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Louise Erdrich–“The Stone” (New Yorker, September 9, 2019)

September 9, 2019 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: LAURA MARLING-NonCOMM (May 18, 2017).

I enjoyed listening to the sets from NonCOMM back in May, so I dug into the archives and found out that a lot of sets are still available.  I was especially happy to see this one from Laura Marling.  The end of the blurb says:

You’ll have another chance to witness this fixating performance when Laura Marling comes to the TLA tomorrow night.

And that’s the show I saw.

After a hearty introduction from Bob Boilen, Laura Marling and crew swan-dived right into debut single, “Soothing,” off of her latest album, Semper Femina.

“Wild Fire” is an amazing example of her incredible voice as she speak-sings, whispers, coos and soars all over the verses which come together in the beautiful harmony of “meeeeeee” in the chorus.  This song has a bunch of curses in it, but she kept it clean for this performance.

With a piercing yet still somehow soft gaze cutting through the crowd (I don’t know how she does the thing, but it’s true), Marling unleashed her otherworldly vocals — flawlessly ebbing and flowing with the track’s funkier rhythm.

“Always This Way” is a beautiful song off of Semper Femina.  The guitar melody is delightful and, of course, her voice is outstanding.

“Next Time” has a simple, quiet, guitar melody which allows her voice to just wend all over this song.  When the backing vocals come it it’s quiet angelic.

“Nothing, Not Nearly” has some wonderfully fast vocals that are as fun to try to figure out as they are to sing along to.  It ends Semper Femina and is my favoirte song on the record.  From the main melody to her wonderfully high notes this song is amazing.

She ended the set with “Once” from Once I Was an Eagle, the album that introduced me to her.

This song is very different from the others, but it still sounded great.  When I saw her I wished she’d played ten songs from each album.  Maybe some day I’ll see her do everything.

[READ: September 7, 2019] “The Stone”

This was an otherworldly story about an earthly object.

As a young girl, the main character’s family drove to an island in Lake Superior every summer.  She was wandering in the brush one day when she felt sure someone was looking at her.  There was no one there, but then she saw the stone.

It was smooth and black, half the size of a human skull and rain had carved what looked like two eye holes in it.

She was spooked at first but then was drawn to it.  She brought it back to the vacation home and put it where she slept.  But then she was sure one of her siblings would try to take it, so she hid it in her sleeping bag.

She brought home after the summer and put it in her room. Her mother saw it as she was getting them ready for school in September. Her mom asked if she’d found the rock the summer.  She nodded and, after dinner, hid it in her room. Continue Reading »

Posted in Laura Marling, Louise Erdrich, Marriage Trouble, Musicians, New Yorker, NonComm, Short Story, Stones, Supernatural | Leave a Comment »

Boris (White Eagle Hall, Jersey City, NJ, September 8, 2019)

September 8, 2019 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: September 7, 2019] Boris

It was almost exactly two years ago that I first saw Boris.  They had come out with a new record and were actually thinking of calling it quits.  But they were inspired to do a tour, which I was sure was their last one, and it was spectacular.

Yet in the last two years they have signed to Third Man Records and have done a live session there.  They are just about to release a two album set called Love Evol (technically Lφve Evφl) and reissue Feedbacker and Akuma No Uta.  So when they announced that they were coming back–and coming to Jersey City–there was no way I could pass it up, even if it meant three concerts in three days.

Especially since the last time they played pretty much the whole new album, which was great, but I wanted to hear some older stuff too.

After the previous two nights of cutting it very close to the start of the show, I knew I wanted to get their early, in part because I had some merch to buy.  I’ve gotten very frugal about buying merch and I often don’t buy anything.  But Boris is a band that’s hard to find stuff here.  And even though Third Man was reissuing records which would mean they are much easier to get, I wasn’t taking any chances . So I arrived plenty early, bought some vinyl (and now greatly regret not buying the Tears EP, which I somehow didn’t know about and now see that it is impossible to get anywhere else). Continue Reading »

Posted in Boris, Coaltar of the Deepers, D-Day, Japan, Japanese Music, Jersey City, NJ, The Novembers, White Eagle Hall | Leave a Comment »

Uniform (White Eagle Hall, Jersey City, NJ, September 8, 2019) [BORIS]

September 8, 2019 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: September 8, 2019] Uniform

Uniform is a duo from New York.  But for this tour that had a live drummer Michael A. Engle (from Crawl).  The main two guys in the band are former Drunkdriver singer Michael Berdan and recording engineer Ben Greenberg (formerly of the Men) on guitar and other sounds.

