largehearted boy: a boy, a girl, and his radio

November 5, 2009

Book Notes - Ben Winters ("Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters")

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.

With Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Ben Winters adds literary-inspired nautical mayhem to Jane Austen's classic novel. A well-written combination of monsters and classic literature, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is a clever and entertaining literary mashup.

In his own words, here is Ben Winters' Book Notes music playlist for his novel, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters:

Alas, there are not a lot of famous songs about sea monsters. There is only one really famous one, which is the theme from the hallucinatory Sid & Marty Krofft show Sigmund and the Sea Monsters; unfortunately, it’s a terrible song. Even allowing for the fact that it’s the theme song for a children’s show about a playful sea monster, it’s a pretty darn bad song.

There are, however, a lot of great songs about just the sea, and also lot of great songs about just monsters. Both themes offer a lot of bang for your buck, metaphor-wise—as Homer knew when he wrote (chanted?) The Odyssey, the ocean and all the menacing things therein can stand in really well for the sea of troubles that we mere mortals navigate, in life and love.

So the playlist for my Regency-romance-meets-B-movie-action/adventure novel consists of fun and/or cool and/or interesting songs that deal with either monsters, or the sea. I’ve left off a lot of bad songs about monsters (including "Monster Mash") and plenty of bad songs about the sea; for example, the two entrants in the sub-genre I call Cutesy-Wutesy Beatles Songs Set Beneath the Ocean ("Yellow Submarine" and "Octopus’s Garden").

For each song, I’ll include a brief lyric quote or some other explanation of what it’s doing on the list; songs that somehow touch on the sea and monsters are marked by an asterisks.

"Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon

For once, an artist’s most famous number which is actually one of his best, encapsulating so much of what made Zevon a class act. "Werewolves" is catchy, dark, and sublimely funny. Like the singer himself, the titular werewolf is debonair and dangerous: "Better stay away from him / He'll rip your lungs out, Jim / I'd like to meet his tailor."

"Boat Train" by The Pogues

The Pogues have a lot of terrific songs set on the water, tales of immigration, drinking heavily on a boat, and/or shipwrecks. This one has whiskey, gin, tequila, brandy, racial slurs, and vomiting.

"Plenty More" by Squirrel Nut Zippers

"Al the boys are monsters / all the girls are whores / so if you lose the one you love, there’s always plenty more."

* "Half Shark Alligator Half Man" by Dr. Octagon

You have to love that math. The half shark/alligator half man sounds like a sea monster to me, although in the lyrics he tangles not with sailors, but with the LAPD.

"The Man in the Iron Mask" by Billy Bragg

The real l'Homme au Masque de Fer was a top-secret prisoner, but the guy in this Bragg weeper is the classic lovelorn-person-as-hideous-monster. "You must have your reasons [i.e. for breaking my heart] / I will not ask / For you I will be the man in the iron mask."

"Crawling to the USA" by Elvis Costello

"I thought I would go to the sea and shrink down very tiny / to slide inside the telephone wire that runs under the briny." I use the word "briny" a bunch in the book, and every time I fondly recalled this EC classic.

* "Everything You Can Think of is True" by Tom Waits

Like so much of Waits, this number from Alice presents a weird and gorgeous vision of descent into madness, or at least some altered state. Earns its asterisks for rhyming the title line with both "before the ocean was blue" and "Nigerian skeleton crew." Also, for that matter, "the fishes make wishes on you" and (my favorite) "the baby’s asleep in the shoe."

"Enter Sandman" by Metallica

I like songs that confirm the fears of children. Yes, there is something under the bed, and yes, it is trying to kill you.

* "Rock Lobster" by the B-52s

Chapter 28 of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters features a malevolent band of death lobsters, which is why the folks at Idlewild Books played this song as a warm-up before my reading at the book launch— happily reclaiming it forever from my previous association, which was with awkward junior high school dances.

"Two Headed Boy" by Neutral Milk Hotel

"Two headed boy / all floating in glass … I can hear as you tap on the jar." So unsettling, and so, so very beautiful.

"Sloop John B" by the Beach Boys

Obviously I had a lot of Beach Boys numbers to choose from, since so much of their oeuvre is, you know, beachy. But there is something really simple and sad about this number from Pet Sounds, which has origins in an old folk song. "I feel so broke up / I wanna go home."

"Thriller" by Michael Jackson

No brainer.

"Table-Top Joe" by Tom Waits

Waits has a lot of monsters scampering around his catalog. I also might have selected "The Eyeball Kid," but I happen to like ole Table-Top a little better: born without a body, he’s rich and famous, playing Stravinsky on a baby grand.

"If I Had a Boat" by Lyle Lovett

The mixing up of perfect worlds in this song always makes me laugh: "If I had a boat I’d go out on the ocean / and if I had a pony, I’d ride it on my boat."

"Tokyo Storm Warning" by Elvis Costello

An epic disaster movie of a pop song, featuring "cheap Korean monster-movie scenery" , "Japanese Jesus robots," and Martians.

"Hat and Feet" by Fountains of Wayne

Maybe I’m stretching, but surely "I’m just a hat and feet" is some kind of declaration of monstrousness. With Fountains, its hit or miss in any given number whether the quirkiness will outweigh the sincerity. In this song, which takes as its heartbroke metaphor the image of a video game or cartoon character crushed by a heavy object, sincerity wins.

"Ventura" by Lucinda Williams

Of all the songs that use the ocean to talk about the boundlessness and the boundless terror of love, this is my favorite. "I wanna watch the ocean bend / the edges of the sun, then / I wanna get swallowed up / in an ocean of love."

