and fast but which is basically an instrumental break–not for showing off exactly but for showcasing more than the bands pummel.  It has a short guitar solo followed by a faster more traditional solo (each for one measure, each in a different ear). Then the tempo picks up for an extended instrumental section.  The melody is slightly more sinister, but it sounds great.  There’s even a (very short) bass solo that sticks out as a totally unexpected (and fun) surprise.

Then the growls come back in, staying with the new melody.  The vocals are so low and growly that they are almost another distorted instrument rather than a voice.

After that there’s a lengthy proper guitar solo.  As the song comes to a close,  it repeats some previous sections before suddenly halting.  It’s quite a trip. And it definitely makes me want to hear more from them (whatever their name means).

[READ: April 14, 2014] “Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives”

Robbins, who is a poet, but about whom I know little else, takes us on a sort of literary tour of heavy metal.  His tone is interesting–he is clearly into metal, like in a big way (at the end of the article he talks about taking his writing students to see Converge (although he doesn’t exactly say why)), but he’s also not afraid to make fun of the preposterousness of, well, most of the bands–even the ones he likes.  It’s a kind of warts and all appreciation for what metal is and isn’t.  many people have written about metal from many different angles, so there’s not a lot “new” here, but it is interesting to hear the different bands discussed in such a thoughtful (and not just in a fanboy) way.

His first footnote is interesting both for metal followers and metal disdainers: “Genre classification doesn’t interest me.  Listen to Poison Idea’s Feel the Darkness followed by Repulsion’s Horrified and tell me the main difference between hardcore punk and metal isn’t that one has a bullshit positive message and one has a bullshit negative message.”

But since Robbins is a poet, he is interested in metal’s connection to poetry.  And in the article he cites William Blake (of course), but also Rilke and John Ashbery and (naturally) Milton’s Paradise Lost, as well as Shelley, Lord Byron and Charles Baudelaire.  He talks about them not because they are cool poets, but because they have also talked about because of metal’s “most familiar trope…duh, Satanism, which might be silly–okay, its’ definitely silly, but has a distinguished literary pedigree”.  Besides, he notes that Satan has the best lines in Paradise Lost (and I note that just as Judas has the best songs in Jesus Christ Superstar).

But sometimes this Satanism turns into a  form of paganism which then turns into nature worship.  From Voivod’s “Killing Technology” to black metal’s romanticism of nature (sometimes to crazy extremes–but that’s what a band needs to do to stand out sometimes).  Metal is all about the dark and primordial, a”rebuke to our soft lives.”

And yet, as a poet, Robbins has some quibbles with metal: (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–The Unknown University (2007) [tranlated 2013]

Posted in Beck, Big Books, bolanobolano.com, Books about writers, Fears, Foreign Books, Funny (strange), Laura Healy, Natasha Wimmer, Poetry, Poets, Roberto Bolaño, Sex, The Beatles, Translation, Translators on March 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »

univSOUNDTRACK: BECK-Mutations (1998).

mutationsThis is the first album that shows a wholly different side to Beck. It is pretty much an entirely traditional album.  There’s no samples, just consistently strong songwriting.  The overall feel is mellow and it comes as quite a shock after the chaos of Odelay!

Although the album has a very consistent vibe, it’s not all samey.  There’s a lot of different instrumentation like the harpsichord on “Lazy Flies,” and the old-timey piano and slide guitar on “Canceled Check” which has a very country feel.  It’s not all simple and normal though, as “Check” ends with a strange musical breakdown that keeps it from being a smooth song.  “We Live Again” is a very mellow track with Beck singing sweetly over the waves of music.

As befits the name “Tropicalia” has a very tropical feel, it’s totally danceable and was a very wise choice as a sample.  “Dead Melodies” has a classical music feel (with vocals of course).  “Bottle of Blues” is, unsurprisingly, a somewhat rowdy blues song.  “O Maria” is a slow but upbeat piano song that also feels old timey.  “Sing It Again” has a melody that is similar to “Norwegian Wood,” but the song is nothing like that Beatles classic.  This is gently sung and played acoustic guitar number.  And “Static” is a quiet disc ender.

