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Archive for the ‘Short Story’ Category

The Walrus: Tenth Anniversary Issue (October 2013)

Posted in Adventure, Andrew Coyne, Biography, Books about music, Books about writers, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Corporate skewering, Culture Shock, Dan Rubinstein, Death, Edward Burtynsky, Essays, Fears, Harper's, History, Katrina Onstad, LGBTQ, Matthew McKinnon, Melissa Fung, Michael Harris, Nostalgia, Parenting, Poetry, Political Humor, Religion, Ron Graham, Russell Peters, Sex, Sexism, Short Story, Technology, The Future, The Walrus, Violence, Voivod on September 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »

2013-10SOUNDTRACK: VOIVOD-The Best of Voivod (1992).

bestvoivodMost Best of records promise you a selection of popular songs from a band.  Voivod never really had any popular songs, so this is an interesting choice to start with.  This may also be the only Best of compilation of a band where people who like some of the songs almost assuredly will not like other songs.

As my posts about the band have indicated, Voivod changed drastically over their first six records (which is the  period this collection covers).  And so in twelve tracks and 50 some minutes you get the very diverse history of this very unusual band.  I’m not going to talk about each track (already done that), but I will list the songs

  • Voivod [War and Pain] classic screaming metal.

  • Ripping Headaches [Rrröööaaarrr] brutal, but I must say sounds a ton better than the original CD.  I wonder if this was remastered for the compilation).

  • Korgull the Exterminator [Rrröööaaarrr] hard to believe they used two songs from this album.

  • Tornado [Killing Technology] heavy but quite catchy.

  • Ravenous Medicine [Killing Technology] signs of complexity enter the heaviness.

  • Cockroaches [EP] a strange inclusion, almost a rarity.

  • Tribal Convictions [Dimension Hätross] very complex with some heaviness.

  • Psychic Vacuum  [Dimension Hätross] I’m surprised they didn’t pick other songs though from this album.

  • Astronomy Domine [Nothingface] their hit.

  • The Unknown Knows [Nothingface] very hard to choose just two songs from this masterpiece.

  • Panorama [Angel Rat] Their newest single and quite a departure from everything that has come before.

  • The Prow [Angel Rat] their prettiest number ever.  If you buy this CD for this song you’ll hate the early stuff.

Although Voivod fans (like Dave Grohl)

are diehard, anyone who would buy only a Best of record from the band is sure to be disappointed. There are so many phases of the band and they are so radically different from “Voivod” to “The Prow” that it’s almost not even the same band.  I’m very curious as to what sales for this album were like.  (Even the cover isn’t that inspired)

[READ: September 2013] The Walrus: Tenth Anniversary Issue

It’s hard for me to believe that The Walrus has been around for ten years (even they seem a bit surprised).  I still remember hearing about the magazine on Book TV from some Canadian channel that I just happened upon.

When I heard about it The Walrus seemed interesting–kind of like Harper’s and elements of the New Yorker but all about Canada.  I’ve been a Canuckophile for decades now, so it seemed like an interesting prospect.  And over the ten years of the magazine, while I haven’t written about every issue, I have read every article.  I have written about all of the short stories that they’ve published.

This issue eschews some of my favorite elements (the short articles in the front and the arts section in the back), but they make up for it with an oversized issue (twice as long as usual and the articles are all packed with content) and some fascinating articles.

And while there are none of the short articles from the front, there are “Time Capsules,” one page articles about things that have happened in the last ten years: The iPhone, Sports Concussions, Armed Drones, The Residential School Apology, Justin Bieber, Foodies, Hand Sanitizer and Cyberbullying.  It’s interesting to read about these phenomena from a slightly different perspective.  We know that Canada and the U.S. share many similarities but there are, at heart some core differences.  And it’s these differences that make you rethink a subject.  (more…)

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Jason–Almost Silent (2009)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Amber Tamblyn, Dan the Automator, David Chang, David Cross, Death, Del the Funky Homosapien, Deltron 3030, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Jason, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kid Koala, Sex, Short Story, Zombies on September 27, 2013| Leave a Comment »

almostsilentSOUNDTRACK: DELTRON 3030-“The Return” (2013).