I looked them up before the show to see who they were and the general impression I got was that they were loud.

So when the band walked on stage, I said to the guy next to me, “time for earplugs.”  And before I could put the second one in, Berdan pressed a button on a machine behind him and out blasted the single loudest sound I’ve ever heard.  Granted, I was standing literally right in front of the massive cabinet that the sound came from, but holy crap.  I assumed it was some kind of accidental feedback.  But indeed, no, that was the opening sound of the band.

And it never let up. Continue Reading »

Posted in Crawl, Drunkdriver, Jersey City, NJ, Public Image Ltd, Set in New Jersey!, The Men, Uniform, White Eagle Hall | Leave a Comment »

Kate Walbert–“To Do” (New Yorker, September 2, 2019)

September 8, 2019 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: EATING OUT-Burn 7″ (2013).

Orville Peck has been getting a lot of attention lately.  In his act, he is a masked cowboy and his identity was (for a time) unknown.

It was fairly recently revealed that Orville Peck is actually Canadian musician Daniel Pitout (those tattoos will always give it away).

Pitout is in a couple of bands including Eating Out and Nü Sensae.

Eating Out plays a noisy grunge.  They have a bunch of one-song singles on bandcamp and this 7″ collects three of them.

Pitout is the singer (and he sounds NOTHING like Orville Peck).  I’ve felt like Orville Peck is a joke character because of the insane way he sings.  Hearing this, I’m evening more convinced of it.  But I’m glad he’s in on it.

“Burn” opens with a clean guitar intro followed by the biggest most distorted guitar around.  It’s certainly grunge and not metal and it runs through the verse and chorus.  The middle reintroduces the opening guitar riff and then the big distortion returns.  The song ends with that same clean guitar–it’s reall catchy–before crashing to a conclusion.

“Come Around” has two lead guitars (nicely fuzzed out) and a big fuzzy sound.  The sound reminds me of an updated version of SST bands.

“That’s My Man” closes the 7″ with a quiet intro.  Echoed vocals and a simple guitar melody.  It’s a poppy, almost do-wop melody with a bit of reverb drenched over the whole thing.  The song doesn’t change much, it just gets bigger as it goes along.  It’s probably the least interesting of the three, but it certainly shows Pitout looking to stretch beyond punk and grunge way back in 2013.

[READ: September 2, 2019] “To-Do”

This is a story about feminism, sex, and a woman’s relationship with her mother.

Constance is in front of a crowd of women at Antler’s Bar for Storytelling Wednesday.

She is telling them that her mother had been a beauty.  She had gotten a degree and was successful in a typing pool in New York City.  Although her boss told her that she had to cut her long hair and adopt the stylish updo of the time.  When she refused, her boss called her hysterical.  I can imagine her telling the audience: Do you know the origin of the word hysterical is the belief that the uterus could reach up through the body and and grip the throat.

The women in the audience seem agitated and bored.  Constance tries to win them over by reciting her mother’s to-do list, something she found in her mother’s effects after she died.

She tries to convince them of the significance of post its and to do lists in a woman’s life.

None of the women see it. Continue Reading »

Posted in Canadian Music, Eating Out, Feminism, Kate Walbert, Nü Sensae, New Yorker, Orville Peck, Parenting, Sex, Sexism, Short Story, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA | Leave a Comment »

Fontaines D.C. (Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PA, September 7, 2019)

September 7, 2019 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: September 7, 2019] Fontaines D.C.

I had heard of Fontaines D.C. from NPR.  They raved about the band’s live show.   I was pretty exited to get to see them in a small place like Johnny Brenda’s.  Then I was really quite surprised that they sold out.  I feel like a lot of times bands that I think have a lot of buzz either don’t or don’t have it in Philly.

But it was sold out and the crowd knew the band really well (much better than I did).

When Pottery went off stage, the floor cleared out a bit and I got a great spot right up front.