Ben Winters and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters links:

the author's website
the book's video trailer

5-Squared review
Books 'n Border Collies review
Diary of a Book Addict review
Fandomania review
fashion_piranha review
The Harvard Crimson review
Jane Austen's World review
Living Read Girl review

The Lovecraft News Network interview with the author
Shelf Life interview with the author
Slate essay by the author about writing the book

also at Largehearted Boy:

other Book Notes submissions (authors create playlists for their book)

online "best of 2009" book lists
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
guest book reviews
musician/author interviews
52 Books, 52 Weeks

tags: books music literature fiction janeausten austen

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November 5, 2009

Shorties (Chuck Klosterman, John Hodgman, and more)

At Flavorpill, Chuck Klosterman lists albums to beat writer's block.

The Winston-Salem Journal profiles the multi-talented author/actor John Hodgman.

Singer-songwriter Neko Case talks to Seacoast Online.

Paste interviews Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara.

The Guardian offers a literary quiz about fire and Guy Fawkes.

The Perpetual Post examines the state of women in music today.

Watch the 1988 30 minute Elliott Smith documentary, Strange Parallel (via Mental Floss).

The A.V. Club interviews Daryl Hall and John Oates.

100 essential reads for the lifelong learner.

The Quietus interviews Lightspeed Champion's Dev Hynes.

The Oxford American previews the 2009 edition of its Southern music issue, on newsstands December 1st.

The A.V. Club interviews Jim O'Rourke.

The Guardian profiles ROIR Records.

Original Hipster lists pianists that rock right now.

Win Peter & Max: A Fables Novel and Fables: The Deluxe Edition, Book One in this week's Largehearted Boy contest.

Follow me on Twitter for links that don't make the daily "Shorties" columns.

also at Largehearted Boy:

online "best of 2009" book lists
best of the decade (2000-2009) online music lists

daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists

tags: music books popculture indie

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Daily Downloads (Raveonettes, Luke Rathborne, and more)

Today's free and legal mp3 downloads:

Arms Akimbo: "Giving Up for Good" [mp3] from You Want It (out December 1st)
other Arms Akimbo posts at Largehearted Boy

Bill Coleman: free and legal Welcome to the Breakdown EP (tips appreciated) [mp3]
other Bill Coleman posts at Largehearted Boy

Brown Bird: "Danger & Dread" [mp3] from The Devil Dancing (out November 10th)
Brown Bird: "Muck and Mire" [mp3] from The Devil Dancing (out November 10th)
other Brown Bird posts at Largehearted Boy

Etienne Jaumet: "For Falling Asleep" [mp3]
other Etienne Jaumet posts at Largehearted Boy

Luke Rathborne: "I Can Be the One" [mp3] from Hello Dark Prince
other Luke Rathborne posts at Largehearted Boy

People Eating People: "All the Hospitals" [mp3] from People Eating People
other People Eating People posts at Largehearted Boy

The Raveonettes: "The Chosen One" [mp3]
other Raveonettes posts at Largehearted Boy

Slim Twig: free and legal Spit It Twig! Volume 2 album [mp3]
other Slim Twig posts at Largehearted Boy

Slothbear: two tracks [mp3] from Qids
other Slothbear posts at Largehearted Boy

Free and legal mp3s of live performances at other websites:

The Flying Tourbillion Orchestra: 2009-10-27, Los Angeles (mostly Fleetwood Mac covers) ]mp3]
other Flying Tourbillion Orchestra posts at Largehearted Boy

Kris Kristofferson: Daytrotter session [mp3]
other Kris Kristofferson posts at Largehearted Boy

The Mother Hips: Luxury Wafers session [mp3]
other Mother Hips posts at Largehearted Boy

The Voyeurs: 2009-10-27, Los Angeles (mostly Creedence Clearwater Revival covers) [mp3]
other Voyeurs posts at Largehearted Boy

Wooden Shjips: 2009-10-31, New York [mp3]
other Wooden Shjips posts at Largehearted Boy

also at Largehearted Boy:

previous free and legal mp3 daily downloads
2009 Bonnaroo downloads
other music festival downloads

Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and album streams from weekly CD releases)
weekly CD release lists

tags: music download indie mp3

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November 4, 2009

November 4th Updates to the Best of the Decade (2000-2009) Online Music Lists

Today's additions to the list of the online best of the decade (2000-2009) music lists:

Aught Music (best songs)
Club Fonograma (best songs)
Filles Sourires - Anna Maria (best French albums)
Lollipops and Crisps (greatest songs)
RedEye (overlooked songs)
Scene SC - The Dirty White (top albums)
Toad's Music Corner (top albums)

also at Largehearted Boy:

list of the online best of the decade (2000-2009) music lists
daily updates to the list

2008 Online "Best Of" Music Lists
2007 Online "Best Of" Music Lists
2006 Online "Best Of" Music Lists
Online "Best Books of 2009" Lists
Online "Best Books of 2008" Lists
other lists at Largehearted Boy
Daily Downloads (free & legal mp3 downloads)
Book Notes (authors create playlists for their book)
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
musician/author interviews

tags: music cd list lists indie 2000s albums

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Soundtracked - "The Way We Get By" by Zack Martin

Motion picture soundtracks have always fascinated me. In the Soundtracked series, composers and/or directors offer commentary on their film's soundtrack, and offer insights into the creative evolution that melds music into the final film.

The Way We Get By is an honest and moving documentary about three Maine senior citizens who greet soldiers at the Bangor airport. Zack Martin's music enhances their story without ever overpowering it, the mark of a great film score.

