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September 16, 2006
Shorties
In the Globe and Mail, Carl Wilson reviews the Mountain Goats' Get Lonely.
Yet this effort is much less narrow, neither diary nor screed but almost a taxonomy of the solitudes: Bereft lovers (pacing their own houses "like a little boy lost at the mall") stand alongside runaways, insomniacs, even literal monsters and freaks. It's about lost romance, but also exclusion from community, estrangement from oneself, every sort of sickness, even the loneliness at the moment of suicide. Darnielle shares his notes on these harrowing topics with a delicacy and compassion that help remedy what they diagnose.
The Yale Daily News also reviews the album.
Turns out that "Get Lonely" is an imperative. The album's title track is a string of "I wills;" I will rise up early; I will leave the house; I will find a crowd. Darnielle winds up, finally, at "I will get lonely," and sighs that last sentence like all this tortured aftermath is mandated. He must get lonely; he doesn't have a choice. "Get Lonely" needs to exist, if only to reassure ourselves that we have feelings; that we aren't soulless; that, at least for moments, people are capable of making other people really, really sad. It's why Darnielle tackles the task of getting lonely. In the end, it's why we're best off listening.
Don't forget, the LHB "Get Lonely, Win Discs" Mountain Goats contest is still accepting entries.
retroCRUSH lists the best zombie films of all time.
Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy talks to the University of Calgary's Gauntlet.
"I'm not denying there's some sick, shooting-myself-in-the-face, self-sabotaging going on with [the name]," says Pallett. "There is a gimmicky side of it, but I just like crap. All my favourite movies, books and [albums] are all kind of crappy. Even though I'm trying to make this classical music, I hope people realize that the foundations beneath it are meant to be semi-serious. On the flip side, I fundamentally believe that joking about something is the only way to have people take you seriously."
Harp lists "kid's albums we'd sell our mothers to see."
Nick Cave, Abattoir Stories and Sonnets
Featuring: “Red Right Hand (From Fingerpainting),” “The Firstborn Is A Blight on My Sunny Day,” “The Proposition (Eat Your Fruit or Get Scurvy)”
Minnesota Public Radio has Brazilian singer-songwriter Cibelle in the studio for a performance and interview.
The Times Online reports that Japan's Bookoff is opening its first branch of the secondhand store in London.
Customers sell their unwanted literature or software to the shop, which cleans the goods thoroughly before selling them on — always at a carefully calculated discount to their original high street price, ensuring that the company makes margins of 70 per cent on books and 50 per cent on electrical goods.
The Independent profiles Booker Prize favorite, author Sarah Waters.
Singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens talks to the Dallas Morning News about a possible Texas album.
"The problem is that Texas is such a phenomenon," he says. "It's so overwrought with archetypes and clichés. You have to sort of wade through all of that to get to the heart of the story of Texas. I'm not sure if I have the stamina for that one."
Extended Books interviews Hillary Carlip, author of Queen of the Oddballs.
Explorefaith.com examines "Sufjan Stevens' ambitious trip through heaven and earth."
Spiritually speaking, Stevens stands at the forefront of a widespread movement of young people looking to live out their faith sacramentally (Seven Swans represents the gifts of the Seven Sacraments of the Holy Spirit), willing to persist in the face of the mystery of God and fully engaged with the world through art and liturgy. He writes as a believer not willing to accept the easy answers, as one who knows the failures of sin, the silence of God and the complications of belief. The work often has the tone of a Lamentation or a Psalm.
Entertainment Week lists the 25 most controversial movies ever.
Lambchop's Kurt Wagner talks to the Washington Post about his band's latest album, Damaged.
"What happens in your life informs the process of making music and making records, not just writing songs," Wagner says of the necessarily downcast and introspective ambience of "Damaged." "As I was constructing this record, I was even having to schedule it around particular things that I had to take care of, and obviously that was going to inform how the record ended up sounding. But it was more about a sonic thing, not necessarily any of these lyrical Bob Dylan-hunting clues. People either accept that about the way I write or don't."
Gothamist misses WOXY already, and gives thanks for the streaming radio station.
Amy Millan of Stars and Broken Social Scene talks to the Victoria News about her solo sound.
"It's nice to play some songs that are a bit softer," she said. "Don't get me wrong, I love my rock and roll, but it's nice to play songs with a bit less twang and more mood."