Then they turned on these awful blue lights.  Was that the band’s decision?  Why were they like that for the whole show?  Who thought that wa sa good look for anyone?  But I didn’t really care because I was ready to hear this legendary (already) band.

They are an interesting band to be sure.  Many (but not all) of their songs are fast.  But all of their songs feature lead vocalist Grian Chatten speak-singing ala Art Brut but with a Dublin accent.  On stage Chatten is something of a caged tiger, walking around grabbing the mic stand, lurching, looking distracted or pissed off.  And then he bursts out his vocals.  Continue Reading »

Posted in Art Brut, Fontaines D.C., Full show video, Johnny Brenda's, Philadelphia, PA | Leave a Comment »

Pottery (Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PA, September 7, 2019) [FONTAINES D.C.]

September 7, 2019 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: September 7, 2019] Pottery

After cutting it so close last night for the Joanna Newsom show, I made sure to leave plenty early for this sold out show.

A few months ago, Route 95 was closed at Girard Avenue.  For TWO YEARS.

So the ease of getting to Johnny Brenda’s has been removed.  They are also doing a lot of other road constructions in the neighborhood.  Which meant it was impossible to find a parking space.  I drove around for nearly 30 minutes before finding a spot in a neighborhood I’ve ever been to before. By the time I arrived for the show, Pottery had already started.  I don’t know how much I missed, but I am bummed I did because e I really enjoyed them a lot.  [Judging by other setlists, I suspect I walked in during the first song, but I’m not sure].

Nevertheless, I did get to hear a solid 30 minutes of their set. Continue Reading »

Posted in Canadian Music, Fontaines D.C., Full show video, Johnny Brenda's, Parquet Courts, Philadelphia, PA, Pottery | Leave a Comment »

Madeleine Schwartz–“Nell Zink’s Satire Raises the Stakes” (New Yorker, September 2, 2019).

September 7, 2019 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: FRENCH, FRITH, KAISER, THOMPSON-“Bird in God’s Garden/Lost and Found” (1987).

The words are a poem by Rumi.   It is a slow droney song that is primarily drums from John French.  Thompson sings in his quieter style.

There are several different versions of this song. There’s an earlier unreleased version with Richard & Linda Thompson that is much quieter.  I especially like this version because after every other verse they brighten things up with a dramatic five note string riff (or maybe it’s Kaiser on the sanshin) that seems to come out of nowhere.

They spice up the middle of the song with a rollicking traditional Irish sounding fiddle melody from Fred Frith’s “Lost and Found.”  (Frith plays violin).  It adds a bit of zing to an otherwise dirgey song.

After about three minutes of the slow thumping there’s a wonderfully rocking instrumental section complete with fiddles and bass playing some wild melodies.

It was recorded on the album Live, Love, Larf and Loaf and also appears on Thompson’s collection Watching the Dark (1993).

[READ: September 1, 2019] “Nell Zink’s Satire Raises the Stakes”

I have really enjoyed the Nell Zink books that I’ve read. I’ve even read an excerpt from Doxology, the book that’s reviewed in this essay.

What I like about this essay though is the summations of her writing and her earlier books.

Schwartz says that Zink looks at life from the fringes.  She then summarizes her three impossible to summarize books in simple and amusing fashion: Continue Reading »

Posted in Badfinger, Book Reviews, Corporate skewering, Fred Frith, French, Frith, Kaiser, Thompson, Funny (ha ha), Hakim Conrad Archuletta, Jonathan Franzen, Linda Thompson, Madeleine Schwartz, Nell Zink, New Yorker, Poetry, Poets, Political Humor, Religion, Richard Thompson, Ruins, Sufism, War | Leave a Comment »

The String/Keys Incident–An Evening with Joanna Newsom (Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center, Philadelphia, PA, September 6, 2019)

September 6, 2019 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: September 6, 2019] Joanna Newsom

This was scheduled to be a busy concert weekend for me–three days, three shows.

I was glad the first one was a seated, relaxed show of Joanna Newsom playing her harp and piano.  The traffic into Philly was light, until I got into City Center.  I had planned to park on the street (you can find it sometimes), but I wound up driving on a street under construction behind a bus and I watched as the time ticked away.  Finally I grabbed the nearest parking garage and sucked up the $22 fee and then hustled over the theater and managed to get into my seat just as the lights dimmed.  Holy cow.

