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Archive for the ‘Short Story’ Category

Max Barry–“Springtide”, Cory Doctorow–“Other People’s Money”, Warren Ellis–“The Position”, Lowell Yaeger–“Factory”, Michael Bagnulo–“Abstract” (Forbes, October 15, 2007)

Posted in Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Cory Doctorow, Dystopia, End of the World, Forbes, Funny (ha ha), King's X, Lowell Yaeger, Max Barry, Michael Bagnulo, Political Humor, Sci-fi, Short Story, Technology, Thin Lizzy, Warren Ellis on September 25, 2008| 7 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X-Ear Candy (1996).

I think of Ear Candy as King’s X most upbeat record musically. Even the cover is upbeat!  It’s their first cover in ages which isn’t dark and forbidding.  It actually has a white border!  And of course, it’s hard to miss the psychedelic, brightly colored scarab beetle.

And the music matches the cover really well.  The opener, “The Train” is a catchy bit of near psychedelic rock which brings Ty’s vocal to the front.  It seems to set the tone for the rest of the album.  Even “Picture” contains a simple guitar riff reminiscent of the joy of Out of the Silent Planet.

I’m jumping down to “Mississippi Moon,” one of their supremely pretty songs ala “Goldilox.”  It’s more of a bluesy ballad, but the chorus is just amazing.

“A Box” continues the loveliness from the beginning of the album.  Its message, that there’s no room inside a box, seems to apply to the band’s more claustrophobic sounds as of late.  But lest you think they’ve gone soft, “Looking for Love” is a fabulous rocker, which makes me think of Thin Lizzy. 

Ear Candy also features “American Cheese (Jerry’s Pianto)” a rare track with Jerry Gatskill on lead vocals.  It contains the most Beatlesque sounds of a band that is full of Beatlesque sounds.  This one maintains a great deal more psychedelia than previous songs.  It’s not prog rock by any means, it’s just straight up psychedelia.

Lyrically, Doug opens up about his loss of faith; “Run” addresses it directly: “Yeah she told me, that if I wasn’t good He would get me, make me pay for everything I did, and she said that everybody bad would burn in Hell. I did what she told me and I became someone else.”

Despite the negative feelings in the above song, musically the album is very positive: a lot of the distorted riffs are toned down, and the album feels less angry.  I think this disappoints some of the band’s fans, but it retains such authentic King’s X sounds that it’s hard to argue with it.

[READ: September 5, 2008] “Springtide,” “Other People’s Money,” “The Position” “Factory” & “Abstract”.

In 2007, Forbes magazine asked five authors to write about this scenario: “It’s the year 2027, and the world is undergoing a global financial crisis. The scene is an American workplace.” I discovered these stories when I was looking up some information about Max Barry (I had just read Company). I was surprised to see that the stories were in Forbes, but whatever.  When I saw that there were five authors given the assignment I decided to try all five. (more…)

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Jeffrey Eugenides–“Great Experiment” (New Yorker, March 31, 2008)

Posted in Alexis de Tocqueville, Books about writers, Canadian Music, Constellation Records, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Garbage, Jeffrey Eugenides, Mary Margaret O'Hara, New Yorker, Political Humor, Record Labels, Short Story, Silver Mt. Zion, Smarty Pants, Vic Chesnutt on September 25, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: VIC CHESNUTT-North Star Deserter [CST046] (2007).

The only thing I knew about Vic Chesnutt before this CD was that he was the songwriter for a benefit CD called Sweet Relief II: The Gravity of the Situation (1996).  I bought it mostly for Garbage’s “Kick My Ass” and Mary Margaret O’Hara’s “Florida”, not for Chesnutt, who I’d not heard of before then.  Usually if you get a CD of covers of an artist that you like, it’s hard to remove the cover from the original.  An album of covers by someone you don’t know is much easier to parse.

I got North Star Deserter because I’m a fan of the Constellation record label based in Montreal. They’ve released some great stuff over the years.  Recently, they’ve diversified their lineup to include some unexpected artists.  Like Vic Chesnutt.

The basic sound of this CD comes in two ways: acoustic guitar with world-weary singer,  and acoustic guitar with world-weary singer and the baking cacophony of what is essentially Thee Silver Mt Zion Orchestra and Tra La La Band.  It works surprisingly well.

