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Archive for the ‘Constellation Records’ Category

Lorrie Moore–“Referential” (New Yorker, May 28, 2012)

Posted in Broken Social Scene, Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Esmerine, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Hospitals, Lorrie Moore, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Short Story, Silver Mt. Zion on May 25, 2012| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: ESMERINE-La Lechuza [CST080] (2011).

This album is a wonderful surprise.  I had not heard of Esmerine before this CD (they have put out two previous records on a different label).  All I knew about them was that violinist Becky Foon (who is all over the Montreal scene and who is really good) was one of the founders of this band.  So I expected some epic instrumentals ala all of the Constellation Recordings bands that she has played with (Godspeed, Silver Mt Zion, etc).

I was delighted by the opening fast marimba notes of “A Dog River”.  I’m not sure if the marimba can play minor key notes, but the melody that co-founder Bruce Cawdron plays is uplifting and mesmerizing.  When Becky adds her strings, it takes on a new element–a kind of wistfulness.  Then at nearly 3/4 of the way in, some loud guitars come in to give the whole song a feeling of urgency.  And all the while it is very filmic.  It’s a wonderful opening.  “Walking Through Mist” is a much slower piece, and the marimba adds contextual pacing–they’re still not minor key or sad marimba notes, but they are not as uplifting as on the first track.  “Last Waltz” introduces a vibrato’s piano as the primary instrument.  It is at once unsettling.   It’s also the first of three songs with vocals.  The vocals work well on this song–they fit the mood perfectly–especially the wordless singing at around 4 minutes.  But I have to admit that I like the instrumentals better.  The same can be said for “Snow Day for Lhasa” (another song with vocals) which I find a little too slow to be impactful (it actually reminds me of a very slow version of Broken Social Scene’s “Lover’s Spit”).

“Trampolin” introduces a harp and some vibrant percussion.  It’s uplifting and feels like a perfect song for a theatrical dance company to perform to.  “Sprouts” is an uplifting new-agey sounding track.  By itself it might veer uncomfortably into the new age scene, but amidst the songs of the album it works very well.  “Little Streams Make Big Rivers” returns to that slower sound from earlier.  But this song is short and feels like a slow building march.  By the half way mark when the drums kick in, the song is unstoppable.  The album proper ends with “Au Crépuscule, Sans Laisse” a slow filmic song that returns the album to the quiet sound it was toying with earlier.

I mentioned Lhasa earlier.  Lhasa was a Canadian singer who had international fame (from my own experience, I know that X-Files creator Chris Carter wanted to go see her live–I know this because I was friends with his assistant and she told me the tale of trying to find tickets for this show).  I checked out her stuff but it wasn’t for me.  Anyhow, Beckie and Bruce were supposed to tour with Lhasa for her 2010 album, but sadly, she died of breast cancer (at 37, Jesus), right after the album came out.  So this album is dedicated to her.  The final song “Fish on Land” is a previously unreleased version of a Lhasa song that was made with Bruce and Beckie.  I wish I liked it more, but as I said, she’s not my thing.

I absolutely love the instrumentals on this album and I’m going to have to check out their earlier releases, too.

[READ: May 24, 2012] “Referential”

This story is like a kick to the stomach.  When you’re lying on the floor.  After you’ve thrown up.  And I mean that as very high praise indeed.

You know you’re in for trouble when the story opens: “For the third time in three years, they talked about what would be a suitable gift for her deranged son.”  We quickly learn that the woman’s son was fine until he was about twelve years old when he stopped brushing his teeth and began muttering to himself.  By then Pete had been dating the woman for about six years.

Pete and the woman had been coping with her son’s placement in the institution for over three years now.  There were so many rules they had to follow when visiting the boy–almost nothing could be brought in for fear of its being used as a weapon–even the homemade jam was taken because it was in glass.  Similarly, the woman has stopped wearing accessories, as a kind of solidarity–she would just have to remove them anyway.  She is now aging naturally and (she fears/admits) not very prettily.  An amazing slap in the face comes at the end of the first section with this amazing sentence:  “‘To me, you always look so beautiful,’ Pete no longer said.”  [Ouch!].

Pete has lost his job and is clearly unable to handle the strain of her son any longer (there’s a wonderfully painful scene where the boy asks Pete why he hasn’t come to visit lately). (more…)

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Jason Scott-Warren–“Reading Graffiti in the Early Modern Book” (Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 73, No. 3, September 2010)

Posted in Banksy, Carla Bozulich, Constellation Records, Essays, Evangelista, Huntington Library Quarterly, Jan Van Eyck, Jason Scott-Warren, Research, Scholarship on May 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: EVANGELISTA-In Animal Tongue [CST082] (2011).