I had never seen Newsom before, and I suspect that I was quite lucky to see her on this limited run tour because I understand it’s her first solo tour in about 15 years–she’s usually accompanied by… someone else, I guess.  It was also her first tour at all in four years.  She said she was very nervous.  And she did make a few mistakes.  But she was always gracious and self-deprecating about them.  And considering she played about 200,000 notes that night, missing one or two isn’t the end of the world.

She came out to much applause.  I gather that her fan base is pretty intense (the kind who laugh and squeal at any comment the musician makes).  However, unlike other similar fans, these were relatively restrained (it was a rather formal setting after all).  But it was nice to be enveloped in so much mutual love.

The strange thing for me is that I didn’t really know any of her songs before this show.  I knew what she sounded like and I’m sure I’ve heard a song or two somewhere, but I was a Newsom novice.  I just knew it would be an excellent evening.  And so it was.

She came out on stage to thunderous applause.  She had on a beautiful floor-length dress, which–when someone asked her–she said was by California designers Rodarte.  And that they had made four dresses, one for each of her albums. Continue Reading »

Posted in Andy Samberg, Fontaines D.C., Joanna Newsom, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Perelman Theater, Philadelphia, PA, Rodarte, The String Cheese Incident | 2 Comments »

Tobias Wolff–“Class Picture” (New Yorker, January 6, 2003)

September 6, 2019 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: THE ANGELUS-“The Young Birds” (2019).

Every once in a while I like to check in with Viking’s Choice on NPR’s All Songs Considered.  Lars Gottrich specializes in all of the obscure music that you won’t hear on radio.  For this month, he did a special focus on Patient Sounds. a small label based out of Illinois.

[UPDATE: At the end of 2019, Patient Sounds closed shop. I’m not sure if any of these songs are available outside of Bandcamp].

Lars had this to say about the label

Matthew Sage, who runs the label, knows that dynamic drone, jittery footwork, oddball drone-folk, hypnagogic guitar music and cosmic Americana can exist in the same space.

The second song of the week is by The Angelus.  Lars describes the song:

Redemption often comes at the hands of something bigger than yourself, but as The Angelus’ soul-rattling doom-gaze reminds us, the love of young children will make you humble.

This song starts with crashing heavy chords–cymbals and loud guitars.  But then it settles down to a groovy death riff.  The surprise to me was when the singer began singing.  He has a soft melodic voice which totally changes this from a heavy dark song into a kind of melodic slow heavy song.  The chorus is surprisingly heavy and even ends on a kind of positive mood.

[READ: September 1, 2019] “Class Picture”

This story surprised me because it started

Robert Frost made his visit in November of 1960, just a week after the general election.  It tells you something about our school that the prospect of his arrival cooked up more interest than the contest between Nixon and Kennedy.

If Nixon had been at their school, they would have glued his shoes to the floor.

This is quite a lengthy story and there are a lot of components.  Wolff fleshes out this school very well.  So well, in fact, that I could see this being developed into a novel [It is actually an excerpt from a novel]. Although for the purposes of this story, the plot is dealt with fully.

It also makes me wonder if such a school could actually exist.  Certainly not in 2020, but even in 1960?  Because this school exhibited pride in being a literary institution. Glamorous writers visited three times a year and the English masters carried themselves as if they were intimates of Hemingway.  The teachers of other subjects (math, science) seemed to float around the fringe of the English masters’ circle.

The tradition at the school was that one boy would be chosen to meet the famous author who was coming next.  This year it is Robert Frost.  Each boy would submit an entry (in the case of Frost it would be poetry).  The author himself would select the winner.  And these meetings were a big deal to everyone on campus.

The narrator is very excited but he knows that his poems are subpar–he writes fiction.  He was on the school’s literary magazine board so he was familiar with the other great writers in his class.  There were three.

George Kellogg was a proficient writer of poetry, although the narrator found the boring.

Bill White was the narrator’s roommate.  He’d written most of a novel already and his poems were impressive.

