Alex V. Cook - Author, Journalist, Critic, Teacher
Sunday, April 5, 2009
[outsideleft] The Drones: Supercargo of Suffering
am all "hey there..."
Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit (listen) This album is so good, it is actually better than I think it is. I am blinded by how much I love it that I need distraction to allow me to hear it. Like I was walking the dog this morning and nearly stepped in the reason we bring bags with us when we walk dogs and heard a new complicated horn and guitar fill deep in a crevice of one of these songs I'd listened to countless times before. We chose the dog we did because in the Craigslist ad was "Her name is Sukie" and "Sukie in the Graveyard" is mine and my daughter's jam on this record. Hearing that little fill in the corner is like when I catch sight of my lovely wife and am all "hey there..." and that is love.
...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Madonna - I am in the apparent minority for liking this band's more expansive side, but this record is a corker.
Micachu & the Shapes - Jewellry (comes out on Tuesday; MySpace) This record has dominated my weekend listening, as I suspect it has most that have encountered it. On one hand, it is a little tuneless, or at least tone-deaf, cantankerous and prickly; on the other, it is all those things except in the most wonderful and refreshing way. It might be the new M.I.A. in that I never though M.I.A would catch on and it did. While M.I.A clearly has the eye on the prize, Micachu is after some fleeting artpop intangible, and the chase gets better with each listen.
Review of This is Water by David Foster Wallace
This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster WallaceMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
Hey, look at me! I finally read a DFW book all the way through!
No matter that this one is all of 7000 words, a commencement speech that would have made a lot more sense as an article in The New Yorker than dressed up as a $15 self-help book. There was some good stuff in here but the melodramatic format of this book sets it up as the easily scoured suicide note everything becomes after the fact. Remember when you first listened to In Utero after the news of Cobain's death?* "It's so obvious."
Which, of course, it isn't. We who schlep around in the stupor of grocery stores Wallace depicts here cannot help but mythologize our "betters" that opt out early, and the things that made them better are, to some degree, reduced to anecdotes to that mythology. It's too bad because this little speech intends the opposite: mythologizing the anecdotal; not only inflating the internal into a dirigible capable of soaring soundlessly above the mundane, but also introducing the radical idea that there are other balloons in the sky.
View all my reviews.
* 15 years ago today, as it turns out.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Get Terry Riley's In C for free from Amazon today
from here, via Alex Ross
Which is weird, because just yesterday I was talking with someone here in town about organizing a performance of this very piece at a homespun music/art thang happening in May. I'm going to start talking to people about my winning the lottery and getting lavish book deals and see where that gets me.
Mr. Hinson, if you are reading this and Randy hasn't gotten with you yet, I think it would be really cool to perform this at your thang in May. Wheels in motion.
Cobra Commander or Satan or Sprint or whoever
Venice is Sinking - AZAR (listen) Some smart-listening compatriot of mine reported listening to this recently somewhere in the chatmosphere and though I can't remember who that person was, I am thankful for and smartly heeding their smart suggestion. That is how it is now: we know each other and ourselves through each other without the baggage of having to know who the other actually is. Probably just the way Cobra Commander or Satan or Sprint or whoever planned it to play out. Anyway, my trusty space-rock station on Pandora was getting too tightly recursive, while this, tangential to that tight little ball of glooomy chimey guitars over hushed march beats, is like opening the window and airing out the place.
Chora - The Baptist Grip (listen) Hey whaddayaknow, there is a Drone category under lala.com's browse options. This one, "Catfish Rib Bone Tunnel," might rid your house (or head) of vermin.
This is Your Captain Speaking - Eternal Return (listen) I am back to that same flavor of nugget that Pandora is dishing up, but truth be told, I like this kind of nugget a lot.
trying to get some work done...in dub
raise up a giant ladder
The Hold Steady - Stay Positive (listen) This album makes me want to go rollerblading, likes serious strenuous rollerblading, power gliding down the bike path in time with rock anthem fireworks, maybe even holding up my fists Rocky-style at let this be my annual reminder that we can all be something bigger. I have never been on rollerblades in my life, so this is all conjecture of what it would be like, and factoring in that I feel like crap this morning after eating like I was preparing for hibernation yesterday only pushes that further into the imagined.
Swearing at Motorists - Along the Inclined Plane (listen) The first time I saw the Hold Steady, these guys opened up, and if the Hold Steady is the realized dream of the rock-enthralled teenager, Swearing at Motorists is the reality, just two dudes rocking out at the limit of their potential, leaving the empty space to be filled with the stuff of those dreams. Like all teenage dreamers, and perhaps, like all things, they rock a lot harder more consistently live than on album. This little number, with its brief quote form the excellent Brian Eno-before-he-was-ambient classic "Here Come the Warm Jets", is a fine example of their artistry.
The Clash - Super Black Market Clash (listen) So, in keeping with the the Hold Steady theme - let's raise a glass to St. Joe Strummer, Sometimes I think he was our only decent teacher. Intellectually, let's not get carried away here, but raise a glass nonetheless. Even when they weren't that great, they were still pretty great. Look at how much they pack into a mere 2:23
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