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Haruki Murakami–“U.F.O. in Kushiro” (New Yorker, March 19, 2001)

September 4, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: ANAT COHEN AND MARCELLO GONÇALVES-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #74 (September 2, 2020).

Anat Cohen plays the clarinet and Marcello Gonçalves plays the seven-string guitar.  Their

music comes from the heart of Brazil. The first two songs are choros, from the choro genre of music that originated in 19th century Rio de Janeiro. Think of choro music like New Orleans jazz, but in South America, both born of European and African influences. Cohen, on the other hand, is a clarinetist from Israel and the composer of these tunes. She developed a passion for Brazilian music while studying at Berklee College of Music and not long afterward found herself in a “roda” (choro jam session) in Rio de Janeiro with some of the most virtuosic players in Brazil’s choro scene. It was on that trip 20 years ago when Cohen met Gonçalves for the first time. All these years later, choro music has woven many of the threads in Cohen’s musical fabric.

Notice Gonçalves’s seven-string guitar, a common instrument in choro music; the additional string extends the lower register as if to combine an acoustic and bass guitar. Cohen explained in an email that playing with Gonçalves “makes me feel like I am playing with a full band.”

This duo was recently revered for their 2018 Grammy-nominated record, Outra Coisa, which celebrates the music of the iconic Brazilian woodwind player and composer Moacir Santos. Gonçalves is acclaimed for refining Santos’s orchestral arrangements down to just two musicians.

“Waiting for Amalia” opens with a bouncy guitar line and a sweet almost flirtatious clarinet.   This song feels quite jazzy.

“Valsa do Sul (Waltz of the South)” begins with a lovely, almost slinky clarinet melody. I love watching him play some of the fast riffs along with her, but it’s the bouncing, percussive moments that really make the song come alive.

This duo was recently revered for their 2018 Grammy-nominated record, Outra Coisa, which celebrates the music of the iconic Brazilian woodwind player and composer Moacir Santos.

Santos was the teacher of the guitarist and composer Baden Powell de Aquino.  I only recently heard of Baden Powell but here he is mentioned again–this time as an influencer before the existence of Instagram.  “In the Spirit of Baden” has some great low notes and a bouncy clarinet.  The middle has a strangely dissonant section where Gonçalves plays a few chords that are a little harsh.  Then Cohen joins in adding some wailing clarinet solos.  It’s a surprisingly dissonant moment in an otherwise very pretty song.

[READ: September 1, 2020] “U.F.O. in Kushiro”

I read this story almost ten years ago.  It was republished in a March 2011 issue of The New Yorker to memorialize the then recent earthquake in Japan.  This story was inspired by the incidents of the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan.

The story (translated by Jay Rubin) opens a few days after the Kobe Earthquake.  And even five days after the Kobe earthquake, Komura’s wife is still engrossed in the TV footage from Kobe.  She never leaves the set.  He doesn’t see her eat or even go to the bathroom.  When he returns from work on the sixth day, she is gone.  She has left a note to the effect that she’s not coming back and that she wants a divorce.  Komura’s wind is knocked out of him. Continue Reading »

Posted in Anat Cohen, Baden Powell de Aquino, Coronavirus, Death, Earthquakes, Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin, Marcello Gonçalves, Marriage Trouble, Natural Disasters, New Yorker, Quarantine, Sex, Short Story, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Translation, U.F.O. | Leave a Comment »

Ann Beattie–“That Last Odd Day in L.A.” (New Yorker, April 16, 2001)

September 3, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: GOAT RODEO-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #73 (September 1, 2020).

Classical music is for serious people.  Yo-Yo Ma, probably the best known cellist in the world, must surely be a very serious fellow.  False!

Yo-Yo Ma is a hoot.  How do we know?  The first song of this set is called “Your Coffee Is a Disaster.”  And the name of the group is Goat Rodeo, after all.

Yo-Yo man formed this assemblage known as Goat Rodeo nearly ten years ago.  It consists of Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile and many other folks.