Evangelista is probably my least favorite band on the Constellation label.  I’m especially surprised/disappointed in this because I loved Carla Bozulich’s earlier bands.  I’ve said before that I find her vocals to be weirdly and wonderfully disconcerting.  And when it’s played over aggressive confident music it works wonders.  But when it’s paired with music that is also kind of abstract and untethered, it just sounds like a mess.

After that introduction, I’ll say that this album is their best release yet.  Her voice (the Constellation site suggests her melodies are “largely improvised” (!)) sounds like it always does–unsettling, haunting, compelling, drawing you into whatever world she is invoking.   The title track is the most intriguing–the music is subdued, drawing you in even more.   “Black Jesus” is also compelling in that it is one of her more subtle releases.

“Bells Ring Fire” has the catchiest section, practically a singalong.  “Die Alone” reverts back to that old nebulous style where there’s just nothing to grab on to.  Indeed, “Enter the Prince” and “Hatching” both have interesting sound effects (especially “Hatching”) but they’re not really compelling as songs.

I think the real problem with these songs is that they’re all too long.  Since they don’t have any hooks in them, since there’s nothing to really grab you and make you want to like them, having them come in around 5 minutes is just too much to ask of the listener.  Some of these songs would be inetresting for two or three minutes, but by 5 I’ve given up.

Check it our for yourself here

[READ: May 15, 2012] “Reading Graffiti in the Early Modern Book”

This may be the most current scholarly article I have read from JSTOR.  Part of the fun of reading the JSTOR scholarly articles is that they are usually old enough that you can have either a) contemporary knowledge about what the author got right or wrong or b) a fun nostalgia based upon the word choices or references that are in the text.  So with this one, which is not even two years old, there’s neither of those possibilities.  What’s also interesting is how the article is clearly current–the references that Scott-Warren uses are contemporaneous (“the Banksy of his day?”)

So what is this article about anyhow?  Well, Scott-Warren looks at the notes and scribbles that people have written in their books.  But not just your average textbook or library book, he goes back very far to the “early modern” period and sees that people have been graffiting their books since there were books.  He mentions how anyone studying books from that era will see all kinds of things on the pages of the book, from scribbles to pressed flowers to even the rust outline of scissors.  But he wants to focus on what people have written.  And he wants to see of any of these notations are comparable to graffiti in the current sense of the word.

He discusses current definitions (including tagging) to explain that graffiti is all about saying “I am here.”  (He even interviews a graffiti artist named Claw).  Then he goes back to 1434 and sees a Latin inscription from Jan van Eyck on his painting Arnolfini Double Portrait that more or less says “Jan van Eyck has been here.”  Although it is his own painting it has a feel of graffiti, of making a public note that you exist.  Similar inscriptions can be found in many books of the period as well.  There is a 1565 edition of a book with a heavily flourished signature, there’s a 1548 edition book with a doodle that may include a self-portrait.  There’s even a bible that has been inscribed by every member of the family (daughter Mildred’s is stunningly ornate).  Another book has the owner’s signature about fifty times throughout the book.  Are these words to the world?  Public notations?  or something else?

Scott-Warren wonders if these markings can be considered “pen-trials”–pens were hard to use back then, the ink was homemade and paper was scarce.  Another possibility is that they were an attempt to prove and expand on literacy.  A third possibility was ownership. Like the graffiti in a 1685 Indian Bible, written in Massachusett: “I Nannahdinnoo, this is my book…I, I Nannahdinnoo, own this forever.  Because I bought it with my money”

I especially enjoyed the book that had written, under the name Walter Vaughn, “This book belongs not to Walter Vaughn but to James Vaughn because his later father John Vaughn gave this book in his last will and testament to the same James Vaughn and therefore the said James is the true owner of the book” (1582).

In addition to the I of graffiti Scott-Warren looks at the “was here” aspect.  In a 1549 History of Italy, there is an inscription noting that the owner had been to Venice.

The key to all of this seems to be its public-ness.  Some inscriptions were prayers that were clearly meant for others to read.  In another case, the person wrote his opinion about the booksmith where the book was purchased.  There’s even some graffiti that is like trash talking of others.

I enjoyed this article because there were lots of pictures of the inscriptions, although i could have used a few more, frankly.  It was also curious to think about why people wrote things in books long ago–who exactly did they think would be reading their copy of a book?  Was it just a public act of disobedience at a time when a public act had to be very self-contained?

