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April 28, 2021
Patrick Allington's Playlist for His Novel "Rise & Shine"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Patrick Allington's novel Rise & Shine is a timely, imaginative, and compelling dystopia.
The Age wrote of the book:
"There is a definite Kafkaesque air to Allington’s writing, as well as echoes of 1984 and Brave New World…The dialogue is one of the great strengths of Rise & Shine: buoyantly paced, drolly comic and easily absorbing…Rise & Shine is apt reading for our current atmosphere of environmental, societal and economic precarity. It is an undeniably imaginative and engrossing fable."
In his words, here is Patrick Allington's Book Notes music playlist for his novel Rise & Shine:
Roky Erickson, “Goodbye, Sweet Dreams”
The first hints of Rise & Shine emerged from me wanting to reckon with, or at least have some fun with, my emotional state at the time: a mix of hope and hopelessness about our collective future. I wanted to look well beyond the moment of societal collapse, to imagine what impossible survival might look like. Roky Erickson’s comeback album, True Love Cast Out All Evil, helped me do that. I listened to it almost every day that I worked on Rise & Shine, often on repeat. It’s an enduring source of inspiration to me, as significant as any book I’ve read. “Goodbye, Sweet Dreams,” like the whole album, is ethereal, fragile, individual.
Because True Love Cast Out All Evil is not available on Spotify, I’ve replaced “Goodbye, Sweet Dreams” below with the 13th Floor Elevators. A much younger Erickson screaming “You’re gonna miss me” takes on a whole new meaning in the context of global apocalypse.
Starship, "We Built This City"
I will not hear a word of criticism against this much-mocked song – although if Grace Slick doesn’t like it these days, that’s fair enough. It’s an ideal companion song to a novel about the creation of a couple of cities, even more so when paired with the vaguely futuristic video. The lyrics are, I guess, a complaint about the music industry, but for me the song is about looking back and looking forward, about old ways and new ways. As a bonus, it reminds me of my youth – a fog of music videos, obsession with sports, and shyness.
Otis Redding, “Try a Little Tenderness” & Etta James, “Try a Little Tenderness”
For a long time, until just before I finished it, Rise & Shine was called Try a little tenderness. The working title was a nod to the story’s premise that the last surviving people on earth can only subsist by feeling compassion for other people, which is, obviously enough, not what the song is about. There are many versions of this song: I had the Otis Redding version in my head to start with, but I also particularly like the tension that Etta James brings to her interpretation.
Alicia Keys, “Girl on Fire”
I am quite in awe of Alicia Keys. I can picture the character Sala nodding along to this song, although she would do it in private and in a restrained way – she might tap her foot but there’d be no dancing, no singalongs. Sala is a soldier fighting a war designed to produce footage to feed the people. She respects the leaders who have saved the remnants of the human race but sees no need for reverence or deference. She speaks her mind and shakes things up.
R.E.M, “Get Up”
This song makes me think of the character Walker, the leader of the city-state of Shine. He’s unwell, he’s got the weight of the world on his shrinking shoulders, and he needs help – a lot of help – to get up in the morning and get on with the business of saving humans from extinction: “Where to turn? Where to turn? … Get up.”
Missy Higgins, “Stuff and Nonsense”
This beautiful version of the Split Enz song makes me think of the way the people of Rise feel about their nearest and dearest. They love each other in true and deep but guarded ways. Grief and loss sit like dust over everyone and everything, and survival is never guaranteed: “I don't know about the future / That's all stuff and nonsense.”
Jenny Lewis, “Sing a Song for Them”
Jenny Lewis does amazing feats with just a few words, cracking open new ways of thinking about the world. This song is a hymn to compassion, a plea to those who hold power and influence. I envy Lewis in the same way that I envy my favorite writers: Why can’t I pack a phrase with the import, depth and wit that she achieves?
Joe Henry, “One Shoe On”
I’ve been writing to Joe Henry’s third album, Short Man’s Room, since its release way back in 1992 (including when I wrote my first published short story). I take this song to be a meditation on death and dying, but, just possibly, it’s about drunkenness. Either way, it’s gorgeous.
The Decemberists, “Everything is Awful”
Everything in Rise & Shine is indeed pretty bad, as tends to be the case in post-apocalyptic worlds. I read an interview with Colin Meloy in which he said that the band had stopped playing this song live. For Meloy, the joke wore thin because the political landscape, and much else, really was awful (I hope my remembered paraphrasing doesn’t misrepresent what he said). I still love the song because its dire prognosis is delivered with such exuberance, even joy. To overthink it – a favorite pastime of mine – there are hints of resilience but also desensitization: everything is awful, but, as we say in Australia, “no worries.” I also love this song for its glorious “na na na na naaaah” chorus.
Birds of Chicago, “Dim Star of the Palisades”
I think, although I’m not sure, that this is a song about new parenthood – the mind-blowing reality of bringing a new child into the great big world. Or maybe it’s about remembering a lost love or friend. Maybe it’s about all of that. Or something entirely different. For no good reason, for me the song is about Rise & Shine: loss and trauma, the building of a new world, thoughts of a tenuous and unpredictable future, a sense of ever-shifting ground and of foreboding – all delivered with a plea to “hold on tight.”
Dream Syndicate, “Kendra’s Dream”
I’ve included this song because I listened to it, and the album How Did I Find Myself Here?, many times during the late drafting and then the editing stages. I hope I’m complimenting the band to say that I can’t differentiate the songs on the album – it’s one long distorted chunk of sound to me.
Waxahatatchee, Saint Cloud
I’m currently writing the sequel to Rise & Shine, called either Shine On or Shine and Rise depending on the day. The album Saint Cloud has become my go-to music for this draft, similar to Roky Erickson for Rise & Shine. This magnificent song of the same name broods and builds, along the way referencing mutating cities, minds losing their perfect shape, new worlds, scorched earth, and so on. It makes me think strange thoughts – and to be clear, I’m grateful for that – and it makes me want to create art that is this good.
Patrick Allington is a writer and editor. His fiction includes the novel Figurehead, which was longlisted for the 2010 Miles Franklin Literary Award. His short stories, nonfiction, and criticism have also appeared widely. His US debut novel, Rise & Shine, is available now from Scribe Publications.
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