You’ve probably heard Stuart Duncan playing fiddle on albums with Dolly Parton, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and he was named the Academy of Country Music Fiddle Player of the Year numerous times. Edgar Meyer has played bass with Joshua Bell, Béla Fleck and Christian McBride, and the Nashville Symphony commissioned his first orchestral work in 2017. And you’d most likely recognize Chris Thile’s vocals and mandolin in the music of Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers.

I really enjoyed their wild (yes wild) Tiny Desk Concert back in 2011.

Fast forward a decade and this collaboration channels that same spectacular frenzy, separately captured in the gorgeous homes of the artists and mixed to perfection.

Thile introduces the song by saying the band is often in the midst of a a coffee war: Yo-Yo, Stuart and Edgar prefer beans that were roasted in a volcano for maybe millions of years, while Aoife and I prefer beans that taste as though the were fashioned by angels.  We like good coffee.”

Up next is one of many inappropriate (not scandalous or anything) titles.  When we are not arguing about coffee we are punning.  This: “Waltz Whitman.”  It is a slow piece that feels a lot like the kind of music Punch Brothers play–where it is a fiddle, not a violin.  Although the middle section which has some gorgeous slow cello from Yo-Yo Ma makes this song transcendent.

They’re accompanied by songwriter Aoife O’Donovan, who lends her pitch-perfect vocals to close out the set. Chris Thile … explains that “The Trappings” is about work/life balance, a timely sentiment.  How the things you are doing impact the ones with whom you do them.  How your partners aide and hinder your efforts (and the humorous variations he describes).

“The Trappings” is a faster song and it’s got vocals!  Thile sings lead and there is wonderful backing vocals from O’Donovan and Duncan.  There’s fantastic cello trills from Yo-Yo Ma throughout.

It’s good til the last drop.

[READ: September 1, 2020] “That Last Odd Day in L.A.”

This story was really interesting.

We meet a man who goes by his last name, Keller.  His girlfriend calls him that, his ex-wife called him that, even his teenaged daughter calls him that.

His wife left him after she had a bit of a nervous breakdown–the squirrels had dug up her bulbs and that was the last straw.

The woman Keller has been seeing, Sigrid, is a travel agent.  She has a son and an ex-husband who has gone deep into animal rescue.  Keller and Sigrid recently had a first date and it was a disaster.  Although they are planning another date after Thanksgiving. Continue Reading »

Posted in Ann Beattie, Aoife O'Donovan, Art, Bicycles, Chris Thile, Coronavirus, Deer, Edgar Meyer, Goat Rodeo, Guns, New Yorker, Possum, Quarantine, Short Story, Stuart Duncan, Thanksgiving, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence, Yo-Yo Ma | Leave a Comment »

Marshmello: Joytime: Into the Melloverse (The Met Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, September 2, 2020) [POSTPONED]

September 2, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[POSTPONED: September 2, 2020] Marshmello

indexI really don’t know anything about Marshmello except that he wears a giant marshmellow thing over his head and that he’s a DJ.

I only happened to notice he was playing at The Met when I was looking up another show. I only really know about him because my daughter mentioned him.  When I told her about this show, she said she only knows of him because he was a guest on someone else’s song.  So, he sings?  He’s not just a dance music maker?  What could his live show possibly be like?

The odds of me going to this show were pretty much nil, but the more I learn about him without actually looking anything official up, the more fascinated I am by him.

Do I dare watch a video of him live?

Posted in Coronavirus, Marshmello, Philadelphia, PA, Postponed, Quarantine, The Met Philadelphia | Leave a Comment »

Korn / Faith No More / Helmet / Spotlights (PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ, September 2, 2020) [POSTPONED]

September 2, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[POSTPONED: September 2, 2020] Korn / Faith No More / Helmet / Spotlights

index

This is a show I only would have gone to if I could get lawn seats upgraded to seats near the front (for about $35).

Korn is one of the few nu-metal bands that I liked back in the day.  I thought they did some pretty interesting stuff with the genre.  And while I haven’t listened to a new song of theirs in probably a decade, I’m sure they would have played some of the early songs too.

I’m only vaguely interested in seeing Korn, so this would have been the way to do it.