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Joshua Ferris–“Mrs. Blue” (The Iowa Review, Vol 29, No 2, Fall 1999)

Posted in Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Efrim Manuel Menuck, Funny (strange), Godspeed You Black Emperor, Huh?, Joshua Ferris, Radiohead, Set at School, Sex, Short Story, Silver Mt. Zion, The Iowa Review, Unreliable narrator on May 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: EFRIM MANUEL MENUCK-Plays “High Gospel” [CST078] (2011).

Efrim Manuel Menuck was a co-founder of Godspeed Your Black Emperor and the main force behind A Silver Mt. Zion.  In some ways it seems odd that he would release a solo album, but I guess Silver Mt Zion is enough of a collective for him to want to do his own thing.  Efrim has been singing a lot more on Silver Mt Zion records, and I find his voice to walk a fine line between interesting and annoying–well, not so much annoying as inappropriate to the music he makes.  For this solo disc, though, there’s something different about the music that works well with his voice.  There’s eight songs on the disc.  Some of them are pretty much unlistenable, but others are really enjoyable.  The opener “our lady of parc extension and her munificent sorrows” is 7 minutes long and has the kind of epic feel of his previous bands, but there’s a lot more keyboard (making cool space sounds).  Meanwhile, “a 12-pt. program for keep on keepin’ on” is described as a “hauntingly processed field recordings and ominous tape-delayed sound-sculpture.”  That’s true for the first minute or so, but after that it’s mostly just an unpleasant cacophony…that lasts nine minutes!  And while it’s great that it was all done with analogue equipment, that doesn’t make it any more listenable.

“august four, year-of-our-lord blues” is a much more enjoyable instrumental, slow vibrated notes, a real western sound.  Efrim sings again on “heavy calls & hospital blues” and his angsty, hesitant voice works very well on this piano ballad.  “heaven’s engine is a dusty ol’ bellows ” is a 2 minute instrumental/introduction that sounds a lot like the guitar opening from Radiohead’s “Electioneering.” “kaddish for chesnutt” is a slow, mournful dirge.  It’s quite moving.  It’s 7 minutes long, and the length is saved by the second half where the chanted vocals bring the song back from the edge.

“chickadees’ roar pt. 2” is mostly feedback noises and squeaks.  It’s less unpleasant than other instrumentals, but it’s not something you’d seek out.  Although it does work as an introduction to the closer: “i am no longer a motherless child.”  After about 2 minutes of dissonant introduction, the group begins singing an uplifting ending hymn.

So this boils down to a self-indulgent solo project, with a few tracks that are among his best.  You can stream it here.

[READ: May 22, 2012] “Mrs Blue”

I really enjoyed Joshua Ferris’ first novel.  So I thought I’d see what else he had written. He has a number stories published but most of them are unavailable for free reading at this time.  Thanks to my JSTOR account I was able to read this one from The Iowa Review.

This was  pretty confusing story–and since its one of his first, I don’t really know what else to compare it to in his work.  There’s all kinds of disturbing images and as you delve more deeply into the story, the images turn more disturbing but in different ways.

It opens with a youngish boy being seduced by Mrs Blue, a teacher in his school.  He warns her about the dangers of unprotected sex and she says that she’s the one who convinced the PTA to hire the guy who gave the lecture, so she knows all about it.  He’s 13 and he keeps telling her he doesn’t want to (her locations of choice include under a railroad car and in a burned out building).  Each paragraph or so is set off by a star, indicating a new section.  So section 2 has the narrator and Gus (friend? brother?) go to the track where Mrs Blue runs laps. Gus walks his dog, Mr Yackley, while the narrator (whose name is Woodrow Williams) talk about Cole Porter and how she’s looking for a new “daddy.” (more…)

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Conversations with David Foster Wallace (2012)

Posted in Biography, Book Reviews, Books about writers, Boston Phoenix, Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Cynthia Ozick, David Foster Wallace, David Lipsky, Details, Essays, Funny (ha ha), History, My Bloody Valentine, Postmoderism, Publishers Weekly, Research, Rolling Stone, Salon.com, Sandro Perri, Scholarship, Set at School, Stephen J. Burn, Tennis, The Boston Globe, The Buffalo News, The Chicago Tribune, The Connection, The Seattle Times, The Wall Street Journal, To The Best of Our Knowledge on May 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SANDRO PERRI-Impossible Spaces [CST085] (2011).