The first song starts out with basically just Vic and his guitar.  He sings in a raspy weathered voice.  It’s a short acoustic song full of passion.  What threw me off here is that you expect that the whole album will be like this: short, passionate, acoustic songs.  The really unexpected part comes with song three, “Everything I Say,” when the backing band kicks in loud and hard.  Silver Mt Zion, for those unfamiliar are an offshoot of sorts from Godspeed You Black Emperor.  They have a great variety of instruments in the group, and much like Godspeed… they play grand, sweeping orchestral works. Unlike Godspeed, they have vocals.  And while backing Vic, they pull out all of the stops: cellos, contrebass, choruses, Casio keyboards, the works.

Perhaps my favorite song of the bunch is “You Are Never Alone.”  The premise is simple: Vic sings some very stark verses (“It’s OK, you can take a condom; It’s OK, you can get an abortion; It’s OK, you can get a quadruple bypass and then keep on, keeping on.”), and then the chorus slowly builds with first the men, then the women harmonizing and then finally everyone singing beautifully “You Are Never Alone.”  It’s 5 minutes of mesmerizing beauty.

And the rest of the album continues in a similar vein: stark, humanizing lyrics and alternating spare guitar or great swells of music.

Overall, I feel like the album runs a little long (or maybe it’s just exhausting to listen to).  But I can’t think of anything to get rid of; the two longest songs are actually two songs that I really like.  “Splendid” is a slow building song, where you don’t realize that 5 minutes have already gone past.  And then there’s “Debriefing.”  The first two minutes are noisy and brash, they settle down into a short sparse verse and then crash away for two more minutes.  Off and on like that for 8 minutes.  Cathartic to say the least.

The strangest thing for me is that I find Vic’s voice to be similar in tone and style to Matthew Sweet. There’s a few songs where you might even think that it’s Matthew Sweet singing.  But this Matthew Sweet sounds not like the pop singer of “Girlfriend” but like a man who has been beaten down by life for a little while.  It’s a voice that you instantly listen to to see if you can learn anything.

I’m not sure if this will make me get any more Chesnutt discs, but I’m glad I got this one.

[READ: September 15, 2008] “Great Experiment”

Jeffrey Eugenides wrote The Virgin Suicides, a great book notable for its use of first person plural narrator (!).  He also wrote Middlesex, which is on my bedside right now (and which I learned today was an Oprah pick).  But in the interim I just read this short story.  It’s my only exposure to Eugenides aside from Virgin Suicides, so it’s a nice change.

This story centers around Kendall, an over-educated, hyper-literate poet who is making a living working for a non-profit company.  This particular non-profit was founded by Jimmy Dimon, a former porn king who apparently grew a heart and decided to publish great books at a loss.  Kendall’s current assignment is to edit down Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America‘s most cogent ideas into a small pocket version called Pocket Democracy. (more…)

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Robert Coover–The Case of the Severed Hand [Revisited]

Posted in Funny (strange), Gangsters, Mystery, Noir, Robert Coover, Sex, Short Story, The L Magazine, Violence on September 16, 2008| Leave a Comment »

[RE–READ September 16, 2008] “The Case of the Severed Hand”

One shouldn’t be afraid of criticism.  Heck, if you’re going to have an opinion you have to expect people will argue with you.  I didn’t like this story when I read it.  But, when Daniel commented, even though the criticism was basically, “I liked the story and you’re a stupid doodyhead” I figured that maybe I missed something.  I searched for the story again, and while browsing, I learned that The L Magazine (which I’ve never heard of) had its Best of New York City Awards and “The Case of the Severed Hand” was voted 1 of 5 BEST SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED BY NYC PUBLICATIONS, although no explanation or review of the story was given.  I’ve also learned that Coover is a highly regarded author and is known primarily for his metafiction.  I had reviewed and enjoyed Stepmother a few months ago.

So, I have now re-read the short story to see if I had indeed missed something.  And, again, I believe I did not.  The first part plays as a tongue in cheek noir and is rather funny.  The end plays as straight private eye stuff and is also rather funny.  And the middle piece was a funny little piece about incest!  I had said that I don’t know the detective genre very well, so aside from the obvious parody aspects of it–or maybe not even parody, maybe just playing withe the genre–I’m not sure how much I’m missing (that a fan of the genre would get).