Faith No More on the other hand is a fascinatingly interesting band that I would love to see live.  Mike Patton is a wonder in and of himself and I told myself I would see anything that he did if it was close enough.  But then there’s FNM themselves–weird, eclectic, oddball and sometimes catchy.  I don’t know how many shows they will do in the future, but i would definitely like to see them.

Helmet is one of the great heavy bands of the 90s.  I loved their debut album–nothing really sounded like it at the time.  I probably haven’t listened to them in twenty years, and I think there have been some fifteen people in the band over the years, but I’ll bet they are still heavy as anything.

I saw Spotlights open for Deftones a few years ago.  They were great. Heavy and doomy, making a huge sound.  And there were only two of them.  There are now three members, which might mean they are even bigger.  I’ve been meaning to see them again.  They play a lot of smaller clubs, but I never seem to be able to catch them.

The good seats were way too expensive for this show, but if I could have done it on the cheap, I would have really enjoyed it

Since this show is officially cancelled, I doubt they will be touring together again. But I do hope that faith No More can keep it together for a tour next year.

 

Posted in Cancelled, Coronavirus, Deftones, Faith No More, Helmet, Holmdel, NJ, Korn, PNC Bank Center, Quarantine, Spotlights | Leave a Comment »

Garbriel García Márquez–“Serenade” (New Yorker, February 19 & 26, 2001)

September 2, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: CHRIS FORSYTH WITH GARCIA PEOPLES-Peoples Motel Band (2020).

This is a fantastic document of a band an an artist who are totally in sync with each other, making forty minutes of amazing jamming music.  I saw this combination of artists in New York City on New Year’s Eve and the set was spectacular.

I absolutely could have (should have) gone to this show.  It was recorded on September 14, 2019 at Johnny Brenda’s in Philly, a place I have been to many times.  I can’t recall why I didn’t go to this one.  But this document (while obviously shorter than the real set) is a great recording of the night.

Recorded September 14, 2019 before a packed and enthusiastic hometown crowd at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia, Peoples Motel Band catches Chris Forsyth with Garcia Peoples (plus ubiquitous drummer Ryan Jewell) re-imagining songs from Forsyth’s last couple studio albums with improvisatory flair.

As is often the case with Forsyth shows, the gloves come off quickly and the players attack the material – much of it so well-manicured and cleanly produced in the studio – like a bunch of racoons let loose in a Philadelphia pretzel factory.

Recorded and mixed with clarity by Forsyth’s longtime studio collaborator, engineer/producer Jeff Zeigler, the record puts the listener right in the sweaty club, highlighted by an incredible side-long take of the chooglin’ title track from 2017’s Dreaming in The Non-Dream LP (note multiple climaxes eliciting wild shouts and ecstatic screams from the assembled).

The disc opens with “The Past Ain’t Passed” a kind of noodling warm-up with three guitarists all taking various solo pieces and it segues into the catchy riff of “Tomorrow Might as Well Be Today.”  It’s a bright instrumental with a series of jamming solos all around a terrific riff.

Up next is “Mystic Mountain,” the only track with vocals.  It has a classic rock vibe and Forsyth’s detached voice.  The highlights of this nine-minute song are the riff and the soling.

The best part of the disc is the 20 minute epic “Dreaming in the Non-Dream.”  The studio version of this song is terrific with Forsyth playing some stellar riffs as both lead and rhythm lines.  But here with three lead guitarists Forsyth, Tom Malach and Danny Arakaki) the experimentation is phenomenal.  But it’s Forsyth’s wailing solo at 18 minutes, when he is squeezing every noise he can out of his guitar, that is the peak of the song and the set.

Also playing: Peter Kerlin: bass guitar; Pat Gubler: organ/synthesizer and two drummers: Cesar Arakaki and Ryan Jewell.

This is a great release and I’m pretty happy to have gotten the vinyl of it..

[READ: September 1, 2020] “Serenade”

I started reading this and thought it was a short story (the title where it says “Personal History” was blocked).  It seemed to be oddly written.  Then when I got to the paragraph where he talks about writing Love in the Time of Cholera, I realized it was non-fiction.