This album has become one of my favorite releases of the year.  I simply can’t stop listening to it.  And the funny thing is that on first listen I thought it was too treacly, too “sweet,” especially for Constellation Records (home to the over-the-top Godspeed You Black Emperor amongst other wonderful bands).  But after a listen or two, I heard all of the genius that is present in this record–so many different layers of music, and so many interesting instrumental choices. Indeed, it does come off as sweet, but there’s really nothing wrong with that.

This album gives me a happy pick me up without being cloying in any way.  That’s a great accomplishment.

“Changes” opens kind of all over the place, with some noisey guitars and really high bass notes.  But once the shk shk of the shakers comes in, the sing settles into a great groove (and there’s a cool bassline that really holds the song together).  After about 3 minutes, it turns into a cool light funk jam, with retro keyboards, buzzed out guitar solos and some funky drums.  It’s unlike anything you’ll hear anywhere else.  “Love & Light” is one of the shorter pieces at just under 4 minutes.  It’s different from the other tracks, in that Perri’s vocals seem to be the dominant motif, rather than the cool music.  I like the song, but it’s probably my least favorite here.  “How Will I?” uses a similar multi-tracked vocal style but it has some wonderful flute moments (yes flute) that make the song bubbly and happy.  The song kind of drifts around the ether in a kind of jazzy world until about 5 minutes in, when the bassier notes anchor the song with great contrasting notes.  And the electronic ending is as cool as it is disconcerting.

“Futureactive Kid (Part 1)” is a shuffling minor key number that’s just over 3 minutes, it features a cool bass clarinet and backwards guitars to propel the song.  The backwards guitar solo segues into the uplifting (literally, the keyboards just go higher and higher into space. “Futureactive Kid (Part 2)” features fretless bass, a flute solo and My Bloody Valentine-esque sound effects (although radically simplified from MBV’s standards).  It fades out only to introduce my favorite song in forever–“Wolfman.”  I can’t get enough of this song.  It’s a simple structure, but at ten minutes long, it deviates in amazingly complex ways.  It has so many cool aspects that I love–I love the chord changes at the end of each verse.  I totally love the guitar solo that goes up and down the scale for an impossibly long run–well over 100 notes by my count.  I also love that the end of each section features a different guitar style playing the simple chord progression–from acoustic to loud solo to full band playing those same notes–so by the end of the ten minutes you ‘re not sure what to expect.   By the time the flute solo comes in at nearly 7 minutes, I’m totally committed to the song and wherever it’s going to take me.  So when it gets a bit of an electronic ending, I’m ready to go there with it.  Oh and lyrically the song is just as curious as the music.

The final song “Impossible Spaces” is a beautiful, quiet guitar song which is actually easy to sing along to.  It quiet a departure from the rest of the record, but it ties things together very nicely.  I have listened to this record so much lately, I just can’t get enough of it.

You can stream the whole thing here.

[READ: May 10, 2012] Conversations with David Foster Wallace

This is a book that collects interviews with David Foster Wallace.  Although DFW was reticent about d0ing interviews (as the introduction states), he did do quite a lot of them–often at the same haunts.  This book contains 22 interviews that span from 1987-2008.

The conversations are in chronological order, which is really a treat because you get to see DFW’s opinion (and his addiction to nicotine) evolve over the years.  You also get to see the topics that he was really focused on at one time and whether or not they stayed with him until the final interview.  DFW was outspoken about certain things, especially entertainment, which is unsurprising.  But he was also a big advocate of truth, honesty, realness.  It’s amazing seeing him when he lets his guard down. Although his honesty is there for all to see in his work, he is better known for his difficulty with language or his humor.  So seeing him without the multiple revision is quite enlightening.

The first pieces, “David Foster Wallace: A Profile” published after his first novel The Broom of the System launched Viking’s paperback imprint actually looks into his classroom a little bit and shows him interacting with a student (I wonder if she knows she is in this book?).  It seems sweet and almost naive compared to what is to come next.  And, for anyone who is familiar with him from later in, it’s a wonderful look behind the scenes.  There’s also a number of pieces from The Wall Street Journal.  Like the second piece in the book, the worryingly named, “A Whiz Kid and His Wacky First Novel.”  It’s not a bad piece at all, but man, headlines can be delicate matters. (more…)

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Brian Trapp–“Liability” (Narrative, Winter 2012)

Posted in Brian Trapp, Constellation Records, Drinking, Marriage Trouble, Narrative, Pat Jordache, tUnE-yArDs, TV on the Radio, Violence on February 21, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PAT JORDACHE-Future Songs [CST076] (2011).