The thing for me is that the parts don’t work together.  Whatever he was trying to get across between these sections of story was just lost.  And, to be blunt, I just didn’t like it.  If I enjoyed the world of private I’s more, I might have a better appreciation for what Coover is doing, but as it stands, I just don’t like it.

If you think the story works, however, please jot me a line and let me know how.  I’d be very curious to know.

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Joshua Ferris–“The Dinner Party” (New Yorker, August 11 & 18, 2008)

Posted in Edward Albee, Eyes Wide Shut, Funny (ha ha), Joshua Ferris, King's X, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Pregnancy, Religion, Short Story on September 13, 2008| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: KINGS’S X: Faith Hope Love (1990).

When Faith Hope Love came out, I was once again blown away by King’s X.  This album actually diverts quite a bit from the heaviness of the previous two albums.  This is their most prog rock sounding release, introducing all kinds of new instrumentation, including Doug’s by now standard 12 string bass guitar (I got to try one of these at Sam Ash a few years back and it sounds amazing).

Overall this album plays with the softer side of King’s X (although this is contrasted by “Moanjam” a six- minute, guitar-wailing freakout, and the great shouting sing along “We Are Finding Who We Are” showing that the band hasn’t lost their hard edge even if they ware willing to play with different textures).  But the diversity of sounds on the record is what really impresses.  You get a song like “The Fine Art of Friendship” which has so many layers of things going on, it’s hard to absorb on the first listen.

I’ve been reading some different reviews of this album, and it’s amazing how people single out songs as being particularly religious.  “Six Broken Soldiers” is mentioned as being Christian.  Now here’s the lyrics, I personally don’t even know what they mean, much less whether they are Christian

i don’t care if you’re sick
what can i possibly do with an American library
and a contract on you
I’ve got six broken soldiers in the trunk of my car
two of them speak; four go to bars
rods in the closet a six shooter in hand
a caged up gorilla and three local bands
fluently the parrot speaks
six languages not known to men
a sixpence and a quarter
as the audience he scan.

But aside from that, the album isn’t preachy about its beliefs, and frankly, it’s easy enough to forget what the songs are about, since the melodies are so infectious.  And, I didn’t even mention one of the greatest alt-rock singles of the 1990s: “It’s Love.”  It’s an amazingly catchy and infectiously happy song.  The harmonies are just stellar.

This is the last King’s X album to dabble in these prog-stylings.  The next bunch are really heavy affairs, quite a departure from this one.

[READ: September 07, 2008] “The Dinner Party”

I enjoyed this story very much.  It felt like a contemporary update of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with a twist. (more…)

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Alice Munro–“Face” (New Yorker, September 8, 2008)

Posted in Alice Munro, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Canadian Content, King's X, New Yorker, Short Story on September 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X-Gretchen Goes to Nebraska (1989).

I loved Out of the Silent Planet and never thought there’d be anything better.  But then just a year later, King’s X put out Gretchen Goes to Nebraska.  It ranks up there with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in terms of weird titles the belie how wonderful the contents really are.  I still have no idea what the title actually means, but that’s okay.  I put on the disc, and relish the music.

The opening is as otherworldly as the cover.  It starts with a sitar chord that plays long and slowly fades…into a great high pitched bass line.  And, then comes the dissonance once again.  The dissonance isn’t quite as harsh this time around, but it plays off the other instruments even more.  And just as the dissonance ends, you get the harmonies.  All of the elements of King’s X are back, and even better!

The next song, “Over My Head” is just an amazing bit of music.  It incorporates everything: gospel sing- alongs, great guitar riffs, he even mentions his grandma!  Fabulous.  “Summerland” may even top “Goldilox” in terms of fantastic ballads.  The harmonies on it are simply through the roof.

I’m going through the song list and there’s not a bad song to be found.  There’s still overtones of Christian rock in evidence, but the message becomes even more about spirituality than simple Christianity as on “Mission”: “What’s the mission of the preacher man, some are true, some do lie.”  There’s also the great “Pleaides” a song not sung by Doug Pinnick, which allows Ty to let his voice shine through.  The disc ends with “The Burning Down” a song that encapsulates the mellower side of King’s X, including an extended instrumental denouement which plays more with fun instrumentation (and shouts of Ow Sigh Planet).