Deltron3030-EventII-caa19c164f9e01c2441aab420c0b54356b261e87-s1After thirteen years, alternative rap supergroup Deltron 3030 is back.  If you’ve forgotten, Deltron 3030 is comprised of Dan the Automator, Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Kid Koala.  Evidently the album is chock full of guest stars (which I usually dislike, but the guest stars are a weirdly unexpected bunch–David Cross, Amber Tamblyn, chef David Chang?–so I’m curious to hear what they are going to add to the sound.

Okay even I admit I don’t really remember what the first Deltron album sounded like, but if memory serves this seems to be picking up in that same spacey vibe that made Deltron so weird and fun.

There’s a story going on here, told in Del’s awesome rapping style–mellow and trippy with big words and convoluted phrasings.  Of course, this is only track 2 on the record so I don’t know exactly what the story is about.  But I know that Deltron 0 is back and I’m pretty excited to hear the whole thing.

You can hear this track on NPR and you can watch the intro track (featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt) here:

[READ: September 20, 2013] Almost Silent

This book collects four of Jason’s previous books “Meow, Baby,” “Tell Me Something,” “You Can’t Get There from Here” and “The Living and the Dead.”

“Meow, Baby” (2006) is a collection of  “short stories” from Jason.  They feature the same (looking) cast of characters as most of the other Jason books I’ve read (anthropomorphic animals), but there’s a few additions: a mummy, a zombie,a  skeleton and a vampire.  None of the pieces are titled and the only way to know when each is done is when you see his signature.  This is just to note that if there is a mummy in two stories, it’s good to know he’s not necessarily the same mummy.

The stories are quite funny with variations on mummy stories (wrapping your head in a bandage after you are hurt, getting an erection(!)), and vampire stories (the same looking guy is always following him with a stake) and some very amusing domestic scenes with skeletons.  I enjoyed the one where the mummy comes out of the sarcophagus, looks at a newspaper and then walks back into the sarcophagus with a look of despair on his face (his face is still covered in bandages—Jason has an amazing way of expression even with people who have no faces). There’s also a whole series of skeletons who climb out of their graves and go about mundane tasks .  There’s even a guy dressed like the Terminator who has some funny moments where he misses the opportunity to say his trademark lines.

The last few pages are three panel strips—like daily cartoons .  Were they ever shown in newspapers?  These show that Jason is also very funny at punchlines, not just dark stories and black humor.  True, all of these three panel comic are black humor (with the same cast of zombies, vampires, mummies and skeletons), but he really makes some funny and unexpected strips here. (more…)

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Simon Rich–“The Tribal Rite of the Strombergs” (New Yorker, August 26, 2013)

Posted in Death, Foetus, Funny (ha ha), Jim Thirwell, Ministry, New Yorker, Scrabble, Short Story, Simon Rich, Skinny Puppy, Violence on September 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_08_26_13Drooker.inddSOUNDTRACK: VOIVOD-Negatron (1995).

negatronAfter The Outer Limits failed to grab an audience, Voivod’s lead singer Snake departed the band.  With just the two original members left (and no bassist or singer), Piggy and Away decided to start again.  And they went dark and heavy.  For the first 45 second of this album, you think, wow, Voivod has made a really heavy album—with thundering riffs and, yet still, some unusual chords from Piggy (the chord progressions are definitely still weird).  Then new singer (and bassist) E-Force opens his mouth.  And that’s when a good portion of Voivod’s  prog rock fan base started weeping.

E-Force is a screamer.  He’s not unlike Snake on the first couple of albums (although without the French accent).  But there’s very little diversity.  E-Force’s voice isn’t a total failure.  It works pretty well with the heaviness of the music.  But those of us who grew used to Snake’s singing can’t help but be disappointed by E-Force’s very limited range and style.

Opener “Insects” has some very cool parts and the music is kind of interesting—Piggy is always inventive and it’s cool to hear him mix some of his weird chords with such heavy music (the style is kind of like Killing Technology era but heavier and weirder).  And there’s some sequences where the chords are just bizarre and cool.  There is a bridge in “Insects” where E-Force sounds a bit like Snake and it’s like a great heavy Voivod album of old.