I love this Constellation release. It is one of my favorite releases of theirs in a long time.  This album sounds like a kind of TV on the Radio demo/tribute.  I don’t mean that in a knock-off way, but there are many elements about TV on the Radio that I recognize here (voice and musical style).  But the fact that a) Jordache plays all of the instruments himself and b) he keeps things simple, makes this an impressive release.

It opens with “Radio Generation,” which has a really cool bouncy guitar riff and bassline.  It doesn’t quite display the signature sound that I think of this album as having but it certainly points to it. “Get It (I Know You’re Going To) is where I hear the first signs of TV on the Radio.  Jordache sings with two voices at the same time–with his deep voice underpinning his higher voice.  It’s a great effect.  And the fiddly guitar bits are really interesting.

“Salt on the Fields” opens with some “wee ooh” vocals in a fairly high register but when the main vocals come in, they are processed and sound not unlike an old radio (and a singer who I can hear but whose name I can’t place) and then midway through, the song introduces a great guitar riff.  “Phantom Limb” features drums and looping from Merrill Garbus who I didn’t know when I first heard this album but who I now know is tUnEyArDs. And, heh, a little browsing tells me that they are in a band together called Sister Suvi.

“Gold Bound” feels more like a demo than the other tracks, it’s a very simple guitar melody with some echoed vocals.  It’s also the shortest song on here and it’s a nice change of pace.  It also ends with a strange excerpt from something else, a vulgar, rocking little piece advising you to run mother fucker.

“Song for Arthur” returns to that cool high-pitched ooo-ooing.  But “The 2-Step” changes things quite a bit.  An interesting processed guitar and loud echoey drums, but that voice is recognizably his.  There’s also more guitars than on other songs which brings a new texture to this album.

The final song “ukUUU” is a slow meandering piece. There’s some interesting sounds going on (reverse vocals and such) and a lengthy spoken piece about love, but it lacks the punch of the rest of the disc.

Nevertheless, this album is interesting, intriguing and a lot of fun.  I’m looking forward to more from him.

[READ: February 12, 2012] “Liability”

I recently saw that Narrative magazine picked three “30 Below” winners for 2011.  So I thought I’d see just what kind of short stories win their prizes.  This is the third place finisher.

I admit I was a little less than excited when I started reading the story.  It was written in second person, which I liked, but it seemed like a pedestrian story about “you ” and your wife.  How she is so beautiful and you feel you have let her down.  But my misgivings soon gave way.  And I think it was with this little section that won me over:

You crave energy and excitement, and to this end you have bought a beautiful condo downtown in the “bohemian quarter,” as the realtor pitched it, which means that it’s cheap enough for artists and poor black people.  That’s okay.  You love art and hate racism.”

By the middle of the next page, after the explanation of your wife’s job (guidance counselor in a poor school) we get to what turns out to really propel the story: “Although, to be honest, she has a small drinking problem.”  He diffuses this bold statement with a qualifier in the next paragraph: “But the drinking problem is only a problem sometimes, and the drinking problem is not a problem tonight.” (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–Tres (2000) [translated 2011]

Posted in Antoni García Porta, Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Enrique Lihn, Laura Healy, Mark Twain, Marriage Trouble, Philip K. Dick, Poetry, Poets, Roberto Bolaño, Short Story, Translation on February 19, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KHÔRA’s-Silent Your Body Is Endless [CST071] (2011).

This is the third and final disc from Constellation’s MUSIQUE FRAGILE 01 collection.  Khôra is Matthew Ramolo doing solo work on the guitar.  But unlike any other guitar album you may have heard, this one is processed and manipulated so that much of the album sounds nothing like a guitar.

Most of the sounds on the disc are washes and waves of guitars that grow and fade.  Although the opening track “Natura Naturans” has a recognizable acoustic guitar melody, the washes are all processed guitar sounds.  This sound also has an echoing church bell, the kind of sound that would bot be out of place on a black metal album although this is as far from black metal as you can get.

The church bell, by the way is a field recording, and in addition to the guitars there are plenty of field recordings on the disc.

He generates a wonderfully expansive amount of moods as well.  There are haunting melodies like on “Body Aperbut also beautifully upbeat ones like on “Hushed Pulse of the Universe”

I find the artwork that accompanies the Khora album to be the most satisfying of all three.

[READ: February 15, 2012] Tres

Another month, another posthumous Roberto Bolaño release.  Tres is so-called because there are three pieces in it.  They are described as poems, although I have a hard time seeing them as such.  It has the Spanish title because it was originally published as Tres and the English version is actually a bilingual version with facing Spanish and English pages (translated by Laura Healy–I guess if Laura Healy translated it, it must be poetry as she is Bolaño’s poetry translator).

