I'm back.
Thank you so very much to the guestbloggers who filled in when I was away, and to all those who shared your comments. Thanks to Adrian for making it possible. Thanks to Monica (whose mystery was solved), to Howard (read the comments for a crackin' Loveless argument), Liz (I wish her well as she tramps across the Continent), Sasha (amazing eloquence, and UB40 with bite [!]), Julian (the Jim Giuffre 3 track is like a sad, strong, hot, long drink), Dan (yes, he would be pink), Brian (buy his new EP), Benjamen (read the comments for a discussion on the ethics of murderers' music, and, well, politics), and Tuwa (succulent, blue sounds). I hope it was as much fun for you as it was for me to read your pieces, listen to your selections, and then to see what others had to say. You must all start a group-blog called Music for Awesome People Who Rule.
Thankyou also to those places, like Fluxblog, who pointed people our way. Matthew kindly called my vacation "well-earned." It probably wasn't. :) But you must not miss his MTV VMA play-by-play, if only for this cogent observation: "The guy from Yellowcard looks like Alan Cumming playing Eminem in a tv movie." Let me tell you, the "guy from Yellowcard" was a stain upon my MuchMusic-watching hospital stay.
There's music below, once we make it through the long grasses of the opening monologue --
So it was a very pleasant holiday, all staring at a lake and listening to music (Glenn Gould! Kanye West!), and reading thrown in for fun. Started on Saturday with a drive to Shawinigan, patronage capital of Quebec. Kosmogonia is a swanky outdoor rotating-stage circus thing, where acrobats fight creaky flamethrowing "oiseaux-tonnerre". It was extremely earnest, quite capably performed, and burdened with a most convoluted, synchronistic plot. ("The Alphas choose their Omega babes this time! But the thunder-bird is angry! So they fight! And he turns into the Sun! And steals some girl to be the Moon! And then Time comes and he has giant fingernails! So they lift-off on an ancient greek rocket-ship!") What I found most interesting about it was the idea of Kosmogonia as Canadian tourist attraction. Contrary to your expectation for such things, it wasn't the content that felt Canadian (it was a weird Xena-fantasy pastiche, albeit with aboriginal design flourishes) - but the form. This is the sort of theatrical, high-concept circus that Cirque du Soleil brought to worldwide prominence, and I'm sure that most of the performers were trained in places like Montreal.
The next morning, visited Noah's Ark, which brought us to Shawinigan in the first place. It was really an outstanding collection of sculpture - thoughtful, entertaining, and immediately compelling. An extraordinary variety - from Picasso to Nick Park, - but it never felt pretentious; always whimsical, clever and inspiring.
And then to an auberge on Lac à la Loutre. En route, the roof-rack blew off, we blew a tire, found the spare was flat, and I closed my dad's hand in the car door, but all emerged (mostly) unscathed and spent the next seven days in deep relaxation. Since the shower relied on lake water (and I still nurse a lake-infected wound), I didn't wash. But smelly people can still enjoy a holiday, and since coming home I've rectified the situation.
I read some books:
Mordecai Richler - The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Sean's attempt to catch up on the classics continues (see also this summer's forays into Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Nathaniel West and Flann O'Brien). Richler is (was) the grande old father of contemporary canadian fiction, and it was a pleasure to dip a toe into his early 20th c Montreal. Very peculiar to be reading a book where much of the action takes place steps away from my old house. I was taken by the characters, by the scruffy energy of the book, but ultimately... I don't know. The ending sort of slipped into a grey lake and I didn't quite care. Richler's prose was surprisingly dull; like a masculine Atwood, utilitarian and without panache.
Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda. Carey writes wonderfully. His books are dense with charm and detail, like bits of seaglass pressed into a wall. I enjoyed Illywhacker very much, up until the dreary end, and Oscar and Lucinda suffers from the same flaw. Carey takes such care to build up his structures, to erect them for a shining moment in the middle - but then he knocks them right down, always just a little too soon, before we will quite have a sense of what we lost. Still, it's an excellent and surprising love story: gambling, god and Australia.
Tove Jansson - Moominland in November, The Exploits of Moominpappa and Moominpappa at Sea. As memory-jog for the upcoming trip to Finland, I grabbed three of the melancholiest moomin books (couldn't find Moominland in Midwinter). And it's reaffirmed: Jansson was a treasure. These books are so filled with whimsy, sadness and love - like the wisest stories that a child might ever imagine, or the best things an adult might ever dream. For those of you who don't know them, you must. Go find Finn Family Moomintroll immediately. Thank-you.