Brilliant.

[READ: September 7, 2008] “Face”

I’ve talked about Alice Munro a few times lately, so I’ll skip any introduction and get to the heart of the matter.  This story concerns a young man born with an enormous birthmark on his face: the entire side of his face is covered with the  purplish mark.  His father is utterly repulsed by him, and as far as the narrator can recall, only looked him in the eye once when he was born, and that was it.  His mother tried to protect him by home schooling him until he was old enough to go to college.  By the time he went to school, he felt he was old enough to withstand any of the abuses that would be hurled at him.  Although, frankly, the disdain of his father was worse than anything the kids could dole out. (more…)

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Joe R. Lansdale–“Steppin’ Out, Summer ’68” (1992)

Posted in Bubba Ho-Tep, Canadian Music, Craig Northey, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Joe R. Lansdale, Sex, Short Story, Stripper's Union, The Kids in the Hall, Violence, Yuck! on September 3, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: STRIPPER’S UNION-Local 518 (2005).

This is a collaboration between Craig Northey from The Odds, and Rob Baker from The Tragically Hip.  Really, it comes across as a showcase for Craig Northey because, and I mean no disrespect, I’m not sure that Rob Baker has a very distinctive guitar style.  Or, put it this way, I couldn’t pick Baker’s guitar our of an audio line up.  And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.  I think it really highlights his wide range of skills.  This is evidenced also by how different The Hip sounds on different albums.  Their last 3 are vastly different.

And so, this collection allows Baker to showcase his varying styles, and probably some things he doesn’t do in the hip, and it allows Northey to sing in some styles that he doesn’t always use.  Basically, it’s a good chance for both guys to stretch out.

My first thought when listening was that the album was just a collection of good rock songs.  But as I’ve listened more, I find quite a lot of fun and interesting things going on.  The two opening tracks are pretty rocking, with “Full Flow Angry Boy” being a good shout-along.  The album changes as it moves along: “Bullet Proof White Limo” is a smooth, almost creepy song.   “Give up and Go Away,” co-written by Kid in the Hall, Dave Foley, has some great shouted “Hey’s” which always make a song fun to sing along with. “The Radio (foggy hill)” is one of those songs that seems simple and is easy to ignore, but once it gets inside of you it sticks (Imagine a droning singalong of “Na-na-na-na-na-na-na goes the radio”).

In general, Northey is a witty lyricist, and this album is no exception. The lyrics aren’t always easy to hear, but some of my favorites include:

Gang vocal with the fist up, into German porn; Peter Band caught fire, warming up for Korn.

We did 22 bucks a head; That’s better than the Grateful Dead; They picked our stock of swag so clean; As they raged against the old machine.

When I was born your time was through, now it’s my generation too; I care so I rehearse, cause everybody knows the words.

You don’t get a sense for the catchy melodies with these snippets but you do get a sense for the tone and themes.  There’s a lot of songs about being in a band, but they aren’t really navel gazing.  I mean, I’ve never been in a band, but I enjoyed the lyrics.

Any fan of The Odds or The Hip should track this down, but really, anyone looking for a diverse collection of well-crafted songs should really give this one a try. You can check out the disc from Maplemusic. There’s even a band website (which hasn’t been updated in over two years!)

[READ: August 19, 2008] “Steppin’ Out, Summer ’68”

My coworker recommended this story to me, as one of the only stories that ever made him laugh out loud (he claims he has no sense of humor). (more…)

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Julie Hecht–Do the Windows Open? (1998)

Posted in Consumerism, Frank Zappa, Funny (ha ha), John Zorn, Julie Hecht, Neurotics, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Ornette Coleman, Short Story, The Mars Volta, Unlikable main character, Unreliable narrator on August 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MARS VOLTA-The Bedlam in Goliath (2008).

I’ve liked Mars Volta more in theory than in actuality for their first few albums. I enjoyed them, but they didn’t make me want to listen all the time. I had heard good things about this new one, so I gave it a shot and WOW. The Bedlam in Goliath is off the charts in its craziness and its masterfulness.