Tres is also amusing to me because it is so clearly a way to make a very small book seem bigger.  In addition to the facing pages of the text, most pages have a paragraph or two at most (short ones at that).  So it’s total 173 pages is really half that and then, given how much white space there is, it’s easily half that as well.  None of this is a complaint, it’s just an observation.

The reason I’m confused about calling it poetry is because of the three pieces only one “looks” like poetry (with line breaks and what not).  Indeed, the first piece, “Prosa del otoño en Gerona” literally translates as “Prose from Autumn in Gerona.”  The second piece (the one that looks like poetry) is called “Los neochilenos” or “The Neochileans” and the final one is a series of numbered paragraphs (again, with no poetry conventions) called “Un paseo por la literatura” or “A Stroll through Literature.”  I read each of these pieces three times primarily because I found them hard to follow and wondered what I was missing.  Multiple readings did help, although I find with Bolaño’s longer short pieces, the details are exquisite while the overall picture is a bit confused. (more…)

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Five Dials Number 22: Why Willows Weep and Other Tales from the Forest Floor (17 January 2012)

Posted in Ali Smith, Amanda Craig, Blake Morrison, Canadian Music, Catherine O'Flynn, Cocteau Twins, Constellation Records, Dead Can Dance, Environmentalism, Fables, Five Dials, Joanne Harris, Kate Mosse, Leanne Shapton, Maggie O'Farrell, Maria McCann, Marriage Trouble, Philip Hensher, Phillipa Gregory, Pink Floyd, Rachel Billington, Richard Mabey, Salley Vickers, Short Story, Simon Prosser, Sinéad O'Connor, Susan Elderkin, Tasmina Anam, Terence Blacker, Tracey Chevalier, Trees, William Fiennes on January 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LES MOMIES DE PALERME-Brûlez de Coeur [CST070] (2011).

This is the second disc from Constellation’s MUSIQUE FRAGILE 01.  Les Momies de Palerme, comprised of Marie Davidson and Xarah Dion, create ethereal music that would not be out of place on NPR’s Echoes (wonder if John Diliberto knows about the album).

There is a female vocalist who has qualities of Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser (big surprise there) as well as early Lush.  But while the music is often swirling and intriguing, it is also sometimes odd.  There are moments in “Solis” which remind me of Pink Floyd’s “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.” (That’s the second time I’ve mentioned this song in just over a month).

“Incarnation” has a vaguely middle eastern feel and works more in a Dead Can Dance kind of vein and “Le Cerf Invisible” has some really cool sound effects that spring up throughout the song.

The title track has a spoken word section that reminds me of the spoken word part in Sinéad O’Connor’s “Never Get Old” from The Lion and the Cobra (probably because it’s spoken by a woman and is in a foreign language, although on Sinéad’s album it’s Gaelic (spoken by Enya(!) and on this one it’s French).  I rather like it.

Most of the songs are longer than five-minutes, but there are two short ones: “Médée” is just under three and “Outre-Temps” is just under two, but they retain the same style of music, although “Médée” introduces acoustic guitars.

“Je T’aime” ends the disc with a bit more acoustic instrumentation.  The album kind of becomes more grounded as it goes along.  But it’s always ethereal.  It’s a neat experience.

Their website has a great front page, too.

[READ: January 23, 2012] Five Dials Number 22

Most Five Dials issues are chockablock with different ideas: contemporary issues, flashbacks to the past, fiction, poetry, ethics, music.  A wonderful melding of interesting ideas.  But Number 22 is entirely different.  Simon Prosser and Tracy Chevalier co-edited this issue and as they say in the editor’s note, they asked a group of contributors “to write grown-up fables about nineteen trees native to the UK.”

This issue is also promoting trees by highlighting the work at http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk, an organization with three aims:

1 Work with others to plant more native trees…

2 Protect native woods, trees and their wildlife for the future…

3 Inspire everyone to enjoy and value woods and trees…

Simple but noble goals.  You can even buy a copy of this book in print from them at their store.

Even though I love nature and like being in the woods, I don’t know a lot about different kinds of trees.  I’m always stumped when it comes to tree identification.  So this issue was kind of enlightening for me.  Each fable has a picture of a leaf (presumably from that tree) which were painted by Leanne Shapton.  The fables also create backstory for what tree-lovers know about their favorite trees, and so this was also helpful just to learn what people know about trees.