Jeff Purcell was the third.  He was also on the literary magazine and was quick to dismiss others.  Could that translate to his own writing?

The one detour from the poetry angle is about smoking.  The school forbade smoking but a lot of boys did anyway.  The narrator said he loved smoking.  He smoked in storage closets and freezers, steam tunnels and bathrooms.  He even went out for cross-country so he could smoke while running in the woods.

If you were caught smoking you were expelled.  It happened every once in awhile.  A person was sent home just before the Frost Poem deadline.  This made the narrator quit smoking on campus.

The narrator wrote a poem for the occasion but he didn’t think it was good enough.  So he decided to submit an older one on the off chance that Frost liked it.

I won’t spoil the winner, but Frost did come to the school and he read some of his poems aloud.  During the Q&A that followed a master asked a question.  Interestingly he misstated the title of the poem.  He called it “Stopping in Woods” which Frost corrected instantly to “Stopping by Woods on a  Snowy Evening”  The master continued the question asking about iambic lines  Frost says “Good for you, they must be teaching you boys something here.”

The boys all laughed and Frost seemed pleased–had he made a mistake about the master or had he known all along?  The boys were surprised to learn later that Frost was quite funny.

The end of the story shows the winner of the contest questioning the value of his poem.  He felt that Frost mis-read it and that perhaps he won for the wrong reasons.  Should he blow off Robert Frost?  Is he crazy?

I really enjoyed this piece and found myself thoroughly engaged.  If this is part of a novel, I would be very curious to read it.  Turns out it is an excerpt from the novel Old School.

Posted in All Songs Considered, Cigarettes, Excerpt, John F. Kennedy, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Patient Sounds, Poetry, Poets, Richard Nixon, Robert Frost, Set at School, The Angelus, Tobias Wolff, Viking's Choice | Leave a Comment »

Sam Humphries, Jen Bartel–Blackbird Book 1: The Great Beast (2019)

September 5, 2019 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: DEATHPROD-“Disappearance / Reappearance” (2019).

Every once in a while I like to check in with Viking’s Choice on NPR’s All Songs Considered.  Lars Gottrich specializes in all of the obscure music that you won;t hear on radio.  For this month, he did a special focus on Patient Sounds. a small label based out of Illinois.

[UPDATE: At the end of 2019, Patient Sounds closed shop. I’m not sure if any of these songs are available outside of Bandcamp].

Lars had this to say about the label

Matthew Sage, who runs the label, knows that dynamic drone, jittery footwork, oddball drone-folk, hypnagogic guitar music and cosmic Americana can exist in the same space.

The first song is by Deathprod.  Lars says:

Deathprod’s first album in 15 years, Occulting Disk, smothers dank, dark drones around the void of your soul, like a frozen hug from a cyborg teddy bear.

This song is 8 minutes long.  It consists almost entirely of a single loud distorted note/chord played on a synth until it fades into distorted crackles.  The note changes, but it is a pretty ominous soundtrack, like the slowest monster approaching you.

[READ: September 2, 2019] Blackbird

This book starts out with a very realistic concern but quickly become supernatural.

Nina was 13 years old and had a vision of an earthquake coming.  Her sister just called her a crazy baby (something the whole family called her). But moments later, the Verdugo Earthquake happened.  She and her family fled, and were almost crushed by a collapsing bridge.

But then a beautiful celestial monster came down and fixed the bridge and saved them.  The creature cast a forgetting spell over everyone, but somehow Nina remembered it all.

Despite the magical creature’s help, Nina’s life went to hell from there.  Her mother and father began fighting.  He began drinking and she died in a car accident while trying to get away from him.  Nina had been a great student but high school became unbearable.  She became “the girl who talked about magic and wizards and paragons.”

Now as an adult, she has a dead end job at a bar, is living with her sister and is sneaking painkillers.

There’s a guy, Clint, who seems to be stalking her at the bar.  I mean, he’s cute, but he’s always there. Continue Reading »

Posted in All Songs Considered, Deathprod, Graphic Novel, Huh?, Humiliation, Image Comics, Jen Bartel, Magic, NPR/PRI/PBS, Parenting, Patient Sounds, Sam Humphries, Supernatural, Unfinished series, Viking's Choice | Leave a Comment »

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