He says that Love is based around his parents’ own love story.  He had heard it so many times from both his mother and his father and he seemed to remember it in different ways, so that by the time he wrote the book he no longer knew what was the actual truth.

And what a fascinating and tangled story of love they shared. Continue Reading »

Posted in Babies, Biography, Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band, Colombia, Edith Grossman, Essays, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Garcia Peoples, Johnny Brenda's, Marriage (Happy), New Yorker, Non-fiction, Nostalgia, Parenting, Pregnancy, Sexism, Translation | Leave a Comment »

Marisa Silver–“Gunsmoke” (New Yorker, June 4, 2001)

September 1, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: TIWA SAVAGE-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #72 (August 31, 2020).

I don’t know who Tiwa Savage is.  Although apparently she is quite well- known.  Savage is

a veteran R&B and Afrobeat singer who began her career at age 11.  For her Tiny Desk (Home) Concert, Tiwa Savage returned, from London, to her birthplace of Lagos, Nigeria. She and The Alternative Sound band set up at the beautiful Jazzhole, a historic vinyl shop well-regarded among record collectors for the rarities within.

After Billie Eilish’s fake backdrop of the NPR office, this backdrop does have an NPR office feel, too.

With floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with books and albums as a backdrop, it certainly seems familiar to us, too — reminiscent of our performance cubicle at NPR HQ.

She plays four songs.  I really like Kenneth Ogueji’s bass sound throughout–very fluid and grooving.

On “Dangerous Love” she “speaks to matters of the heart.”  The song has a lot of high guitar notes from Phillip Akinkuande–fills and trills that flesh out the song nicely.  I also really like how a few times the song seems to smooth to a halt, just to pick up in unison again.

She says “I want you to vibe with us a little longer. I want to bring some Afrobeat to your screens.”

“Attention” has a nice, complex drum opening from Stanley Unogu and some very cool bass fills and runs.  There’s a lot of piano on this song, although I don’t know if it’s from Gospel Obi or Orowo Ubiene.

She sings the Reekado Banks single “Like” that she featured on.  This song is kind of odd as she keeps singing “Go go shorty it’s your birthday.”

She ends the set with “Koroba,” her newest single.  The song “blends her native Yoruba language with Nigerian Pidgin English, underpinned by a catchy, feel-good rhythm.”

This is the danceyest and most fun song of the set.

[READ: August 31, 2020] “Gunsmoke”

I really enjoyed this story.

It begins with the narrator, Alice, saying that her father has a gun and won’t come out of his house.

She received a call from a policeman telling her that her father has not made payments on his house recently and he is about to be evicted.  And yet there he sits with his gun, pointing it at the cops.

It turns out that this particular policeman, Bobby, is someone she slept with in high school. So they have a bit of a history.  She messes with him a bit (her dad has always been eccentric), but Bobby is serious.  He asks if she will get involved. She says she’ll call him.  But he has cut the phone lines.  Shit.

Alice’s father was a stunt man in the movies.  He worked mostly in Westerns in the fifties and sixties.  I love this insight into the world of the stunt man.  He could fall off of a horse, or a building or just about anything.  His only flaw was that he was quite short, but that didn’t stop him from getting work–make up and camera angles could make up the difference.

In one movie there was a battle between the Indians and the Army.  He dressed as a Comanche for one of the shots then changed into a lieutenant’s uniform for the other.  In the final product, “there was a scene of a heavily made up Indian pulling a soldier off a horse.  The Indian stabbed the soldier in the chest with a knife at close range.  The final two closeups of the victor and the vanquished revealed them both to be my father.

Alice also works in films, although when people ask her about it they are inevitably disappointed.  She does post-production voice over work.  She was in Titanic–she was the screams of some people drowning and the chewing in the eating room scenes.

She arrives at her father’s house.  The police are still there.  She knocks on the door and immediately has to tell her dad it’s her so he doesn’t shoot her.

She only visits her dad once a year and he looks a lot older each year–desert rats don’t age well.   She offers to help him pack up and move but he won’t put the gun down.  She’s not really afraid of him, just concerned.