Speaking of heavy, Away sounds like he is having a great time banging the hell out of his drums.  I feel somewhat surprised that after the last few albums of mellowing out that both guys could ramp up to play so fast and heavy again.  “Project X” gives E-Force some room to do some different vocal styles (like on the first bridge which is actually kind of catchy), but the song is more pounding than exciting,

“Nanoman” brings some diversity, with a standard, but cool metal riff (and double bass drums). It also has a chorus that you can sing along to (or scream along to at any rate).  “Reality?” is by now standard scream fare, but there is a chorus “upside down reality” in which E-Force shows he can actually sing and that part is quite good.  “Negatron” is over 7 minutes long, and yet there s very little prog at hand.  It does have some astonishingly noisy dissonant chords, though.  “Planet Hell” opens with a bass riff that stands out a bit on this pounding album.  But it quickly begins to sound like much else of the album.  I do like the middle of the song where it breaks down into alternating guitar and drum breaks.

Starting with “Meteor” the album gets a little more interesting.  There’s more high notes in this song, especially in the bridge—it’s still heavy and bludgeoning but there is some diversity here.  I haven’t talked about the lyrics on the albums mostly because I can’t make them out, but on this song you can actually hear the lyrics and you can tell that they’re also not really up to snuff: “I don’t fucking care, I don’t care no more, I don’t give a shit.”

“Cosmic Conspiracy” opens with a simple echoing guitar line.  It introduces a sci-fi element that the album has sorely lacked.  Between that and the heavy drums and the crunchy bass, the song sounds really promising.  Indeed, when E-Force starts singing, it’s muffled in an interesting way.  And mid way through, it breaks into just martial drumming from Away.  This is the diversity we’ve been looking for.  There’s even an impressive (an interestingly effected) drum solo.  Then the guitars that kick in are fairly traditional but actually fun speed metal.  Sadly, E-Force’s voice doesn’t work with this section and kind of ruins it, which is a shame.  There’s some interesting guitar work in the end of the song but it’s kind of drowned out by E-Froce’s screams.  “Bio-TV” has a staccato sound that breaks up the pummeling.  And the middle has a kind of pretty guitar riff (and a simplistic sing along section that sounds great amidst the chaos).

The final track is by far the most interesting and unusual.  It is called “D.N.A” which stands for “Don’t know Anything” (seriously).  But what’s unexpected is that the song is primarily written by and sung by Jim Thriwell (of Foetus).  It’s not entirely clear if Piggy’s guitar is even on it (it is so distorted beyond guitar that it could be anything), although you do hear some chords near the end.  Away’s drums are in the mix somewhere (it may indeed be all machines).  It sounds like a Ministry/Skinny Puppy hybrid, and I would have preferred that electronic direction to the fairly generic death metal sound of the album.  I’m really not sure what to make of this song.  If you like noisy industrial music, this is an unexpectedly interesting track and surely a weird place to look for something like this.

There is a degree of irony that Blacky left to play more electronic music and Voivod recorded “DNA”.  But even more ironic is that Snake left in part to start a much more heavy hardcore band (Union Made) and then the next Voivod album was the heaviest they’d done.  It’s cool that Voivod is ever evolving, but this is a weird sidestep in a career of progression.  It’s not a failure, but it takes a number of listens to find the gems within the noise.

[READ: September 17, 2013] “The Tribal Rite of the Strombergs”

This Simon Rich story is very funny.  It begins (as the picture that accompanies it shows us) with Scrabble.  Jeremy is playing his father.  Jeremy always loses to his father.  And yet, Jeremy reveals that he has been playing Words with Friends (his father doesn’t know what that is).  And through Words with Friends he has learned that words like “qat” are playable (his father doubts the word but doesn’t challenge).

It soon becomes clear (because Jeremy can see the score) that although he is losing, it’s close enough that he might, for the first time, be able to beat his father.

When Jeremy plays Ta (a word they have always used), his father challenges.  But it is useless.  Jeremy’s father has a Z and that should do it. (more…)

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Tom Bissell–3 book reviews (Harper’s, August 2013)

Posted in Adelle Waldman, Alice Munro, Barenaked Ladies, Book Reviews, David Foster Wallace, George Eliot, Harper's, Jim Guthrie, Kathleen Edwards, Kevin Hearn, McSweeney's, Neil Young, Peter Orner, Rheostatics, Sex, Short Story, Sloan, Susan Choi, Tiny Desk Concert, Tom Bissell on September 21, 2013| 2 Comments »

aug2013SOUNDTRACK: JIM GUTHRIE-Tiny Desk Concert #294 (August 10, 2013).

jimgI was unfamiliar with Guthrie before this set and I almost didn’t play it because of his mustache–he just looks so country to me.  But then I read that he and his band drove 9 hours from Ontario just to do the show (which is 11 minutes long, so that’s pretty crazy).  But the set is really good.