This disc also feature a “bonus” track, and this is the first one that is actually enjoyable.  It is a fleshed out song (and a good one at that). It is comparatively rambunctious and noisy and quite different from anything else on the disc.  It’s called “Diamond Bollocks” and has a great bass line and cool backing vocals.  This song could easily have been a hit if it weren’t tucked away at the end of the disc.  (Well, and there are some weird moments to, but overall, easily a hit).

Despite all that Beck is known for his crazy songs and samples, Mutations is an extremely cohesive record with enough diversity to keep it from ever getting dull.  It’s a great record and is somewhat overlooked in his catalog.

[READ: March 16, 2014] The Unknown University

This is a collection of almost all of Roberto Bolaño’s poetry.  Some (but not all) of the poems from his collection The Romantic Dogs are included here, although some of those are apparently modified a little.  It also includes what was earlier released as Antwerp but is here called “People Walking Away.”  (I found Antwerp and “People” to be quite unusual and would never remember what is the same in the two.  But translator Laura Healy says that she more or less uses Natasha Wimmer’s translation of Antwerp for the parts that are the same (a task which must have been harder than it sounds if the two pieces weren’t exactly the same).

This book is 830 pages with facing pages of Spanish and English.  According to the publisher’s note, this collection was found on Bolaño’s computer as is—a collection of all of his poems from throughout his career.

Most of the early poems were written when Bolaño was young (in his 20s).  Even at such a young age, he writes powerfully.  Not all of his poems are great of course (how could they be when there are so many) but there are dozens and dozens of poems that I thought were fantastic.  I’m going to include some below, but I also wanted to get some criticisms out of the way too.

He tends to revisit ideas quite a lot, which is normal for a poet, but it seems weird to revisit an idea in subsequent poems (especially when the poems are just a few lines long each).  It almost feels like he fixated on a subject and thought of a number of ways to work with it and rather than make one long poem, he made several short ones.  Like this strange occurrence: (more…)

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W.S. Di Piero–Tombo (2014)

Posted in McSweeney's, Poetry, Poets, Short Books, Tiny Desk Concert, W.S. Di Piero, Zee Avi on February 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

tomboSOUNDTRACK: ZEE AVI-Tiny Desk Concert #36 (November 23, 2009).

zeeZee Avi is a Malaysian born singer songwriter who was discovered via YouTube.  After a few videos were forwarded around, she was signed and then released an album full of simple, delicate guitar driven acoustic songs.

“Honey Bee” is a very pretty, sweet song in which she accompanies herself on guitar.  The second song is a cover of a Morrissey’s “First of the Gang” and while it is far slower than the original, Zee sings it perfectly—her voice is very well suited to Morrissey’s style.  (I enjoyed that she swooned a little when she said his name).  She doesn’t play guitar on this one and there’s a funny moment where the guitarist doesn’t end when she does and she says thanks for giving me the heads up (he says was going to text her but…).

She plays the final song “Just You and me” on ukulele and as with anyone who plays the uke well, this song sounds great.  I don’t know much more about her but I’d be interested to hear what an album of hers sounds like.

 Check it out here.

[READ: February 12, 2014] Tombo

This is the sixth book in the McSweeney’s poetry series.  Even though the series descriptors talk about the beautiful covers on the books, this one is resolutely not beautifully covered, although it is a handsome volume.

Di Piero is a prolific author, with ten books of poetry, a column on the visual arts and several collections of essays.

This collection of poems seems to be about place.  There’s a lot of descriptors of locations and places, but none of them grabbed me strongly.  I enjoyed the last few poems in the collection much more than the early ones.