The New York Times wrote of the film:

"Unfailingly modest and profoundly humane, “The Way We Get By” profiles three people over 70 whose lives have been changed by a simple act of service: greeting troops at Bangor International Airport in Maine."

In his own words, here is composer Zack Martin's Soundtracked essay for his soundtrack to the film, The Way We Get By:

The score for The Way We Get By started with a phone call. The film was long from being finished, but director Aron Gaudet wanted to get started immediately brainstorming ideas and themes for the soundtrack. We believed that due to the film's rural setting (Maine), minimal acoustic guitar music could work perfectly. I suggested that we might consider tastefully working in some experimental percussive aspects; that it need not be strictly traditional Americana. Aron agreed, and the work began.

Upon starting the demoing process, I thought about of some artists I would consider as inspiration. I am a huge fan of Califone, and believe they have put an interesting spin on the Americana sound. I also thought of Ry Cooder's score for Paris, Texas. I got to work on some initial theme ideas and started tracking them at my home in Providence.

The acoustic guitar ideas were an instant hit with Aron and producer Gita Pullapilly, but that is not to say that the process was without setbacks. I was making regular trips from Providence to the WGBH building in Boston to show them new ideas, watch new cuts of the film, and take notes to bring home. Initially, the film had news footage of soldiers in Iraq on patrols and scenes of real life war carnage. This led me down a road that was not working for any of us. I started writing and recording ideas for "hard-hitting" modern warfare film music, with everything from intense, deep drum percussion, to electronics that strived to emulate cheese-ball nightly news music to intensify war footage. I struggled, trying to conceive something that would coalesce with the minimal guitar music that is prevalent in the rest of the film.

In time, and luckily for me, Aron and Gita cut all of the war footage from the film. They struggled, like I did with the music, interweaving it into the story. They felt that the "war is bad" documentary had been done numerous times before, and although important and done well by others, it just wasn't the film they were trying to make. The film was about the subjects, not about the visceral horrors of war.

Although most of everything recorded for Aron was eventually re-recorded for the final cut, a few of the original demo pieces used for the first trailer were also used in the film. "Bill's Lament" was one such piece, and in some ways it was conceived by accident. I was getting audio levels for recording melodica -- an instrument I used throughout the score -- and an idea came to me. I tracked it quickly, and layered it with additional melodica tracks. Its somber tone worked perfectly as a theme used to establish the more difficult aspects of Bill's life.

A deadline of two months came as I was moving from Providence to Brooklyn, NY. I spent a month living with some family friends in their guest house in the Adirondack Mountains, and continued to record the percussion of the score. It was then that Aron asked me to write and record a song for the credit sequence. He wanted an acoustic song sung by me to replace a Kinks song they were using as temp music. I wrote "the Trapper" in an hour, and had recorded most of it later that night. With percussion all but finished, I spent a week in Burlington, VT recording acoustic guitars at a friend’s house. I chose her house because of her spacious living room, yielding big, bright sounds with a character that really suited this project well. Upon moving into my new apt. in NY, I didn't bother unpacking anything but my recording gear and my mattress. I had little time to finish and mix before the deadline. I finished a few days ahead of time so that I could get it mastered with a friend, Ken Johnson, who I believe really brought the life and tones out of my recordings.

When I met the three subjects of the documentary – Bill, Joan, and Jerry -- we were all attending a large screening in Bangor, Maine. Upon our introduction I could tell they were practically dizzy from meeting so many people, but when they were told that I was the one who did the music they were ecstatic to finally meet me. It felt amazing that the music had an effect on them. They are the true essence of this film.

The Way We Get By links:

the film's website

The A.V. Club review
Film Threat review
Hollywood Reporter review
Living in Cinema review
New York Post review
New York Times review
Variety review
Washington Post review

Zack Martin Links:

Zack Martin's MySpace page

also at Largehearted Boy:

Previous Soundtracked submissions (directors and composers discuss their film's soundtrack)
Book Notes (authors create playlists for their book)
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
musician/author interviews

tags: music movie film soundtrack documentary indie

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Book Notes - Jeff VanderMeer ("Finch")

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.

Finch is the third book in Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris Cycle, and also the third book in the series to inspire its own soundtrack (by Murder By Death). With Finch, Jeff VanderMeer has created a richly populated world with speculative fiction imbibed with impressive detective noir storytelling.

Paul Tremblay wrote of the book:

“Told in a pitch-perfect voice and steeped in the unrelenting menace authentic to the best works of noir, Finch is a wonderful, sad, brutal, and beautiful book. A tour de force.”

In his own words, here is Jeff VanderMeer's Book Notes music playlist for his novel, Finch:

I've always listened to music while writing, because it helps me stay true to the mood and pace of the fiction. But starting with the first novel in my Ambergris Cycle, the actual separation between music and fiction began to crumble, in favor of a kind of cross-pollination. Robert Devereux, an experimental musician out of Pittsburgh, created a song cycle based on City of Saints & Madmen called Fungicide. The Church did a soundtrack for my second Ambergris novel, Shriek: An Afterword—and now Murder by Death has created an incredible instrumental soundtrack for my new novel Finch.

All of this music has or will influence my fiction, but I also had an iPod playlist of over one hundred songs that I listened to while working on Finch. Having that many songs on a loop was great because it remained fresh far longer than it had any right to. Many of these songs have what I'd typify as a gritty desperado sound that speaks to Finch's grounding noir tradition (detective, murder, complications) despite being set in a fantastical world. But the novel also has a phantasmagorical and visionary element, so I needed tracks for inspiration that seemed to wed the gritty with an ethereal and melancholy depth. Given that another layer of Finch steals from the thriller and spy novel genres, another necessary element was crazy and kinetic energy. Several tracks on my playlist combined their underlying darkness with waves or spikes of forward movement or “action".