The three songs come from Guthrie’s new album Takes Time (his first solo album in ten years).  And I was hooked…not right from the start, but 15 seconds into “The Difference a Day makes” when the guitar plays the chorus riff.  There is something so… Canadian about the melody line.  It reminds me of Neil Young, Sloan, Rheostatics, even Kathleen Edwards, all of these great Canadian songwriters who play with slightly different melodies.  The fact that he sings “doubt” and “out” with an Ontario accent solidifies it.  It’s one of my favorite mellow songs of the year.  “Before & After” sounds a bit like  Barenaked Ladies mellow song, like something  written by Kevin Hearn.  I tend to not like the Hearn songs, but I thin kit’s that I don’t like Hearn’s voice, because I like this song quite a lot.

Guthrie has a delicate but strong voice–I can’t imagine him screaming, but he conveys a lot.  Especially in the final song, the more mellow (and minor key) “Like a Lake.”  I’ve heard Tiny Desk shows that go on for five or six songs.  I wish that Bob and Robin had let them play for ten more minutes. Now I’m off to find his records.  Check it out.

[READ: September 10, 2013] 3 book reviews

Tom Bissell reviewed three new books in the August 2013 issue of Harper’s.  I like Bissell in general and since I’ll probably wind up writing about these when they get collected anyway, why not jump the gun here.  Especially when there’s three good-sounding books like these.

sagamoreThe first is Peter Orner’s Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge.  I know Orner from McSweeney’s mostly, where I’ve read a few of his things  But one of the stories that Bissell mentions from this short story collection sounds familiar and yet it doesn’t seem to be something I’ve read.  Hmmm.  Well anyhow, he says that Orner’s previous book (with a title that Bissell assumes he had to fight to keep–The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo) was a great piece of fiction about Africa, and that his previous collection Esther Stories was also very solid.

This book is a little stranger—bundled into 4 sections, it includes more than fifty “stories” and is all of 200 pages.  (Sounds like just the kind of thing I can get into).  Bissell suggests that the stories have a layer of remove, like someone telling a story about someone telling a story.  Or, if they were about a bank robbery, the story would actually be about someone describing having once met the guy who sold the robbers their ski masks.  But the real selling point for me was this pithy description of the collection: imagine Brief Interviews with Hideous Men written by Alice Munro.   That sounds hard to pass up. (more…)

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Robert Coover–“The Colonel’s Daughter” (New Yorker, September 2, 2013)

Posted in Death, Modest Mouse, New Yorker, Robert Coover, Short Story, The Kids in the Hall, Threats, Typhoon, Violence, War, Wolf Parade on September 19, 2013| 1 Comment »

CV1_TNY_09_02_13Viva.inddSOUNDTRACK: TYPHOON-“Artificial Light” (2013).

typhoonartSince I mentioned “Artificial Light” the other day, I thought I’d link to it today.

The song opens with a pretty guitar melody punctuated by horns.  The singer’s vocal style is dramatic and often unexpected–especially the way he gets louder mid sentence and then drops to a whisper at other times (reminds me a bit of Wolf Parade or perhaps even Modest Mouse).

There are very pretty moments in the song (especially when the orchestration fills in).  But the horns also give it a kind of Spanish feel, which rides on top of the heavier guitars in the verses.

At about two and a half minutes, the song drops out completely.  It is picked up by some gentle guitar and horns as it builds back up.  By the end the chorus of voices builds the song to new heights and widths.

It’s interesting what you can do with so many band members in five and a half minutes.  This song really runs a breadth of ideas but remains quite pretty throughout.

[READ: September 12, 2013] “The Colonel’s Daughter”

The Kids in the Hall once made a sketch in which there was no beginning or ending, just a middle.

In the sketch, a man in a tutu slaps a man in a scuba diving suit saying.  “Stop it. stop it. I’ve got to stop you and your revolutionaries from taking over this country.”

This story is like the inverse of that sketch.  It has a beginning and an end but no middle.  Interestingly, since it is also about revolutionaries taking over a country, I now just insert that sketch into the story (I’m sure that makes Coover very happy.  I wonder if anyone else mentions this sketch in the review of this story).

