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November 27, 2022
Hugh Sheehy's Playlist for His Story Collection "Design Flaw"
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.
The stories in Hugh Sheehy's collection Design Flaw are haunting in the best of ways and always compelling.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
"Sheehy delivers a dark and dazzling collection pocked with surface tension and an undercurrent of menace. . . . Artfully imagined and written with a distinctly devilish edge, these beguiling yarns plumb the depths of humanity and explore how human behavior can be twisted and modified by science. Often murky and mysterious, with some only a few pages long, Sheehy’s curious tales never fail to enchant and entertain."
In his own words, here is Hugh Sheehy's Book Notes music playlist for his story collection Design Flaw:
Eschatology Ltd—MF Doom, “Potholderz”
I prefer the original version of Doom’s 2004 song “Kookies,” but that cut appears to be unavailable through licensed distributors; the Sesame Street sample adds a theme song momentum any child of American TV could cherish in a beginning (curious readers can find it on Youtube). “Potholderz” will do, containing multitudes and volumes as it does, reflections on masculinity, friendship, honor and dignity, the value of having a creed, and the need to keep things in perspective. I’m not a lyrics guy, but Doom operated at a different level.
Design Flaw—A Tribe Called Quest, “Scenario”
There’s always a moment in a book where themes, patterns, and core ideas shuffle into line. Suffice it to say I hope something like that happens early in my collection. As for this perfect song, Busta Rhymes steals the show with his revolutionary style near the end, but every twist and turn still yields—somehow, after all these years—thrill and delight.
Rest Area—McLusky, “Alan Is a Cowboy Killer”
Transitions between genres tend to be awkward. Fortunately, Andrew Falkous doesn’t beat around the bush.
Amontillado—Pelican, “March into the Sea”
The best long post-metal songs wander and build to a peak where they effectively become new songs without harming the overall project. One of my ambitions for this collection is to do something like that.
The Help Line—Sannhet, “Sleep Well”
Sannhet is one of my favorite New York bands, and I’m not sure of their status since the pandemic began. They’ve been outstanding since their days playing at St. Vitus, though, and they created something new with the album “So Numb.” I hope they make more music soon.
Demonology, or Gratitude—my bloody valentine, “Only Shallow”
I grew up knowing almost nobody who listened to shoegaze. The Canadian radio station 89X (R.I.P.) occasionally floated songs by Catherine Wheel and Slowdive across Lake Erie, but that was the only supply for Toledo-area kids who were sick of Sixties and Seventies rock and detested Top 40 and country pop. I rarely caught song titles or band names; all I knew was something cool was happening without me and that I was going to check it out when I got older.
The Severed Hands—Brian Jonestown Massacre, “Wisdom”
The lyrics of this deranged and perhaps psychopathic song have always jarred me a little. There’s a type of American character, a bad guy who thinks he’s a good guy, who’s always held a certain fascination for me as a writer: a character like that can find a way to justify just about anything.
First Responder— Yo La Tengo, “For You Too”
Much of the music I listen to these days is categorized as post-metal or post-rock. A lot of it is instrumental or uses lyrics in some kind of secondary way, as a texture or a placeholder for whatever the inner voices the music might awaken in the listener. There are a couple of implications to this, the foremost and most obvious being exhaustion with lyrics, though the subtler obverse of that is a nod the futility of trying to speak into the current cultural noise. You have to find some other way to say your piece, and sometimes it’s just a sound like a feeling. That’s how I think about this song and the next few selections, as well as the stories to which I’ve assigned them.
The Documentary—Russian Circles, “Schiphol”
Everything is Going to Be Okay—Thurston Moore, “Trees Outside the Academy”
Story Hour—Mogwai, “Tracy”
The Secret Self—Guided by Voices, “Tractor Rape Chain”
Nobody does adolescent angst like GBV, though on some level I blame the culture of Ohio, where they grew up and where I did, too, a place DEVO’s Jerry Casale another Buckeye) recently described as a “pressure cooker of insanity.” Living there formed much of who I am, and listening to these guys feels natural to me.
Modern Wonders—Songs: Ohia, “Farewell Transmission”
As someone who grew up Catholic but never got it, the closest I get to the experience of worship is probably through ecstatic encounters with music. It’s comforting to know Jason Molina went through something similar, which we know from his pious lyric “I tried to sing the blues/ the way I found them” from his maybe-the-saddest-country-song ever, “Old Black Hen” (the demo version). Figure I might as well start and end with a couple of bangers, and here’s the perfect ending, one that doubles as a bright beginning, a song tuned into all the gravity and light it takes to carry a listener from one world into the next.
Hugh Sheehy is the author of The Invisibles, winner of the 2014 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His writing has appeared in Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, Cincinnati Review, Antioch Review, Crazyhorse, The Rumpus, Los Angeles Review of Books, Rain Taxi, and Post Road. Sheehy teaches at Ramapo College of New Jersey and serves as a mentor in Miami University’s Low Residency MFA Program.
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