Here are a few selections from that playlist. In the process of writing, rewriting, and editing the novel, the songs gained additional layers from their association in my head with various scenes, themes, or characters. I'm aware that in a sense I've repurposed them from their original meaning, or deliberately misinterpreted or misunderstood them to aid my creative process.

Magnolia Electric Co. "Almost Was Good Enough" from Trials and Errors 

Early on, I adopted this amazing, sad, defiant song by Magnolia Electric Co. as my beleaguered detective's theme music. John Finch is an honest, compassionate man trapped in an impossible situation in the city of Ambergris, which has been subjected to an unholy occupation. Jason Molina's opening lyrics could as easily have come from Finch's mouth: “It's been hard/Doing anything/Winter's stuck around so long/Kept trying anyhow/And I'm still trying now/Just to keep working, just to keep working./And I remember when/ this didn't use to be so hard./This used to be impossible./New Season has got to begin./I can feel it leanin' in, whispering." The recurring refrain of “Almost no one makes it out" poignantly captures Finch's dilemma: there's no way out of the ruined, war-torn, dangerous city, and he knows he's probably not going to survive his mission. I seeded Finch with this refrain as a kind of mental hotlink to this song and to put subtle emphasis on what in Shriek: An Afterword was expressed as “no one makes it out," meaning no one escapes their own mortality. In Finch, that's not an abstract idea but a daily reality. As for the music, Molina's guitarwork is extraordinary. The clear, echoing, rising guitar notes, which remind me of Richard Thompson at his best, perfectly capture the theme of defiant hope/hopelessness in both the song and my novel.

Pleasure Forever  "Curtain Call for a Whispering Ghost" from Pleasure Forever 

I find Pleasure Forever demonic in the same way as the strangest parts of the Rolling Stones' catalog. This band's two CDs constitute some virulent strain of Decadent rock from an alternate universe where all the cities are on fire and no one's trying to put out the flames. For this reason, then, in my mind Pleasure Forever's music created a demented theme music for the ostensible villains of Finch: the inhuman gray caps. Subterranean inhabitants of the city, they've come aboveground and conquered Ambergris at the time period covered by the novel. John Finch must work for them if he wants to live, as they've set up the trappings of a normal functioning society as part of their dictatorship--a police force, food stations, and the like—even as their ultimate aims are unknowable. A song like “Curtain Call for a Whispering Ghost" seems to fit the gray caps perfectly. It's full of danger music and awash in lyrics like “weakened flesh and hollow bone nothing left but a sullen pose against the flame you stood too close certain call for a whispering ghost" that might've easily been created using automatic writing or some other surrealist game—a steady stream of somewhat alien or alienated thought. Like some of my other favorite songs, “Curtain Call" slowly ramps up the tension and energy. I also love their use of piano. (Other songs like “Gideon & Goliath" contain a lot of muttering that I interpreted as the speech of the gray caps.)

The Church   "Sealine" from Forget Yourself

For shimmering, transcendent guitars no band is better than The Church. What isn't always appreciated about that guitar work is how dangerous or threatening it can sound, even as it forms a beautiful tapestry of sound. On “Sealine" the guitars have a point, like a knife, and the edge to the lyrics reflects that sense of menace: “The minute the sting penetrates your finger/You're strapped to the pain like an angry stranger/The moment the rain freezes in the gutter/Caught the flaming birds and the hideous matter/The second the claw lifts up your head/I'm alone in your head and you can't get in./Somebody said it's all for you./It's a miracle, let it alter you." In Finch, John Finch's partner at the police station, Wyte, is slowly disintegrating. Having been colonized by a strange fungal weapon, he's been forever transformed and is trying with limited success to live day-to-day in a kind of growing horror and denial. Finch and Wyte have a friendship that goes back twenty years, so Finch stands by Wyte even as he's shunned by the other detectives. To my mind, “Forget Yourself" is about this transformation, the “claw" lifting up your head belonging to the gray cap who is Wyte's direct boss. Of course, to the half-human Partials, who have embraced the occupation, Wyte's transformation is a “miracle" and any advice they'd give to Wyte would be to “let it alter you." The “sting" is Wyte's initial contact with the fungus, when it infiltrated him. The rain freezing, the flaming birds, the hideous matter (probably a reference to C.S. Lewis), are all the symptoms of what Wyte's condition is doing to him. “Sealine" is a deeply strange song in the best possible sense. I love the way Steve Kilbey's lyrics are surreal and open to interpretation and yet grounded in concrete images. “Sealine" is Wyte's theme song because I find in it intertwined human and alien qualities.

Spoon  "Everything Hits at Once"  from Girls Can Tell 

Spoon's genius is often about coiled percussion and crafting songs where the words and guitar sound circle back in on themselves, returning to the same place only for the listener to find that that place has changed forever. In my novel, John Finch has a complicated relationship with his girlfriend Sintra, because it's so simple: to protect themselves from the dangers of the city, they don't share personal information. Their primary connection is through sleeping together. Finch doesn't even known where she lives. This creates strife because Finch has fallen for her and wants more connection. Yet more connection will probably damage that relationship. This is all taking place as Finch is under incredible external pressure: he has to solve an impossible murder case for his gray cap masters, yet if he does solve it, the rebels will kill him. It's in that context that Spoon's lyrics resonated with me: “Don't say a word./The last one's still stinging./Back of my mind, I feel that phone ringing./And there is no way back from this./Everything hits at once." In my mind, what Spoon means as personal to a relationship is much more in the world of Finch. It's about Finch and Sintra, but also about details of his case and his inability to talk to anyone about it without endangering them and himself—“everything hits at once." “There's no way back from this" also nicely echoes Magnolia Electric Co.'s “Almost no one makes it out."