But at the same time, it makes me uniquely unequipped to really talk about these fables.  So I’m just going to list the authors and their trees and say a word or two about their style. (more…)

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Diane Williams–Vicky Swanky is a Beauty (2012)

Posted in Africa, Concept Albums, Constellation Records, Diane Williams, Disease, Flash Fiction, Harper's, McSweeney's, Poetry, Racism, Short Books, Short Story, Slavery on January 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MATANA ROBERTS-COIN COIN Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres [CST079] (2011).

This is an abrasive album.  Not only does it has some massively skronking free-jazz, but it is also aggressively political, dealing with slavery and race.   So, if the heart-rendered screams of Roberts don’t make you uncomfortable, the description of a woman on the auction block will do it.

I listened to this album a number of times and kept thinking that it would probably work much better live than on record.  Lo and behold, if I’d read the liner notes more closely I would have known that it was performed live.   (The final song has an introduction and cheers at the end, but none of the rest of the album indicates that it’s live).

I like free improv jazz (when I’m in the mood of course) and I also like noise jazz (John Zorn mostly).  So I’m not averse to a lot of the genre.  But there was something odd about this recording to me.  And this is where that whole “live” recording comes into play.  This music felt like it was being performed for an audience.  I don’t know what the difference is, but it’s one I heard.  I can imagine images going along with the show.   And because of that, I feel like I was missing a crucial element.

The liner notes don’t explain anything about the show itself, nor how this person apparently named Coin Coin relates to her (it seems vaguely autobiographical, but I’d love to know more).

There are moments of rather conventional beauty on this recording.  The song that contains the “Bid ‘Em In” section is a great singalong (of course, when you realize what you’re singing about, you’re horrified).  And there are some other sections where Robert’s voice melds perfectly with her band and with Gitanjali Jain’s backing vocals.

The final song is a very moving song written for her mother.

The only thing I really don’t like about the album is Roberts’ poetry-slam-type singing.  I have complained before about this type of sing-song delivery, which just irks me.  I can see that there are times on the album where it works, but for the most part it feels arbitrary (as it always seems to me).  And when you have crazy improv jazz you need something to hold it down.  The poetry slam lyrics don’t do that.

This is not for everybody, but it is certainly a powerful album.

[READ: January 16, 2012] Vicky Swanky is a Beauty

McSweeney’s has gotten me to like a lot of things that I never thought I would–a cooking magazine, a sports magazine, long out of print unheard of titles.  But they simply cannot get me to like flash fiction.  Okay, that’s not entirely true.  Deb Olin Unfurth is quite a master of the genre.  But man, I just cannot get into Williams’ short short stories.

The majority of these stories are two pages long.  This means 12 lines on the first page and anywhere from a quarter to a full-page on the second.  But there are also some stories that end after one page (12 lines).  So here’s the little drinking game I invited.  Since Williams’ stories end so arbitrarily, try to guess which ones end after those first twelve lines and which ones continue on to the next page (it’s not really a fair game because some stories end in ten lines or so, but you get the idea).

Take “Cockeyed” (more…)

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Linda McCullogh Moore–“Final Dispositions” (The Sun, February 2009)

Posted in Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Eric Chenaux, Linda McCullogh Moore, Short Story, The Sun, Unreliable narrator on January 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ERIC CHENAUX-Warm Weather with Ryan Driver [CST068] (2010).

I just checked my review of Chenaux’s previous album and it’s funny how similar it is to what I figured I’d write about this one: soporific, free-form, sweet, hard to get into at first but ultimately rewarding.  Chenaux must be the most mellow person ever.  His songs just sort of drift around without any real theme to guide them.  Sometimes the chord changes even seem arbitrary.  And Chenaux’s voice is so slow and gentle that it’s not always clear he’s even singing along with the music.  But the thing about all of this is that it sounds very pretty (so he must know what he’s doing).

It’s not even worth me doing any kind of song by song evaluation because they are all pretty much the same–slow guitar with occasional keyboards and backing vocals.  I find the disc maddening at times and yet at other times I find it achingly beautiful.  My favorite song, the one with the most compelling melody to me, is “Mynah Bird.”  I suppose it’s the most “obvious” song, very Nick Drake-like, but it’s a great way into this record.

The Ryan Driver of the title is a piano/synth/melodica player who contributes all of the accents to the record.

There are times when I adore this album.  In the right frame of mind, this is simply a gorgeous record.  But in the wrong frame of mind, this is just slow plodding dullsville.  Choose wisely–and you will be rewarded.