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Haddon's "murder mystery" has scaled the bestseller charts, and it's easy to see why. The writing is light, intelligent, and full of humour - better still, the autistic protagonist is totally arresting. We never sit too long on a particular topic - prime numbers, red-car-counting or outer-space - and instead skip about, catching only snatches of what's 'truly' going on, the blunt reality of Christophers mum and dad. Unfortunately (sense a trend, here?), the ending is awful. Everything is wrapped up in a neat few pages; the resonances are silenced; and the lasting impression one of mere fondness, not depth.
James Joyce - Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. I like Dubliners very much, and hated most of Ulysses. I hoped Portrait would be a middle ground, but - sigh. My frustration with Joyce is in his indulgence. He is an astonishingly gifted writer; he plays with language in ways I can only envy-
He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. he was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and velied grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures, of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.But as a novel - as a novel to enjoy, to sink into, to draw personal meaning from - Portrait (like Ulysses) sucks. There's much to admire formally, much to think about (and oh yes, many connections to be drawn). But I feel such frustration, dredging through the 15 pages of the preacher's sermon. Who cares? And turning the final page, that's the foremost thought. What of this lingers in me - in my heart and not my mind? Why wouldn't he stop fucking around!?
John Le Carré - Absolute Friends. This is the best novel LeCarré's written in years. And - woosh! - the man's found some new fount of energy. The whole book is electric, its characters positively brimming with life. Munby is a delight - kind, whole-hog, smart and certainly as naive as his beret-wearing pal, Sasha. We travel from post-raj Pakistan to Berlin's radical 1960s, then through the fog of the Cold War and into today's harsh, clear air. It's a dazzling, exciting, likable book, and one that punches you in the gut just as it's wrapping up. It's a cruel world, this post-911 place. If only the ending weren't quite so clumsy, politically. LeCarré commits - for the Left - the very same sin that his characters criticize in the Right: he portrays all of the baddies as a single, colluding group. That's blind, partisan foolishness.
and I'm mid-way through Jose Saramago's Stone Raft, which is very good. But has too many commas. (Like me!)
Why aren't there bookblogs, like mp3blogs, with thumbnail reviews and two-page chunks so we can sample a bit? Someone start one.
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okay!
The new Tom Waits has leaked, and it's something very interesting, but you won't hear anything here because no songs on Real Gone are truly "Singapore"-level fantastic, and you're all gonna listen to them anyway. I'm tempted to post something more from that fresh Wolf Parade EP, though, because it is rad.
irregardless, you should listen to these:
Dinah Washington and Brook Benton - "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)". Tuwa wanted to include this in yesterday's post, but it just didn't fit. Since we don't want to let grand things go to waste, however, here we are. Oh my - listen to (feel) the guitarline, the highglossy nudges of strings. And oh oh oh of course there's Washington and Benton, playing and smiling. Cherries and milk chocolate, a first date that's full of nonsense. It rains umbrellas, there's chain-gang on the board-walk, the philharmonic is wearing victorian swimming duds. Through it all they dance dance dance, their shoes squeak, and (fade out) the night won't ever end. no. (This was recored in 1963. Dinah died three years later. Sleeping pills.) [buy]
Antony - "The Lake [live]". A - the - lake. Antony's voice trembles like water ripples. The piano starts bare as ice, then thaws into a deep, full blue. He got his start in NYC's afterhours cabarets and you can hear it here - Vincent Gallo's sipping a chilled drink, Devendra Banhart's sober and blackeyed. The song is so wobbly and yet so strong - one moment erect, then suddenly tipping leaning swooning over that darkbright still-lapping lake. It's peculiar that such a thing can be so powerful; that the artifice fades in the flow of the song, that its affectations fade under the dilute light.
Antony does interesting, arty things - he's in Buscemi's Animal Factory (anyone seen it?), and sings on Lou Reed's The Raven. I heard this on Banhart's psychfolk Golden Apples of the Sun comp, which is basically impossible to find... But you can buy "The Lake" on the Live at Saint Olave's split. Antony "and the Johnsons" also have an EP due coming out in November, and an LP due next year, both on Secretly Canadian.
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Music is a Virus is a fine, fresh mp3blog (yes, another!), that runs the gamut from Herbie Hancock to My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. And, reminiscent of Mewsic, it's got a nice Democratic sheen.
Pregnant Without Intercourse is Ottawa-based (!) and points to fine local acts such as the Hi Lo Trons (heard here last week), and Jim Bryson.
It seems Julie Doiron has a new album coming out in September called Goodnight Nobody. I haven't heard it yet, but there are two mp3 samples here, and both are wonderful. Herman Dune is the backing band. I am very excited.
Finally (hoo boy this post is long), the sidebar now was a little addition to show me just how much lifetimes have been spent, writing here. Said the Gramophone is currently words long.