Songs: Ohia "The Body Burned Away"  from  Ghost Tropic 

In Ambergris at the time of Finch, the conquering gray caps have so altered the very air that the dead don't last very long. Within 24 hours, invisible spores turn them into beds of mushrooms, and then into more spores that drift away on the wind. (Finch has to actually use a preserving powder on his murder victims to make sure they don't disintegrate into nothing.) If you see a large human-sized stain on the pavement, it's probably where a body fell. This is another way in which the gray caps eat away at the city's past, obliterating it by removing all trace of those who once lived there. “The Body Burned Away"—more genius from Molina—has a definite requiem feel, and also makes me think of the body cleansing ritual my wife, who is Jewish, participates in when members of her synagogue pass on. “Death as it shook you/you gave it a fool's look.../I once had all the words./I forgot all the words." And: “We began to burn away/The body burns away." It's the music playing when Finch and Wyte encounter a body on the street while trying to track down a spy—a way of giving back dignity to the dead. It's also the silent song the dead are singing as they are broken down into spores and lifted away by the wind.

Afghan Whigs   "Congregation"  from Congregation

One of my favorite sneer-rock outfits, the Afghan Whigs, especially on Congregation and Gentlemen, did more for white guy relationship angst, bravado, and ruthless vulnerability than any other band of their time. It wasn't exactly pretty, but, infused with Motown influence and alt-rock riffs, it had real power and swagger. Scorched-earth guitars and the way they spiral to ever-greater crescendoes made me put “Congregation" on the playlist. There's a scene in the novel where John Finch has been ordered to meet with his gray cap boss in the station after work that includes this passage: “Waiting this way, helpless, his vision became apocalyptic, false. In his mind, mortar fire rained down on the city. Artillery belched out a retort. Blasted into walls, sending up gouts of stone and flame. The war raged on, unnoticed by most. He was an agent of neither side. Just in it for himself." Although Dulli is singing about anguished relationships, the music for me reflects what's going on inside of John Finch's head as he waits for this possibly fatal meeting with his superior: frustrated, furious, the external landscape of the city indistinguishable from the torment in his head. He wants to blow things up, wants to be in control in a way that overcompensates for his powerlessness, but he knows he can't be. Even as “Congregation" spirals out of control, it's trapped, the music eventually spiralling back down because it can't, ultimately, escape. For Dulli it might be a relationship. For Finch, it's everything. For a different reason than Dulli, Finch is thinking, “I'm gonna turn on you before you can turn on me.../And walk a mile into this web of my conspiracy.../I'm in a hole/but I don't feel the safety net."

Muse " Knights of Cydonia" (crazy town live version from their site) from Live Radio

At their cheesy worst (best?) Muse can sound like Radiohead pretending to be a mix of Rhapsody and Mannheim Steamroller, with a dash of Queen thrown in. At their true best, they use excess like the Decadents used it—to get to a place no one else would ever even have thought of, not caring if their reach exceeds their grasp. The crazy live version of “Knights of Cydonia" on the band's website captures these qualities best, with its galloping pace and falsetto chorus. It's like Night on Bald Mountain and Ride of the Valkyries on glamrock acid. Every writer needs a healthy dose of caffeine or an adrenalin rush to carry them over those periods of fatigue that sets in while writing a novel. This crescendo of camp insanity served that purpose for me while working on Finch. More specifically, “Knights of Cydonia" provided the direct, no-nonsense fuel for scenes later in the novel where John Finch, tired of the constraints placed on him, decides to take matters into his own hands: “No one's going to take me alive./The time has come to make things right./You and I must fight for our rights./You and I must fight to survive." (The surreal gunslinger's video made for the song is played for absurd laughs, but in some of the images and juxtapositions achieve a rough genius that helped with the texture of a couple of scenes in my novel.)

The Black Heart Procession  “It's a Crime I Never Told You About the Diamonds in Your Eyes"  from 2

This song from one of my favorite bands has a rollicking tune to it, supplied by a drunken piano and drums—a kind of stagger, to my ear, evocative of being out late at night having had too much to drink, everything around you both hyper-real and blurred. There's darkness here, offset by shiny lights in the distance. The song's perhaps falsely hopeful, tinged with the desperate, as the singer regrets not telling his lover what he felt, while engaging in daydreams that are romantic but suspect: “And maybe someday we will be/Away with the wind we'll go/By the sea we'll float/And away with the wind we'll go/A million miles away/And you'll say maybe someday we will be/And you'll say please please/Don't tear your heart from me." These sentiments correspond to a scene in which John Finch's girlfriend Sintra takes him to a blackmarket party at night. He's had one of the roughest days of his life, and he's suspicious of her offer—he's afraid she's leading him into a trap—but as an expression of trust, he follows her. Night in Ambergris is dangerous if awe-inspiring. Shoals of iridescent emerald spores pulse and swoop across the sky, some composed of tiny nano-cameras reporting back to the gray caps. Because of curfews, parties are forbidden, but held anyway in the basements of abandoned buildings. They're traveling through a landscape of stunning fungal beauty in the sky and the shadows of crumbling, burnt ruins all around, people stumbling past in the grip of hallucinogenic mushrooms that allow them to live in their memories rather than the present. Finch is now finally demanding to know more about Sintra—“Something that makes you more real"—and she's resisting, telling him at one point, “You don't really want to know. There's nothing I can tell you that will help you more than what's already in your head." And, in a sense, Finch already knows the moment has moved past them, and that knowing more about her will only unmoor him by displacing his idealized image of her. In a similar way, the narrator of “It's a Crime I Never Told You About the Diamonds in Your Eyes" seems to have an idealized version of what happened in the past and what is going to happen in the future—the song has no real present. For Finch, that whole transition from apartment to party is one of the most important parts of the novel—getting right the mix of hope, exuberance at being out in the night, and truths about their relationship. For a long time, as I was writing and rewriting this very difficult scene, I played this song over and over.