[READ: January 4, 2012] “Final Dispositions”

This is another story recommended to me by Karen Carlson (see all of her recommendations in the comments to this post).  Of this one she writes: “from her linked-story collection This Road Will Take Us Closer To the Moon, available online in The Sun, Feb. 2009. A little sentimental, but well done. Try it with S&G’s “Bookends” or Janis Ian’s “Hymn [as a soundtrack].”

I loved the way this story was set up.  It opens with a woman, Margaret, who seems off somehow: “I am the oldest sibling.  Always have been.  I thought the years might mute the effect of that, but nothing so far.”  Her siblings are deciding “what to do with her.”  And after they have their confab, they call her up and ask her questions based on what they decided.

Initially you feel angry on her part, that her family is so dismissive of her.  But it soon becomes clear that they feel she needs help.  Interestingly, since the story is from Margaret’s point of view and she is lucid, it’s hard to know exactly what is wrong with her.  She talks of depressive things and speaks very deadpan but then wonders why no one has a sense of humor.

There’s not a lot of plot in the story, but there’s an initial “subplot” point when Margaret’s sister (“Irene–I mean, Eileen…. I like it that I can never keep her name straight”–[I love this joke/telling remark.  It is such a smart encapsulation of a person who is forgetful but still with it]) sends her husband over to pick Margaret up.  Tom, her brother-in-law, was previously married and the beginning of the story focuses on that a bit–on Margaret’s prying into Tom’s past presumably to needle Eileen.  The narrator soon finds out Tom’s ex-wife’s name and plans a surprise for her sister. (more…)

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Elliott Holt–“Fem Care” (Kenyon Review, Summer 2009)

Posted in 2 Broke Girls, Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Elliott Holt, Kenyon Review, Menstruation, Short Story on January 4, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: NICK KUEPFER-Avestruz [CST072] (2011).

This is the first disc in the Musique Fragile 01 set that I’ll be writing about.  Kueper’s disc is pretty daring, at least for an unsigned artist.

The album is a series of short (1-4 minute) instrumentals, with each one featuring a different instrument as the lead–guitar, accordion, drums, violin.  And yet they aren’t songs so much as sketches, or even soundtracks to an unmade film.  The songs don’t have standard construction–they just seem to ramble on a little bit until they stop.  And yet the whole album has a cohesiveness that creates a picture.  In some places it’s more obvious than others, but you can hear woodpeckers and other birds (or possibly people whistling like birds?). .

I love “Corpse in the Wildflowers” (accordion), “Kettle” (percussion), “Red Sand Market” (acoustic guitar and accordion), “Blue Pig” (guitar and violin) and “Public Transit” (acoustic guitar).  “Tail Still Moves” is a slightly off-kilter sawing kind of song.  It’s not exactly pleasant but it brings an interesting aspect to the disc.  The final instrumental track has a kind of lo-fi Sebadoh feel (cool guitar riffs played on a crappy guitar).

Some of the tracks in the middle don’t really go anywhere “Vampyro” is just kind of meandering and “Bus Windows” is a bit long, but they all add to the soundtrack of this fake movie.  I keep picturing a dry Western town, a windmill creaky in the slow wind.

The final track is very confusing, however, it’s a “live,” poorly recorded song in which Kuepfer sings along with his strumming.  You can barely hear him and I’m nots ure what to make of it.  The birds are pretty, though.

The Constellation site says that these were field recordings done in Argentina.  So that’s pretty cool too.   I’d like to hear more from him, but I’d also like to hear a bit more of a complete idea rather than sketches.

[READ: December 3, 3012] “Fem Care”

This is the first story that I read which was recommended by Karen Carlson.  She describes it like this “As much fun as you can have with menstruation. Literary fiction doesn’t often look at professional women at work. This could be a little chick-lit for a guy. Somehow I’m thinking Carly Simon would be good here [for a soundtrack].”

Karen is pretty much right on the money.  I really enjoyed this story quite a lot.  It deals with women and business and women’s business.  The story takes place at the annual Beauty Summit in Miami.  The unnamed narrator works as a market researcher for a company that sells feminine beauty products.  “Fem Care” is shorthand for her division: feminine care products, a division that lacks any of the sex appeal of, say, skin care products.

The summit sounds dreadful.  As we zoom in on the scene a German man is making everyone laugh as part of  a kind of team building exercise.  The narrator has had enough and excuses herself.  This part in which the department head, Luis, is embarrassed by tampons, when that is what his very division markets is quite funny and is done very well.  And, I might add, the same basic joke was played out on 2 Broke Girls just this week, but Elliott Holt handles it with so much more grace and simplicity that the 2 Broke Girls writers should really read this story. (more…)

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