I have mixed feeling about Coover’s work in general.  It often feels more style over substance.  And I fear that this one may have been playing with that somewhat. Interestingly as well, there is a lot of substance, but it is played in such as way as to make it almost seem meaningless—unless you are willing to really unpack it (which I wasn’t).

So, the Colonel is intent on overthrowing the President (the country is unnamed).  He has chosen the group of men sitting in the room with him.  Some of them know each other but not all do.  They look around and size each other up.  Indeed, 5/6 of the story is the men sizing each other up.  To me, the men are interchangeable.  I don’t know if that is lazy reading on my part or if it is indeed on purpose.

Each man gets a brief biography—the Deputy Minister, the Police Chief, the biplane pilot, the business man, the professor, the doctor and possibly someone else.

We learn a little about each man and why the Colonel would have chosen him.  We learn about his fears about the mission and who he mistrusts the most.  We also learn that one of the men is a double agent, working for the President.  Like a game of Clue, pieces of information are given that would let you know who the man is, but again, I didn’t feel like doing the work to figure it out.  I am curious to know if you can tell who it is from the story, but not curious enough to do the work (so I should not be rewarded). (more…)

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Lauren Groff–“Amaranth” (Lucky Peach, No. 8: The Gender Issue: Summer 2013)

Posted in Chastity Belt, Food, Guster, Humiliation, Jefferson Airplane, Lauren Groff, Lucky Peach, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Revenge, Sex, Short Story, Violence, Virginity (Loss of) on September 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

lp8SOUNDTRACK: CHASTITY BELT-“Black Sail” (2013).

noregerstChastity Belt are notorious for their band photo.  And the fact that their album is called No Regerts (sic).  By rights they should play ugly abrasive punk or something weird and edgy and probably a little scary.

So imagine the surprise when “Black Sail” opens and sounds like a Guster song–simple chords with a very catchy melody (it reminds me of a rawer version of “Architects and Engineers”).

Then the vocals come in and the singer sounds a bit like Jefferson Airplane-era Grace Slick–powerful but kind of slow.  It’s a very compelling mix.

Especially when things change in the chorus–a simple, pretty guitar riff leads us into the simple chorus “black sail, strong wind.”

The difference between the image and the music is so striking that i wonder if I’d have been as taken with the music with out the picture.  Was this a brilliant strategy or just a really bad idea (it has already made a list of unfortunate band photos).  You can decide for yourself, I’m including the picture at the end of the post.

And you can listen to the song on NPR or at their bandcamp site.

[READ: September 12, 2013] “Amaranth”

Amaranth is a 12-year-old girl who goes by the name Merry.  She is out driving with her father one night when he gets a call from his business partner.  Amaranth pretends to be asleep while her father goes to talk to the man.  But rather than a conversation, the partner, Otto, kills her dad.  And Amaranth saw the whole thing happen.

Amaranth is devastated.  But she is even more devastated when Otto starts coming around.  Like a remake of Hamlet, soon Otto and Amaranth’s mother are getting married.

Amaranth wants nothing to do with this; the rest of the story details the ways she rebels against the unpardonable acts.

First she begins starving herself.  She eats just enough to survive but her mother hates how thin she is getting. Eventually they send her to a place for girls with eating disorders.  She returns plumper, but with a new scheme.  This time her rebelliousness gets her put into a special hospital. (more…)

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Adam Johnson–“Nirvana” (Esquire, August 2013)

Posted in Adam Johnson, Batman, Canadian Music, Esquire, Kurt Cobain, Marriage (Happy), Nirvana, Short Story, Technology, Voivod on September 3, 2013| Leave a Comment »

esqSOUNDTARCK: VOIVOD-Dimesnion Hatröss (1988).

hatrossDimension Hatröss takes the advances from Killing Technology and moves them even further into craftsmanship and prog excellence.  In the Killing Technology band photo and in this one, Blacky had shaved part of his head—which was pretty outrageous for a metal band in the late 80s.  It’s just a small visual showing how the band was different from other metal bands.

It also opens with some interesting sounds—a swirling noise that coalesces into a fantastic solid heavy riff—a confident metal riff that is more sophisticated than most of their output already.  And then a cool noisy chord from Piggy lets you know that this album is going to be…different.  And so it is, a wonderful mix of metal and prog rock chords (and long songs)  all used as the background of a sci-fi story of The Voivod.  The dissonance is amazing on the album—Piggy is playing chords that seem like they shouldn’t come from a guitar.