Eleni Karaindrou & Kim Kashkashian  "Ulysses' Theme: Lento-Largo" from Soundtrack to Ulysses' Gaze 

Although I'm choosing “Ulysses' Theme: Lento-Largo" as my track from this CD soundtrack for the movie Ulysses' Gaze by the great Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, it functions as one component of what's meant as one continuous piece of music. I seeded the various tracks throughout my playlist to provide a kind of continually returning motif or musical theme. What you might call “neo classical," this melancholy and utterly beautiful music, with its violins viola, oboe, accordion, and its mood of continual seeking for something that will never be found created useful continuity between Shriek: An Afterword and Finch. In the movie, which is set in Eastern Europe around the fall of the Soviet Union, there's an incredible scene in which an enormous white stone head of Lenin travels down a river on a barge, while farmers and the like walk to the banks to watch it languidly move downstream. It's one of the most compelling images of the fall of an empire that I've ever seen, and I used it in Shriek—the great marble head of the despotic ruler/opera composer Voss Bender similarly travels down the River Moth as a sign of the end of an era. I discovered the music while writing Shriek, but continued to listen to it while writing Finch. Whereas in Shriek it denoted the end of an era, in Finch it serves almost as danger music promising a new era to come—one that will be strange and incomprehensible to the residents of the city. It also serves as a kind of ongoing musical brainscan of Finch's mind. It's the sound I imagine his neurons make firing, because he has the history of the city in his head—when he travels from neighborhood to neighborhood, he sees not just the fire-damage, the bombed out buildings, the human remains, the spent shells. He sees these places the way they were before the occupation. The music, then, slowly travels through the half-destroyed, destitute Ambergris and as it moves through the streets it reveals the past of those places. Rubble reconstructs itself into a cafe. Burnt wooden beams resurrect into the facade for a theater. This empty space overgrown with yellow grass and bullet casings is again a farmer's market. I imagine this is how it must be for anyone who still lives in a place once grand now brought low.

Murder by Death “That Crown Don't Make You a Prince" from Who Will Survive and What Will Become of Them?

Although songs like “That Crown Don't Make You a Prince," “Fuego!", “Killbot 2000," and “A Master's in Reverse Psychology" were on my playlist, I'd also bought all of Murder by Death's individual CDs so I could listen to them as I worked on Finch. To me, they epitomized the qualities I needed: a rough energy that seemed like misdirection because a precision and complexity fueled that energy—and a kind of outlaw Americana rock feel that, as my friend Matt Staggs put it, makes Murder by Death sound sometimes like “a jam session between Tom Waits, Kronos Quartet, and Sergio Leone." The texture of the songs had the kind of haunting, almost hyper-real feel I wanted, too, and I liked the way they worked in cello, violin, and piano. Some songs, like “Pillar of Salt," reminded me of the plight of characters like Wyte: “I made a deal/To get us out of this place/But I am falling apart/With each step I take/And as the pieces fall/I count them all."But, in the latter stages of working on Finch, as I felt my way toward the end, and realized the kinds of sacrifices that might entail for John Finch, I began to see Murder by Death's music in another way. Murder by Death began entering into a strange sort of dialogue with Eleni Karaindrou & Kim Kashkashian's Ulysses' Gaze soundtrack. If the Ulysses' compositions formed a wave flooding Ambergris with memories of its history from one side, then Murder by Death was a wave coming in from the other—populating the city with stories of beautiful losers, rogues, and ordinary people caught up in desperate situations. In the tension between both, I had the outline of the city and intimate portrayals of those who lived in it. On one level, this is nonsense, of course. This music had nothing to do with Ambergris, how could it?, and yet for me, spending day after day doing nothing but living in the world of the novel, it became real to me in ways that, as a particular piece played—as I wrote in a coffee shop or at home or jotting notes while hiking, totally lost in the words—left me with a lump in my throat or a moment of rising epiphany and euphoria, the music bringing forth not just idea after idea, but an ever-clearer picture of both John Finch and his world.

Jeff VanderMeer and Finch links:

the author's website
the book's website
the book's soundtrack album by Murder By Death
the author's Wikipedia entry
excerpt from the book (PDF link)

Bibliophile Stalker review
Bookslut review
BSCreview review
A Crotchety Old Fan review
Flames Rising review
J.M. McDermott's Blog review
Lunch review
MentatJack review
My Ghetto review
OF Blog of the Fallen review
Punktalk review
Vaguely Borgesian review

Clarkesworld Magazine interview with the author
Literary Kicks interview with the author
Prima Storia interview with the author
RevolutionSF interview with the author

also at Largehearted Boy:

other Book Notes submissions (authors create playlists for their book)

online "best of 2009" book lists
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
guest book reviews
musician/author interviews
52 Books, 52 Weeks

tags: books music literature fiction fantasy

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Shorties (Nurses, Essential New York Albums, and more)

Paste profiles Nurses.