Later she heads out to the store to get some decent food for dinner (he only has soup).  She sees Bobby in the store and they catch up.  He says he’s on his night off from his wife–she says they are in rut so they need to bring new experiences to the marriage. He is supposed to go to the movies and come home and talk about it with her.

So Alice and Bobby go to the movies together.  They watch a movie in which she is the laughter of a girl on screen and then later: “That’s my kissing sound…tongue and everything.”  When he shouts to the crowd that she is the kisser in the movie, she covers his mouth with her hand.  When he licks her skin, they of course end up making out in his car.

The next morning, Alice’s father has to make a decision.  When the police tell him to vacate, he cocks his gun.  Is this a stunt?

I really enjoyed that there were so many great details in this story–some of them didn’t really pertain to the plot but which fleshed out the story really nicely.

Posted in Coronavirus, Film & TV, Guns, Marisa Silver, Quarantine, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Tiwa Savage | Leave a Comment »

Jeff Kinney–Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball [#14] (2019)

August 31, 2020 by Paul Debraski


SOUNDTRACK: BILLIE EILISH-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #71 (August 26, 2020).

There’s so much to say about this Billie Eilish concert.

The biggest artist in the world has just done a Tiny Desk Concert!

Somehow it looks like she’s in the Tiny Desk studio!

Why does she only play two songs?

My daughter and I were supposed to see her back in March and she cancelled her tour about three nights before our show was supposed to happen.  What a bummer!  Especially because who knew if people would even want to see her again in a year (I’m pretty sure they will).  And would her stage show and song style change over that year?

The answer to that seems to be a dramatic yes.  Especially if these two songs are anything to go by.

For these two songs Billie embraces her torch song inner child.  She has a really lovely voice–delicate and emotional.

These songs are personal and lovely–there’s no “Duhs,” there’s no snark.  Compared to what I expected, they were kind of dull, actually.  Very pretty, but kind of dull.

These are the two new singles.  For “my future” Billie plays keyboards and her “real brother” Finneas plays guitar and sings some backing vocals.

On “everything i wanted” they switch places, with Finneas playing the pretty piano melody and providing a lot of nice backing vocals.

These two songs seem like they would go very nicely in the middle of a set of bangers for a few moments of cool down.  I hope when her show is rescheduled that she still brings all the excitement I;d heard her shows typically have.

As for the background…at first I thought it was just a cute idea.  But after six months, it was really comforting to have musicians look like they were playing the actual Tiny Desk.

[READ: August 28, 2020] Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball

This is the book that started my resurgence into reading Wimpy Kid books. I bought this one for my daughter.  This story had me laughing out loud once again.

This book has a lot to do with the Heffley’s house.  I don’t know if middle school kids can appreciate jokes about household maintenance, but as an adult I sure can.

The book opens with Greg’s mom wanting to do some cleaning up.  That means going through the closet in Greg’s room.  He tells us that he basically just throws things into it, so it’s like an archaeological dig.

He starts sifting through things and finds old toys and things to feel sentimental about which is pretty funny.  But with all this junk, he decided that rather than throw it out, he should make some money off of it and have a garage sale.  Cue: Family Frolic magazine and their “great” ideas for a garage sale.  [I love when he makes fun of this magazine].

Greg has labelled his tables in creative ways: “Great gifts for your grandkids”(stuff from his grandparents that he doesn’t want).  “Pre-written birthday cards” (with his name white-outed). Mystery socks (which is just a pile of junk for 50 cents) and Rare Items (like an invisibility lotion and a freckle remover (an eraser or soap I guess)). Continue Reading »

Posted in Billie Eilish, Children's Books, Coronavirus, Diary, Family Frolic, Fears, Funny (ha ha), Humiliation, Jealousy, Jeff Kinney, Lies, Nostalgia, Parenting, Quarantine, Short Books, Technology, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Toilets, Yuck! | Leave a Comment »

John Berger–“Woven, Sir” (New Yorker, April 2, 2001)

August 30, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-“Will You Return/When You Come Down” (2020).

As part of The Flaming Lips’ slow release of new songs from American Head, here comes this gentle song “Will You Return/Will You Come Down.”