“Tribal Convictions” is a little less harsh than “Experiment” and you can really hear Snake has been honing his singing skills.  There’s even multiple tracks of vocals (including a deep voice singing along on this track).  And there are so many different sections—and the first that stands out on the album is Piggy’s echoed guitars just before the “who’s the God” section.  Or the repeated chords that open the fantastic “Chaosmongers”—sounding for all the world like electronic malfunction.  And yet for all of the experimentation, the songs are still heavy—the chorus of this song is very fast and full of Away’s noisy splash cymbal.  My favorite parts comes at around 2:15 where Piggy plays these great fast chords and Blacky plays a very cool accompanying bass line.  Indeed, Blacky’s bass sounds great on this record.  And when that riff repeats later in the song, it’s followed by a great concluding section.

“Technocratic Manipulators” is a fast heavy song—a very traditional sounding metal song until the “that’s not for me” comes in with a  huge time change that last… for one measure.  I love how the song ends with a repeated section of “I’d rather be…” until the final line, “I’d rather…think.”

Then comes one of my favorite Voivod songs with the awesome title “Macrosolutions to Megaproblems.”  It opens with some increasingly dissonant chords, but also features some loud chanted singalong sections followed by a ringing guitar solo that sounds like a siren.  All within a few seconds of each other.  It also has the thoughtful bridge, “You better shake up your mind, coz if you’re just staying blind, integrity you won’t find.” And another super cool dissonant chord sequence on the high notes of the guitar—I don’t know how Piggy thought of these sequences.  Just to top it off, the ending sequence is a series of descending chords, each one odder than the last.

“Brain Scan” has a cool riff at the end of each verse that is actually surprisingly major chord bright—amidst the chaos of the rest of the song (more great bass from Blacky and some crazy sounds of a brain scan—Snake’s voice processed?).  “Psychic Vacuum” is one of the songs where I have to wonder how they can switch to different sections so fast.  “Cosmic Drama” opens with a distant echoic riff and then nothing but heaviness.  And yet it keeps up that sci-fi experimental feel.  This is one of the great heavy metal records of the 80s.  technically brilliant playing, odd time signatures and yet still some really catchy music.

The CD has an addition of the Batman theme song.  It’s a very odd addition and has no place on the record, but I’ve always liked it because it is so weird. (It’s also only 1:45).

[READ: August 29, 2013] “Nirvana”

I was apprehensive about reading this story because I tend to dislike Esquire fiction. But Adam Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Orphan Master’s Son (which I haven’t even heard of), so I figured this must be better than the male bonding stories that usually appear in Esquire.

And so it was.

This also happens to be the second stories about a virtual reality President that I’ve read in a few days.  How about that.

So this story is set in some kind of future.  And in this future the President has been assassinated (and has been dead for three months).  The story seems like it is set in the near future (so I kept imagining Obama as the dead President and I wonder if others do too).  But something is odd, because the protagonist has been whispering to the President (and evidently the President is talking back to him).  However, what’s more significant to the narrator is his wife. (more…)

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Zadie Smith–“Meet the President!” (New Yorker, August 12 & 19, 2013)

Posted in Boredom, Death, Kathleen Edwards, Live from Mountain Stage, New Yorker, Short Story, Technology, The Future, Zadie Smith on September 2, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_08_12_13RussoGate.inddSOUNDTRACK: KATHLEEN EDWARDS-Live from Mountain Stage (April 16, 2013).

Kkedsathleen Edwards is one of my favorite country/folkie performers.  I love her song craft and the beautiful way she sings.  And I’d love to see her live if she ever comes around.  Although she explains during this Mountain Stage show that it was near the end of her tour and she sounds….tired. Or perhaps just mellow.

I love the five  songs she plays “Asking for Flowers,” “Change the Sheets,” “House Full of Empty Rooms,” “Chameleon/Comedian,” and “Soft Place to Land,” but they all seem so…quiet.  I think of Edwards as kind of a rowdy performer—she can wail with them all, but everything seems dialed back here somewhat.  “Empty Rooms” is so quiet (and it is a mellow song, but even more so here).  But even  “Change the Sheets” which has a bridge and chorus that just blows me away the way it rocks and “Comedian” which ends with such wonderful anguish on the record, are both much more mellow here.

She has a very funny sequence talking about female singers and how she wants to create a Canadian ladies band called Modern Beaver (and she is apparently serious about it, and even has songs for them (as of summer 2013), but no time or energy to get it done.  Maybe for Xmas?