The result is a whimsical collision of memorable melodies (such as the eminently hummable “Caterpillar Playground” and “Lita”) and eccentric, cut-and-paste arrangements dominated by a whistled bridges, treated pianos and rattletrap percussion. Along with Chapman’s decidedly Brian Wilsonesque vocals and guitar work, it’s a charming combination that—again, like the band’s hulking white van—doesn’t seem much concerned with where it’s headed next.

Time Out New York has musicians name their "essential New York album."

AfterEllen interviews Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara.

Reuters reports that President Obama's brother, Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, has launched a novel in China.

Ndesandjo's book details how the protagonist, David, made an improbable journey to China in 2001 just after the September 11th attacks, inspired by his "growing love for a beautiful Chinese woman and a young orphan", and reflects Ndesandjo's own marriage to a young Chinese woman and his charitable work for Chinese orphans.

At the Guardian, Howard Jacobson lists the top 10 novels of sexual jealousy.

The Vancouver Sun examines how independent artists are harnessing new media to promote their music.

Paper Cuts shares a music playlist by author Adam Langer.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reviews Nick Hornby's latest novel, Juliet, Naked.

PopMatters interviews author Nicholson Baker.

Neatorama lists 13 examples of literature in song.

On sale at Amazon MP3: the 12-track Tori Amos album Little Earthquakes for $1.99.

Jeff VanderMeer talks to the San Antonio Current about the soundtrack Murder By Death produced for his novel, Finch.

The San Antonio Current also reviews the book.

All Scandinavian previews Finnish musical artists to watch in 2010.

Drowned in Sound reviews the recent Feelies reissues, Crazy Rhythms and The Good Earth.

At All Things Considered's blog, Bob Boilen defends the indie rock bias of the NPR program.

The Herald Scotland profiles former Suede frontman Brett Anderson.

“My pop instincts are still there,” he sighs. “I just wish I could get rid of them.” Huh? The former Suede singer is clearly a very different man from the one who burst onto the indie scene in 1992, singing of chemically-fuelled sex in council houses and admitting that he wanted to “make his mark on pop history”. Ask him now what he hopes to achieve with his new solo record, Slow Attack, and he replies, “Absolutely nothing. I don’t have the same sets of goals I once had.”

The Aquarian interviews Peter Moren of Peter Bjorn And John.

Spinner lists the top 10 music cliches.

MLive.com offers a primer on the music of the Mountain Goats.

Flavorpill examines the trend of "writers who sing and singers who write."

WHYY's Fresh Air interviews Mary Karr about her new memoir, Lit, and also excerpts from the book.

They Might Be Giants visit The Current studio for an interview and live performance.

Win Peter & Max: A Fables Novel and Fables: The Deluxe Edition, Book One in this week's Largehearted Boy contest.

Follow me on Twitter for links that don't make the daily "Shorties" columns.

also at Largehearted Boy:

online "best of 2009" book lists
best of the decade (2000-2009) online music lists

daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists

tags: music books popculture indie

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Daily Downloads (Cold Cave, Molina and Johnson, and more)

Today's free and legal mp3 downloads:

Coconut and the Duke: "Walcott (Vampire Weekend cover)" [mp3]
other Coconut and the Duke posts at Largehearted Boy

Cold Cave: "Theme from Tomorrowland" [mp3] from Love Comes Close (remastered)
other Cold Cave posts at Largehearted Boy

Daniel, Fred, & Julie: "Runner" [mp3] from Daniel, Fred & Julie (out December 1st)
other Daniel, Fred, & Julie posts at Largehearted Boy

Molina and Johnson: "Almost Let You In" [mp3] from Molina and Johnson
other Molina and Johnson posts at Largehearted Boy

Regrets & Brunettes: "Post Punk" [mp3] from At Night You Love Me (out December 1st)
Regrets & Brunettes: "Tough Love" [mp3] from At Night You Love Me (out December 1st)
Regrets & Brunettes: "Uh-Oh" [mp3] from At Night You Love Me (out December 1st)
other Regrets & Brunettes posts at Largehearted Boy

The Sun: "So Long, Sundays" [mp3] from Don’t Let Your Baby Have all the Fun (out November 10th)
The Sun: "In Perfect Time" [mp3] from Don’t Let Your Baby Have all the Fun (out November 10th)
other Sun posts at Largehearted Boy

Free and legal mp3s of live performances at other websites:

The Monolators: 2009-10-27, Los Angeles (Abba covers set) [mp3]
other Monolators posts at Largehearted Boy

Pokey LaFarge & The South City Three: Daytrotter session [mp3]
other Pokey LaFarge posts at Largehearted Boy

The Twilight Sad: LaundroMatinee session [mp3]
other Twilight Sad posts at Largehearted Boy

also at Largehearted Boy:

previous free and legal mp3 daily downloads
2009 Bonnaroo downloads
other music festival downloads

Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and album streams from weekly CD releases)
weekly CD release lists

tags: music download indie mp3

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November 3, 2009

Try It Before You Buy It (November 3rd, 2009 Music Releases)

Try It Before You Buy It features free and legal mp3 downloads and full album streams from this week's music releases:

Alan Cohen Experience: Eat the Peace
“Ranger Stranger” [mp3]

Andy Caldwell: Obsession
full album stream

Athlete: The Getaway EP
full album stream

Continue reading "Try It Before You Buy It (November 3rd, 2009 Music Releases)"

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November 3rd Updates to the Best of the Decade (2000-2009) Online Music Lists

Today's additions to the list of the online best of the decade (2000-2009) music lists:

Filles Sourires - Frans_S (best French albums)
Filles Sourires - Jan-Willem (best French albums)
Filles Sourires - Maks (best French albums)
Filles Sourires - Mordi (best French albums)
F**k Yeah, Go Team! (best albums)
Gimme Tinnitus (best songs 2000-2004)
Music for Kids Who Can't Read Good (albums of the decade)
We Are the Music Makers (best albums)

also at Largehearted Boy:

daily updates to the list

tags: music cd list lists indie 2000s albums

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Note Books - Lisa Berlin (Jookabox)

The Note Books series features musicians discussing their literary side. Previous contributors have included John Darnielle, John Vanderslice, and others.

