the return of my book reviews was a smash hit. this is the rushed, sophomoric slump post. we got a new producer and everything. 6.2 on pitchfork ass post.
Love by Hanne Orstavik - when i sent christian utigard some books, he sent me some uk-published translations of norwegian books, including this one. it's a a split narrative following a single mother and 9 year old son, taking place over the course of about six hours. it's bleak - everyone has problems, it's cold and icy, etc. the split in perspective happens randomly, paragraph by paragraph, introducing some intentional ambiguity at times, i think to create additional tension. felt interested in the internal thoughts of each character, both seeming very realistic - a mix of self-doubt, intrusive thoughts, strange memories, speculations. i don't remember reading many books with a child protagonist that feels so relatable and realistic. felt like there was an artificial amount of thriller-adjacent tension which was unneeded, but i enjoyed most the daily artifacts of life in a small norwegian village, like people eating liver paste on bread and watching music videos on tv. didn't predict the ending and thought it was just good, as an ending. but overall felt like the book went slowly, in spite of its short length. curious about orstavik's first novel (this one seems more acclaimed and is probably, to me, based on this and what i know about myself, the worse of the two).
Zero by Gine Cornelia Pederson (Nordisk books) - bought this without knowing anything about it because i liked a different book in translation from nordisk. published originally in 2013, translated in 2018. this is a book-lengthed poem, split into chapters, about a teenager/young woman slowly getting into drugs and going clinically insane. started out slow and melodramatic but then quickly pivoted to ridiculous, slapstick/comedic, and very dark in a fun way that made me laugh out loud and share passages with others. reminds me of alt lit in a good way, but cranks up the action and is less self-referential, or something - leans into being fiction and not autofiction. i enjoyed the consistent emphasis on her being selfish, misanthropic, and uninterested in others in spite of much of the plot revolving around intense feelings of love and desire, often to great comedic effect. the poem form allows/encourages some moments of obscuring what's happening with more impressionistic/staccato lines especially toward the end, which i wasn't as interested in, but i 'got' it as an effect. thought i wouldn't like the end as it was happening, but then i did. would recommend; keep thinking of it as a 'romp.'
Modern Massacres by Timothy Willis Sanders (Publishing Genius) - i liked TWS's novel Matt Meets Vik and random stuff i've read online. this is a very short collection of mostly very short stories. most seem/appear autofictional and mostly focus on social anxiety; there's a big theme of overthinking and being distracted during interesting social situations. similar to Matt Meets Vik, I really like his tendency to emphasize the disconnect between what people think vs. what people say; several of these scenes made me laugh throughout the book. some of the stories do that fragmented/shuffled up cnf thing that doesn't appeal to me much, and it felt like the sequencing and content was imbalanced; i think most of the stories follow tws-like protagonists except one toward the end. felt like, because of its length, it could have fully committed to either just autofiction or a wider mix of perspectives. would have also enjoyed more/longer stories - i found all the stories compelling and enjoyed reading them. would vote for an elected official whose platform includes the publication of modern massacres 2.
I'm Not Hungry but I Could Eat by Christopher Gonzalez (sante fe writer's project): vaguely knew about this from online, bought it at a local shop. liked it a lot more than i expected to; i had assumed it would be mostly melodramatic 'normie' litfic kind of stuff, but i found it overall engaging and unpretentious. all the stories focus on being insecure and bisexual - some trauma-from-being-closeted/coming-out stories, some cynical 'love is hard to find' stories, some more 'plays-with-form' stories. i liked the emphasis on food and the straightforward narrative structure of most of the stories, but felt like some of the endings were 'mfa-style' with shoehorned in setups and at times relied on 'lazy' caricatures as an attempt at humor/levity. repeatedly thought that i would have enjoyed more long stories - i enjoyed 'inhabiting his world' and felt like he doesn't need the 'punchiness' of flash-lengthed stories to keep you interested. unrelated to the stories, i felt that the cover is terrible and looks like a bad cook book/chef memoir. also noticed all the blurbs try to make metaphors/similes comparing the stories to eating food, which feels embarrassing for chris.
Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass by Harold Gatty - a
nonfiction book from the 50s, i think, about 'pathfinding'. mix of
practical navigation tips (of varying levels of stupidity, such as
'follow your nose: cities smell like factories, and farms smell like cow
shit'), belligerently confident speculation (author is convinced that
people naturally walk in wide circles because of having differently
lengthed legs; no idea what is true explanation but i assume this isn't
the reason), complex math problems (calculating the day of the month
based on some tables you're supposed to memorize), and legitimately interesting history,
anthropology, biology (specifically the chapters about bird migration
patterns and how some pacific island nations navigated by stars, thinking of the sky in terms of a dome with bands of stars). skipped
some of the dumber-seeming passages. enjoyed various scientific fun
facts i've since forgotten. unsure i learned anything practical. biggest takeaway was
thinking of moon phases as they relate to the moon's spatial opposition to the
sun in the sky - a full moon rises as the sun sets, for example.
after experiencing minor petty twitter bullshit over a middling review on my blog, i stopped publishing book reviews. i felt like the petty twitter bullshit stirrer made me reassess the purpose of me writing book reviews, what role they could serve anybody, and whether my criticisms of any given book weren't just rooted in various biases. i spent some time learning, in a shallow way, ideas related to art and taste, quality, etc. i also talked with some people about the role of negative reviews in small press publishing, how there's little value in it in contrast to the millions of dollars invested in keeping small press books out of serious press to begin with -- someone puts out a book on a no-name press because they care about their art more, i believe, than someone who views publishing as a job, and their books as marketable products. i have nothing new to say about literary criticism or critique. i like reviewing and talking about books. i had mostly positive, personal feedback from people who read my more honest and open reviews of indie books. i have seen a fun trend in people i like writing single-paragraph reviews of books online (eg nathan, crow, and sebastian), on their blogs. i feel inspired by this and want to participate again. and, finally, if you don't like my review of your book, fuck you. just kidding.
Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist: this is from 1808 and apparently was a favorite of franz kafka, which is why i assume people know about it today and revere it, and why it was recommended to me. it's about a horse trader who suffers a petty slight from some baron or something, and his quest for justice escalates in exceedingly rambunctious and bizarre ways. wikipedia describes it as eerily modern for its time, which i agree with. it made me laugh in several places, although i felt like the ending dragged on a little bit. i liked the emphasis on absurdism by way of pettiness and honor. the writing is at times hard to follow, with lots of long, complex sentence structures and confusing references to people, eg lots of referring to someone as 'the latter' or 'the former' in a 200-word sentence, and using various titles like 'the elector' that had to be understood in context (as there are many electors). i celebrated kohlhaas's various victories and cursed his enemies. fun book.
The Mold Farmer by Rick Claypool (six gallery press): a purely sci-fi book that i felt was compelling for its severe bleakness and provocative imagery. i haven't read much sci-fi as an adult, but i enjoyed this, its emphasis on family obligation and futility, the conceit of the world post-alien invasion, and the non-contrived-seeming ways some people act, the ambiguity of their choices/actions. i felt the dream sequences and some aspects of the prose were distracting, but overall the book made me feel frustrated and depressed in a fun way.
What Are You? by Lindsay Lerman (clash): written to a sort of aggregation of men in the narrator's life as a condemnation of patriarchal values, sex, and relationships. a unique means, i felt, of communicating personal trauma and connecting it to broader patterns. i felt frustrated by what felt like a lack of direction/plot and a little confused on whether it should be understood as a novel or a collection of essays. i noticed a large number of cliched expressions, which surprised me, as there is otherwise an emphasis on style and philosophical expression. i think its strength is in its anger/indignation and how it collectively functions as a subjecting you, by the narrator's experience, to a sort of 'onslaught of bullshit' that is ruinous to life and depressingly common for all women. glad i read it.
Small Moods by Shane Kowalski (future tense): fun collection of mostly very short things. mostly reminded me of lydia davis in terms of style, but with some more 'fun' and absurdism. someone in an interview asked about the ellipses, and i think they contribute well to the tone, conveying 'madness' or being 'unhinged', which was effective when it happened and elevated the stories by emphasizing the speaker in a unique way. reminded me of the joy williamsian exclamation point and the bernhardian parentheses. i liked the stories most that didn't try to end on a clever pun or poetic turn, but i think for a different audience those are probably the best part of the stories. a few made me laugh out loud.
You can't betray your best friend and learn to sing at the same time by Kim Hiorthøy (nordisk books): something like 40 short stories/scenes and a few bleak drawings presented as a novel. emphasis on comical, farcical relationship things with an
antagonistic/misanthropic/stupid narrator. made me excited and giddy at
times and i sent pictures of the chapters to people. many of the 'chapter's made me laugh and feel validated about my own writing. felt impressed/interested that it's originally from like 2001 or 2003.
Yes by Thomas Bernhard: ok by bernhard standards. made me laugh in a couple very specific scenes, but mostly felt like the repetition wasn't as effective as in other books by him. the last fourth was the most exciting part, i felt, and included the best jokes. for example, the (unhinged) narrator randomly describes his library as 'the spider room' without any reason/context, and repeats it a few times - both effective and comical. i also liked the 'reveal'/explanation of the swiss couple at the end and the last few scenes in particular. it has an effective title for the book, which also made me laugh, learning its context. interested in reading more 'middle period' bernhard books.