Wayne sings his falsetto vocals over a gentle piano and bells melody.  He sings the title a few times before the verse begins.

The verses are very Flaming Lips–a friendly vocal melody about death.

About half way through, after the second chorus, the song takes off with soaring backing vocals and more instruments added.

A vocal line (Wayne’s voice sped up?) sings the “will you return” part a few times before a folky acoustic guitar comes in to take over the chorus.  The last minute or so goes full on Lips with strings, different vocal lines (screaming from beyond) and a wild guitar solo.

Although there’s not much to this song, there’s quite a lot going on.

[READ: August 21, 2020] “Woven, Sir”

After reading some bizarre and exciting stories, this one felt rather dull.

A man is in a hotel in Madrid waiting for a friend.  He looks around the hotel, makes observations about the other people there and then notices a man name Tyler.

There’s a number of interesting lines in the story which I liked.  Like when the narrator requests food from the waiter and Tyler, who is not facing him, says

I notice that, regrettably, you haven’t improved your pronunciation.  You are as lost in Spanish as you once were in English, he says…. You don’t listen to how other people talk.  You never say to yourself, He speaks well, so I’ll listen to him and learn how to speak.

Then we learn that the narrator knew Tyler (it’s his last name, first name unknown) many many years ago, when the narrator was six or seven.  Tyler was a tutor at a facility called the Green Hut.  Continue Reading »

Posted in Death, Hotels, Huh?, Humiliation, John Berger, New Yorker, Nostalgia, Short Story, The Flaming Lips | Leave a Comment »

Hella Mega Tour: Green Day / Fall Out Boy / Weezer / The Interrupters (Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia, PA, August 29, 2020) [POSTPONED]

August 29, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[POSTPONED: August 27, 2020] Hella Mega Tour: Green Day / Fall Out Boy / Weezer / The Interrupters [moved to August 20, 2021]

indexWhen this tour was announced I knew that I’d have to get tickets for the whole family to go to.  We haven;t all been to a big spectacle show and I thought this sounded like a great one.

My son likes Green Day.  My daughter likes Fall Out Boy.  We all like Weezer.  No brainer.

Neither of them have been to a big stadium show before.  I don’t love a stadium show really, but getting decent tickets would make it more fun to be sure.

The tickets were pricey, yes, but I managed to get pretty good seats (on the ground but near the back of those seats) and I thought it would be a great way to end the summer (even if I have no idea what Citizens Bank Park is like it was better than trying to get to CitiField in New York).

I was bummed that this tour was postponed since it was at the end of the summer and seemed so far away.  But they need to postpone a tour like this early and it was decided on May 19, so there was no waiting until the last minute.

There’s not much to say about any of these bands.  They’re all huge.  Musical purists don’t like any of them, but they write catchy songs and all of the songs are fun.

I have only seen Weezer, and if they put on the kind of show that they have been playing, that alone would be a great night.  But I’m pretty sure all three bands were going to pull out all the stops.  I think we were in for an exhausting night ( I assume with traffic we wouldn’t be home until like 2AM).

The Interrupters are a ska band with whose lead singer Aimee Interrupter sounds a bit like Brody Dalle from The Distillers. The rest of the band is three brothers: Jesse Bivona on drums, Justin Bivona on bass, and Kevin Bivona on guitar.  I’m still a fan of ska so I’m glad to see its (apparent) resurgence.  I hope it’s still of interest next year since i;d love to hear a new ska band.

I’m glad the show is being rescheduled.  The kids will all be one year older, which makes it even more fun for us all.

Posted in Brody Dalle, Citizens Bank Park, Coronavirus, Fall Out Boy, Green Day, Philadelphia, PA, Postponed, Quarantine, The Distillers, The Interrupters, Weezer | Leave a Comment »

Jim Crace–“Digestions” (New Yorker, May 7, 2001)

August 29, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: PHIL PULEO-Phil Puleo’s poly”WOG” 1996​-​2003 (2003/2020).

Phil Puleo has been the drummer for Swans for a number of years.  He has also been in Cop Shoot Cop and a number of other bands.  He also lived in New Jersey and was a good friend of a good friend of mine.  So I’ve hung out with him a few times and was pretty excited for him to get the gig with Swans.  I was really looking forward to seeing them this past winter, but theirs was one of the first shows to get postponed until next year.