Bedlam has most of the same components of a Mars Volta disc: chaos, noise, fantastic instrumentation, bizarre lyrics, jazz-like elements and metal, sweet metal. But for some reason, Bedlam seems to cohere into a masterful project. I haven’t listened to the first two discs in a while (but I’m sure going to check them out again), and I never got the third one, so I can’t really compare them. This one just seems to have something special to it.

The overall sound makes me think of someone tuning in a radio. Some parts are (deliberately) fuzzy, some are crystal clear. As the sound of one segment fades out a new, entirely different section blares in. Anyone who channel surfs can appreciate the sound of this.

All of the literature about this record talks about their use of a Ouija board during their tour and while recording. They bought it in Jerusalem and they say it had a horrible impact on the recording process. (Check out this NPR story…yeah, that’s right, I said NPR.) And, in many respects, rather than a radio, you could think of the album as the voices and sounds from the Ouija board coming through. Some are crystal clear and other are mechanized and ghostly. Spooky, eh?

But what of the music? It is fast, fast, fast. Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s voice is a powerhouse of high-pitched, operatic notes. And the music keeps pace. And yet, despite the speed the album isn’t thrash metal or speed metal necessarily. It doesn’t all have that heaviness, it just has a lot of speed. It lets up once in a while, but for the most part in every song something is going fast: drums, bass, voice, something.

One of the perplexing things about the record is how each song seems to have multiple parts that are unrelated to each other…some songs even have longer breaks within the track than between them. For instance, tracks one and two, the nearly 6 minute “Abernikula” and the over 8 minute “Metatron” blend seamlessly into one long track. However, midway through “Metatron” the song stops for a good second or two and then begins with a brand new, wonderfully catchy riff, which runs through the rest of the song. Truly masterful, and yet impossible to know what track you’re on, half the time.

The album is about an hour long, and it’s such a roller coaster of rocking guitars and high speed chases.  And yet it doesn’t wear out it’s welcome, because the catchy bits are so incredibly catchy. I was amused to see that there is a “single” on the record called “Wax Simulacra.”  It’s the shortest song, possibly that MV has ever done at under 3 minutes, which makes it an ideal single.  Except that the last twenty or thirty seconds are taken up with a mind blowing saxophone solo that could be lifted from Ornette Coleman or John Zorn (and this is a single?).  In fact, the horns come into play a lot on the record.  There’s one or two motifs that sound like they could be taken from a Zappa piece (the Zappa song “Sofa” kept popping into my head during this record. And you can’t ask more from a record than to make you enjoy it while it makes you think of other great music too.

[READ: July 20, 2008] Do the Windows Open?

I read an interview with Julie Hecht in The Believer (some of which is available here). And boy did she come across as an unlikable person. (more…)

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Paul Theroux–“Twenty-Two Stories” (Harper’s, April 2008)

Posted in Bathory, Black Sabbath, Digression, Eagles of Death Metal, Flash Fiction, Harper's, John Zorn, Led Zeppelin, Mastodon, Paul Theroux, Queens of the Stone Age, Short Story, The Believer, The Mars Volta, The Sword, Venom on July 25, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MASTODON-Blood Mountain (2006).

As I was in a metal/Black Sabbath kick, and Mastodon is always mentioned as a fantastic metal band, I figured I’d give them a try. As with The Sword, I saw no resemblance to Black Sabbath, and at first I was afraid it was just another sludgy death metal record.

[DIGRESSION]: I just read a great article in The Believer about the USBM (United States Black Metal) scene, and how it compares to the black metal in Norway and other European countries where the bands take the music seriously enough to burn churches and such. The article was really interesting. I knew some of the bands that he talked about, but the only ones I had heard were the “grandfathers” of the genre, like Venom and Bathory. Any of the new bands that he focused on, if I’d heard of them at all, I certainly hadn’t heard them. Regardless, it was a great read, and really got me hankering for a band like Mastodon, even though they’re not really in the genre at all.