In particular I thought that the title poem “Tombo” was quite enjoyable because it was so concrete.  And the sequence with the hawk in the poorly named “So It Goes” was visually arresting as well.  (more…)

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Five Dials Number 29: Weight to Lift (9 November 2013)

Posted in Anna Kelly, Bob & Doug McKenzie, Bob and Doug McKenzie, César Aira, Christmas Album, Craig Taylor, Daniel Sherbrooke, Dave Eggers, David Bezmozgis, Death, Deborah Eisenberg, Douglas Coupland, Eggs, Eric Reinhardt, Essays, Fears, Five Dials, Geddy Lee, Gruff Rhys, Hasani, Jack Underwood, Javier Marias, Joan Lingard, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Jonny Reid, Leo Tolstoy, Lydia Davis, Mark Beldan, Poetry, Rachel Willson-Broyles, Racism, Richard Ford, Richard Godwin, Russia, Short Story, Super Furry Animals, Surreal, Technology, Violence, Vladimir Nabokov, Weight Lifting on December 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »

fivedials_no29SOUNDTRACK: BOB & DOUG McKENZIE-“The 12 Days of Christmas” (1981).

bob & dougThis is my preferred old school version of “The 12 Days of Christmas.”  It was one of the first parodies of the song that I had heard (and I was big in parodies back in 1981).

I loved how stupid they were (on the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…a beer).  I loved trying to figure out what a two-four was, and it cracked me up that they skipped a whole bunch of days.

I also enjoyed how they continued to snipe at each other throughout the song.  Not comedy gold perhaps (that would be “Take Off” recorded with Geddy Lee, but a nice way to start, or end, the season on these “mystery days.”

Evidently, decades after SCTV went off the air, Bob & Doug got an animated TV show (without Rick Moranis).  And they made a video of the song. Hosers.

[youtube-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2oPio60mK4]

[READ: December 3, 2013] Five Dials #29

Five Dials Number 29 was the first issue I had read in a while.  (I read this before going back to 26-28).  And it really reminded me of how great Five Dials is.  I don’t know why this isn’t Part 2 after Number 28’s Part 1 (there was no 28b either), but that’s irrelevant.  This is an independent collection of great writing.  I was instantly surprised and delighted to see that César Aria was included in this issue (I didn’t even know he had made inroads in England).

CRAIG TAYLOR-Letter from the Editor: In Swedes and Open Letters
Taylor’s usually chipper introduction is saddened by the contents of this one.  The discussion centers on Sweden and the city of Malmo, where integration is proving to be tougher than they’d hoped.  Black skinned people are profiled pretty explicitly.  Taylor talks about meeting the writer Jonas Hassen Khemiri (who they subsequently published in issue 21) who deals with issues of race.  In March of 2013, Khemiri wrote an open letter to Swedish Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask after she brushed off concerns about racial profiling. The letter went viral including getting translated into 15 languages.  So I guess there is some positivity after all. (more…)

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Five Dials Number 26: Berlin. London. And More. (3 December 2012)

Posted in Amanda Hopkinson, Anna Kelly, Anthea Bell, Anthea Bell, Arabella Spencer, Bob Dylan, Christmas Album, Clemens J. Setz, Craig Taylor, David Foster Wallace, Death, Demetri Martin, Donal McLaughlin, Essays, Fears, Fishing, Five Dials, Iain Galbraith, Jan Brandt, Judith Schalansky, Juli Zeh, Katy Derbyshire, Lawrence Howarth, Marion Poschmann, Marjana Gaponenko, Michael Hofmann, Paul Ewen, Paul Greenleaf, Paul Maliszewski, Pedro Lenz, Peter Stamm, Photo Essays, Poetry, Raoul Schrott, Ross Benjamin, Sally-Ann Spencer, Scholarship, Shaun Whiteside, Short Story, Simon Urban, Sophia Martineck, Sophie Elmhirst, Surreal, Thomas Pletzinger, Tilman Rammstedt, Tom Waits, Ulrich Blumenbach, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Uwe Schütte, Uwe Tellkamp, W.G. Sebald, Will Wiles, Word usage, Zsuzsi Gartner on December 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

fivedials_no26SOUNDTRACK: BOB DYLAN-Christmas in the Heart (2009).