So Phil has reissued (and remastered) some of his solo projects.

This one is described as

Highly effected samples of me playing various instruments. Guitar, Piano, Bass, Percussion, Electronic percussion, hammered dulcimer, harmonica, found audio recordings, weird answering machine messages etc.  Many of these tracks were recorded around the Swans are Dead tour in 1997 in my home in NJ.

So you get fourteen tracks of warped instrumental songs.  They sound like a soundtrack to a world that is slightly out of phase with ours.

“Italianato” is basically the music for “La Vie en Rose” performed on a a pipe organ that’s underwater.  But its ten minutes are filled with all kinds of samples that break through the surface.  By about four minutes the main melody has been stripped away to pulses of keyboards and samples of a woman saying “Are you too young to remember that?  You are.”  Along with a slowed voice saying “I’m a depressing motherfucker.” And that same earlier voice repeating “You are.”

“Can Somebody” opens with a somber piano that’s accompanied by swirling waves of high notes.  An answering machine plays through as if from another world. I’m really enamored of the simple melody that starts after the message, like a mechanical bird singing a robotic song.

“I” is a minute and a half of a slow echoing piano melody while “Ahoy” soars with a violin-like instrument fluttering around.  Until a more sinister noise comes from under the depths, surfacing again and again.

“Mother’s Plot” is based around percussive sounds.  There’s also distant voices processed to sound almost like chanting.  “Vio” messes around with some loosely tuned guitars and a harmonica, a kind of under the sea Western.  Although half way through the song grows a bit brighter with clean guitars strumming a pretty melody.  “Message” has a deep pulsing sound and delicate sprinkling of chimes and piano as a man leaves a message about burning the whole place to the ground and needing an alibi.  Yikes!

“Slow By” has some plucked almost Spanish guitar enveloped by more of that pulsing sound.  Once the percussion comes in the melody establishes itself to create a really interesting soundtrack.  “Overgrown” has a melody based around what sounds like a dulcimer.  There’s some interesting guitar sounds that come and go and a noise that sounds like a cow (but isn’t).  The rubbery sound quality in this song is really terrific.

“Hill 503” is an exploration of what constitutes percussion.  A steady drumbeat is accompanied by other sounds (including a violin bow banging strings) that grow and recede. By the end, an echoing guitar line re-introduces a kind of Western feel to the piece.

“Tumble” has some wooden percussion underpinning the sounds of children playing in the distance  It sets for a potentially bucolic scene.  Especially when combined with “Wog Maia,” a pretty guitar song with gently echoed piano and processed children’s voices.

“Indian Guy” has some gentle dulcimer in what sounds like an urban landscape. The “solo” sounds like it was manipulated by some proto-Auto-tune.  “All New Baby” has some more lovely hammered dulcimer playing over the top of some sinister backing chords.  The second half cycles through rising seven note patterns that provide some excellent tension.

“Everything” is the reissue’s bonus track.  It does sound like he’s crammed everything that’s gone before into 90 seconds.  Waves and waves of noises that resolve in a tidy little guitar piece.

This is not easy listening, but it is very evocative and visual.  I’d watch whatever movie this was a soundtrack to.

[READ: August 20, 2020] “Digestions”

I was surprised to learn that I had not read anything by Jim Crace before–his name sounded so familiar.

This piece is several very short stories about food.

“Mussels on the House” is the best one.  In it, the chef of The Yellow Basket likes to take revenge on unsatisfied customers by giving them less than good mussels.  The locals enjoy hearing the stories of the politician or the couple planing a divorce or the state executive whose evening did not end how they planned.

“George’s Magic Cookies” may have been given to a man on death row.  It certainly would have made the moments after his last meal happy ones.  George thinks that he might still be flying. Continue Reading »

Posted in Cop Shoot Cop, Death, Drugs, Huh?, Jim Crace, Mushrooms, Mussels, New Yorker, Phil Puleo, Short Story, Swans, The Devil | Leave a Comment »

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