Anyway, after two listens, I really got into the Mastodon album. I don’t know anything about their previous releases (except that they are heavy), but Blood Mountain is all over the map. It is a fascinating mix of thrash metal, hardcore, beautiful melodies, prog rock, and total chaos. In fact, the song “Bladecatcher,” is three and a half minutes of total insanity. I haven’t heard anything lie it since John Zorn’s Naked City. There’s a beautiful melody which progresses into a screaming guitar riff, which morphs into a headbanging thrash part which basically just unravels into a noisy spasm, wherein the high-pitched noises might be voices, or might by keyboards, or might just be the machine melting. (more…)

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Steven Millhauser–“The Next Thing” (Harper’s, May 2008)

Posted in Black Sabbath, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Harper's, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin, Short Story, Steven Millhauser, The Sword on July 25, 2008| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE SWORD-Gods of the Earth (2008).

So I used to be really into heavy metal. I’m not so much anymore, although I do enjoy the occasional bout of heaviness. However, I had been listening to some Black Sabbath recently, and I guess I was in the mood, because when I read some descriptions of The Sword, I was intrigued. Black Sabbath kept coming up as an obvious precurosr. So with that and the reviews saying they use silly middle earth swords and sorcery lyrics and they have screaming guitar solos, I had to get it. It sounded great.

And the first track, a fantastic instrumental, lived up to the hype. It’s fast, it’s furious, the guitars are totally something that I would have HAD to learn how to play back in high school. It was amazing. And then the second song kicked in, and it was great too. Finally I got to hear the singer, and when he started singing, the lead guitar played the vocal line in tandem and it was awesome. And then the lead guitar stopped and the voice was….where? It was mixed way way way in the background, sounding like he was in the next room. What was the point of all the weird fantasy lyrics is you couldn’t hear them?

And so it is with the bulk of the album. The music is first rate: excellent riffs, great harmonized guitar solos, Middle Eastern (by way of Led Zeppelin) atmospheres. The acoustic guitar even pops up in a couple of places too, showing a nice range of diversity. All kinds of things that make metal so wonderful. And yet, it’s so hard to get into the voice. It sounds kind of reedy and thin. If you crank it up really loud, it kind of works. His voice does creak through on occasion. And yet, with bombast like this, you expect the voice to be out there in front, leading the way like Bruce Dickinson or Rob Halford. I guess if you grew up listening to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, you have a certain, if not standard, then expectation. Maybe if you grew up listening to some of the great stoner bands of the 90s, the muted voice is just par for the course, which is fine, but the guitar riffs don’t jibe with that. And, frankly, I just don’t hear Black Sabbath at all.

The album ends with two strong instrumentals. The 5 minute, powerful, chugging along, rifftastic “The White Sea” and then an untitled acoustic-jam-type ballad that is totally incongruous with the rest of the disc and yet seems to put a mellow calm over the whole proceedings.

Reviews of their first album suggest that the overall mix isn’t like this one. It has more Black Sabbathy. I can’t decide if it would be worth getting. I may have to just pull out We Sold Our Souls for Rock n Roll instead.

[READ: June 30, 2008] “The Next Thing”

This was a wonderfully subversive story. It is actually quite simple in scope: on the edge of a small community, a new shopping center called “The Next Thing” is being built and causing rumors to fly. (more…)

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Joyce Carol Oates–“Suicide by Fitness Center” (Harper’s, June 2008)

Posted in Canadian Music, Funny (strange), Harper's, Joyce Carol Oates, Short Story, Stars, Supernatural, The Dears on July 17, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: STARS-Do You Trust Your Friends (2007).

Stars released Set Yourself on Fire in 2005. It was a surprisingly good and catchy pop album from a band I hadn’t heard of before. It was lyrically downbeat, and yet the choruses were sweeping and grand. A great paradox of a record that I liked very much.

Well, they gave the master tapes to a whole bunch of their Canadian band friends and had them remix or redo the songs. This collection is interesting in that the collective work is very strong and everybody makes a remix that is fresh and interesting. I didn’t know too many of the bands before hand (only The Dears) so the sound was pretty new to me. The Dears do an interesting thing with their track: they split their song into two songs, since the original had two distinctive parts. It’s a fun thing to hear.

Most of the roster comes from the Arts & Crafts label, so that may give you an idea of the sound; they include some dance remixes, some indie rock remixes and some straight ahead pop ones. Obviously, the original is better if only for the overall continuity, but this is an interesting and enjoyable listen in and of itself.

[READ: June 30, 2008] “Suicide by Fitness Center”

Joyce Carol Oates must talk in her sleep, and she must have a dictation service that records all of it. (more…)

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