220px-Bob_Dylan_-_Christmas_in_the_HeartI have been a dabbler in Dylan over the years.  I like his hits, I like some of his albums, but I’ve never been a huge huge fan.  So the biggest surprise to me was that Bob Dylan now sounds like Tom Waits.  His voice is so crazily gravelly, it’s almost (almost) unrecognizable as Dylan.

That said, on some of the tracks it works very well–like he’s had too much to drink and is enjoying the revelry of these traditional songs.  I imagine him as a benevolent uncle trying to get the family to sing along.  And sing along they do.  He has a group of backing singers who sound like they are straight out of the forties and fifties (on some songs the women sing incredibly high especially compared to Dylan’s growl).  I’m not always sure it works, but when it does it’s quite something.

The first three songs are a lot of fun. However, when he gets to “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” it really sounds like he has hurt himself.  He seems to really strain on some of those notes–note the way he pronounces “herald” (heeerald).

The more secular songs fare better with “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” sounding especially Waitsian and being all the better for it.  Although I feel that perhaps he made up some lyrics–“presents on the tree?”  It’s interesting that in “O Come, All Ye Faithful” he sings the first verse in Latin (I don’t know that I’ve heard any other pop singers do that) and it works quite well.

A less successful song is “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in which the music just seems to be too slow for him.  His verses end early and it seems like the backing singers are just out in the middle of nowhere.  Perhaps the best song is “Must Be Santa.”  I love this arrangement (by Brave Combo) and Dylan has a ton of fun with it (and the video is weirdly wonderful too).

“Christmas Blues” is a bit of a downer (as the title might suggest).  I’d never heard this song before and Dylan is well suited to it.  Dylan’s version of “The Little Drummer Boy” is also very good–he croons gently and his voice sounds really good.  I was surprised to hear him do “Christmas Island,” a song I have come to love this year–his version is quite fun as well, with the backing singer doing Aloha-ays.

Finally, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” is pitched a wee bit high for him (and the Waits voice is more scary than avuncular here).

So overall it’s a weird collection (to say nothing of the artwork–both the cover and the inside cover), but I think it’s well suited to the day after the festivities.

[READ: December 15, 2013] Five Dials #26

I was shocked to realize who many Five Dials issued I had put off reading (and that this one came out over a year ago!).  I knew 26 was a large issue, so I put it off.  And then put it off.  And then put it off, until Issue 29 came out.  (I read 29 before this one, which got me to jump back and tackle this large one).

I have to admit I did not enjoy this one as much as previous Five Dials.  The bulk of the issue was taken up with German short stories, and I don’t know if it was the choices of the editors, but (a few) of the stories just didn’t grab me at all.  Having said that, there were one or two that I thought were very good.  But with this being such a large issue, perhaps it deserved to be spaced out a little better–Weltanschauung fatigue, no doubt.

This issue starts with Letters from Our Glorious readers and other sources.
I feel like this is a new feature for Five Dials (although again, it has been a while).  There is applause for the Bears (From Issue #24) and the acknowledgement of Zsuzsi Gartner’s first adoptees of her story ideas (Issue #25 Pt 1).  There’s also the amusing story of a guy who got nailed at work for printing the color issue (something I used to do at my old job as well) and a refraining of answering spam.

CRAIG TAYLOR-On Ewen and German
Taylor doesn’t say much in this intro, since the “heavy lifting” is done by Anna Kelly.  He does mention Paul Ewen (and his food writing) and the first Five Dials questionnaire (which I assume it is too late (and too far away) for me to submit for that free HH book).

ANNA KELLY
She explains about wanting to know secrets, and how when she was little, learning Pig Latin was a such a huge boon to her secretive life.  Then her sister started studying German, and Anna herself was hooked.  She says that reading German works in German is like flying.  And she wants to share German language writers with us.  Of course, we won’t be reading them in German, so there will be no flying.  (more…)

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