Jookabox (formerly Grampall Jookabox) releases its third album, Dead Zone Boys today, a zombie-love rock opera.

In her own words, here is the Note Books entry from Jookabox's Lisa Berlin:

This same time last year I started reading about this magical place where this magical family had a magical farm. "I'm going to do this one day," I said the whole time I was reading, and the next spring I planted strawberries and lavender as a start and I think I'll save up some nerve and money for chickens. The book is called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and it's about what I think I'd like to do one day when money stops leaking out of my pockets and real land collects underneath my real house. Right?

It's the story of one year - on a large, hilly piece of land in Virginia where the author's family of four chore-lovers planted and raised the only food they'd eat for 365 days (with occasional locally produced supplements like flour and lamb - though they did raise their own poultry). Everything was organic and chemical free, a daily commitment of all four of them to weed and trim and water together. They took a lot of walks around it all, keeping tabs on its health by peeking under leaves and scooping up little handfuls of soil to smell, observing the bird-to-insect ratios and outsmarting the deer and rabbits. The work began well before the first meal of homegrown produce was served marking the beginning of the experiment. They had to plot out the plots and cook up some good composts, order their weird heirloom seeds from reputable internet stores and gather a lot of advice from books and neighbors. The first things to green up and arrive, though, were the asparagus. And if you make it to that part of the book, you will probably finish it. I don't think I'm dull or anything, but I did have a really good time reading about asparagus. She sells you right here on why homegrown food is better than grocery store food. It tastes better right when you pick it and is way less icky than the sticky, trucky, rubber-banded stuff with countries on its stickers that you know it'd cost an assload to mail a banana to. I'd heard eating local honey helps cure pollen allergies, but I hadn't put together that the French survive into glamorous old age smoking cigs and drinking wine and eating rich foods because they don't import everything they eat raw nor would they stuff their dainty desserts with freak corn and fake sugar. You're not really a snob when you've got dirt under your nails, and I'm not thinking about having perfect health until I'm 115, but I would love an occasion to swipe a grape from a vine in my 80's wearing tattered velvet and tell a toddler it's my eye.

My grandmother's place was on a large mountain in West Virginia and as kids we'd visit a lot. They had a small vegetable garden, and some vines, fruit trees, and berry bushes. And this stuff was sprinkled here and there around the edges of giant woods and the big, mossy boulders we'd play on. So we'd play and then we'd pick snacks and go back to playing. Sometimes a berry's sour, and sometimes it's sweet. We'd accidentally eat a bug now and then or get stung by a bee pollinating a flower (not quite yellow jackets drinking cokes). There were poisonous snakes and happy dogs and frogs called "Peep-a-Deeps." Up top of the property was a huge cow pasture where we'd find bleached cow bones and terrorize ghosts dressed up in ground pine. Everything was bigger than us, the smaller things outnumbered us. So when we ate (and it wasn't always freshly picked, sometimes it was from the nearest grocery store more than a few miles down the highway) we did feel somewhat cunning to have got it, and yet humble to feel it all still growing outside in the dark. One time I saw a pig being butchered, not walking into a "sterile" factory, but walking down a dirt path at Carriage Hill Farm in Ohio. They were having a little festival and had slaughtered a pig which was hanging in a tree curing or something, split right down the middle like a Frances Bacon painting in the shade. I stared and felt strange and grossed out, but a few hours later I poured a bowl of ham and bean soup (presumably a different pig) and decided I still enjoyed it. And that became a little goal of mine, a challenge I'd like to do, if I can raise an animal, watch its birth and one day kill it all by myself, and eat, well I suppose I'm without question truly omnivorous. These things are probably what made this book make sense to me, my deep-down longing for a closer connection to my food. The tit, not the bottle, so to speak.

I'm not surprised to see the book on people's shelves when I stay in their living rooms on tour. More and more I see seedlings in windowsills and beans crawling up lattices by their porches where there used to be cigarette butts. It's getting to be pretty chic to pull a ceramic bowl of odd-shaped tomatoes into the kitchen to snack on. It's not like Subway was the first to discover how great it feels to "Eat Fresh," but it seems like people are starting to get the sense that there's fresher than that. And any little pad of soil, even a pot next to a futon, can grow really fresh food. To eat. Just like that.

Jookabox links and free and legal mp3s:

Jookabox MySpace page
Jookabox page at Asthmatic Kitty

"Phantom Don't Go" [mp3] from Dead Zone Boys
"You Cried Me" [mp3] from http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002PAD2N0/ref=nosim/largeheartedb-20
"The One Thing" [mp3] from Ropechain
"The Girl Ain't Preggers" [mp3] from Ropechain

also at Largehearted Boy:

Previous Note Books submissions (musicians discuss literature)
Book Notes (authors create playlists for their book)
guest book reviews
musician/author interviews
Soundtracked (directors discuss their film's soundtracks)
52 Books, 52 Weeks

tags: books music literature fiction indie

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