Any Kathleen Edwards is good Kathleen Edwards, but I’m looking forward to the next rowdy set I get to hear from her.

[READ: August 28, 2013] “Meet the President”

This is a most unexpected story from Zadie Smith.  It is set in the future and features a technology that allows the wearer to be fully absorbed into a virtual space.

It opens with a boy, Bill Peek, standing on a barren beach in England.  While his family may have once come from this area, that was immaterial, he considers himself a global child, accompanying his father on inspections.  But this part of England is a wasteland and only those who could not afford to leave England were still there.

Bill is pleased to have the beach to himself so he can plug in.  But then he is approached by an old lady with a young girl.  The girl, Agatha, is simple.  And both of the women talk to Bill even though he is doing his best to ignore them while he interacts with his virtual goggles.

Bill is deep in his world, creating his avatar (which has breasts and a tail) and by arming himself with grenades and knives.  He is trying to create the landscape.  Other users wondered whether you should augment the area around you or use a more or less barren world as your basis.  Bill has chosen the barren world and learns that it is three miles to the White House. (more…)

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Santiago Roncagliolo–Hi, This is Conchita & other stories (2013)

Posted in Canadian Music, Death, Depression, Edith Grossman, Marriage Trouble, Miguel de Cervantes, Santiago Roncagliolo, Sex, Short Books, Short Story, Venom, Voivod on August 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »

conchitaSOUNDTRACK: VOIVOD: Rrröööaaarrr (1986).

roarI have always loved this album because of its name (preposterous and complete with umlauts).  It also has the classic Voivod song “Fuck Off and Die.”  Interestingly, a band that Voivod liked, Venom, released a song “F.O.A.D.” the previous year.

But man, is this album hard to listen to.  The production seems even worse than on their debut.  And the songs seem faster and a bit harder to understand.  Perhaps it was my mood when I re-listened, but songs like “Ripping Headaches” seemed more portentous than fun.  And “Slaughter in the Grave” is just light years behind the kind of songs they would write as soon as the next album.

I like to think of these first two Voivod albums as part of a pair.  The cover art is kind of similar.  But starting with the next album, the cover art would jump ahead in detail and quality.  All of Voivod’s art (and apparently the entire concept of The Voivod (you’ll have to look that up) was by Away.  He has released a coffee table book (which you can’t get anymore) but a lot of his art is online at his website.

Not many people think too highly of Rrröööaaarrr, and it is safe to say that compared to their next several albums, this one might be best ignored.

[READ: August 29, 2013] Hi, This is Conchita

This is another book that crossed my desk.  I recognized…the translator of all people (Hi, Edith Grossman) but not the author.  I couldn’t remember why I recognized her name and then I realized she had translated Don Quixote, which is supposed to be an excellent version.

I also liked the cover and the packaging of the book (sometimes that’s all it takes) and since I left the book I was reading back at home, I brought this with me to lunch.

Imagine my surprise when the first story opens with a man calling a phone sex line (in graphic detail).  I flipped through the story (which I thought was a bunch of short stories) but is actually a very long story called “Hi, this is Conchita.”  In this story, each “chapter” is a phone call and each chapter title is the phone number and time of the call. (more…)

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New Boy [short film based on a short story by Roddy Doyle] (2007)

Posted in Roddy Doyle, Short Films, Short Story, Steph Green on August 25, 2013| 3 Comments »

[WATCHED: August 19, 2013] New Boy

new boyWikipedia leads me to find things about authors that I don’t know.  Some things lead you to unfindable items (see yesterday’s Douglas Coupland post).  But this time, the post about Roddy Doyle has led me to a number of things I wouldn’t have otherwise known about,

Like this short film.

New Boy is based on his short story “New Boy.”  I read the story a while ago.  I remembered the basic premise, but not the details.  And I was delighted by this short film.  It is about 11 minutes long and it really captures the story very well.

The story is about Joseph, an African refugee, who is starting school in Ireland.  He is not the only black student, but he really does stand out.  And when the mean boy behind his calls him “Live Aid” you know that things aren’t going to go all that well.

But then we flash back to the boy’s past (in an unnamed African country).  We see him in school there and then we see why he is a refugee (there’s nothing explicit either visually or narratively, but a lot is hinted at). (more…)

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