The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata: recommended to me by troy. enjoyed it a lot and i think of the imagery/characters often. oddly split something like 30-70 between two protagonists who briefly overlap. great book about fucked up freaks doing weird, vaguely threatening shit and feeling sexually repressed. fits in the canon of books about a little creep acting weird and then revealing that they suffered some kind of trauma in their youth in the last quarter of the book. i liked the ending a lot and a lot of the dialogue, and the way that scenes and transitions are allowed to slowly develop - felt like it's presented with confidence, which appeals to me. never really knew what was going to happen next throughout the whole book, in spite of it not being a 'thriller.'
Woodcraft and Camping by 'Nessmuk': mostly a travelogue/collection of 'yarns' about bushcraft and camping from the late 1800s, written by a conservationist. includes a lot of practical (but in modernity impractical) advice/tips on camping, like how to make your own bugspray, cook certain kinds of bread, fishing, building a fire, and prepare shelter. mostly enjoyed the shittalky parts about lumberjacks (wasteful and dumb) and soft tourist-type campers. includes a very dated/racist but interesting discussion of getting into coffee on a trip to brazil. includes a good day-by-day travelogue of a trip through michigan in the deep woods. i think this author was a big influence on hemingway's outlook on the natural world and sport. made me excited about camping.
La Serenissima by Wallace Barker (gob pile): travel writing poems, mostly about continental europe. lots of repeated imagery of drinking aperol spritzes and seeing famous places i've never heard of. enjoyed the icelandic section and the montana camping sections most i think in spite of how short they are comparatively. some good humor and observations throughout. i think these are mostly technically sonnets and qualify as poems with line breaking that i don't understand. made me want to travel places again.
Easy Rider II: Sleezy Drivers by KKUURRTT and Tex (and Cavin and Brian Alan Ellis): split-perspective road novel with some cameos by cavin and brian. i liked the humor and emphasis on the physical experience of being on a long road trip with someone. enjoyed the sillier parts and the sort of meta-writing-world commentary (shout out colin winnette, who i think anyone read because of his soft skull book) and the comedic scenes at tourist traps. felt rushed toward the end - would have enjoyed it going on longer, maybe with a stronger character arc for the tex character, combating his insecurities. ends in a puff.
shithead laureate by homeless (clash): this is a book of his usual type of poem - the same recurring themes and
images, such as self-hatred/depression, fast food, homeless people
(which he refers to as 'housing-impaired', which i think is supposed to
be a joke, but feels weird in the context of his penname (and that he's
not, you know, homeless)) and stuff on the street, nostalgia for childhood, and being judgemental about people
who use social media. compared to his earlier poems, there's less emphasis on hope/beauty in
the mundane/broken and more bitterness about things. noticed here a reliance on convoluted, sometimes recursive metaphors/similes.
usually i found myself sort of skimming them for the imagery, which i
feel is the intended way to read them, but sometimes i'd actually trace
one out/pay attention and feel like the metaphor doesn't make any sense.
one that i remember is describing the sky as the color of a dead vacuum
cleaner - what color is your vacuum cleaner? does a
vacuum change color when it dies? there's also an
inexplicable poem about being on a boat made out of scabs, or something,
and jerking off onto a woman's feet, which made me laugh in its
nonsequiturness. i also want to say here, and this has nothing to do with homeless as an author, that this is possibly the worst typeset book i've seen. i'd be really mad if this were how my book ended up looking.
telapaphone by adam soldofsky (maudlin house): bought based on
randomly reading what felt like a compelling excerpt online which turns
out to be the first few pages. it's novella-length and goes by quick.
starts out with what felt most interesting, to me, as a herman
hesse-style portrait of a man's friendship with another man at art
school, a compelling scene of them presumably going to a baseball game
together, but it quickly moves into a sort of light sci-fi thriller
where the characters freaky friday into each other's bodies and
the (depressed, alcoholic) protagonist, pretending to be the more
successful friend (by occupying his body) comes to learn the guy's mixed
up in shady bullshit. there's a russian mobster and goons, there's some
quickly-resolved mystery stuff about figuring out what the mobster
wants, then everything is all fixed and smoothly cleaned up and
everyone's happy. my main complaint is how underdeveloped it all felt - felt like a 1st draft to get general plot points down and was left at
that. most characters stand around or seemingly disappear when it
doesn't serve the action, especially at the end.
islands in the stream
by ernest hemingway: didn't finish, but enjoyed reading ~1/3 of it and
would probably enjoy the rest but didn't feel compelled to keep going. i
liked the protracted scenes about fishing the most especially in
context of fatherhood, plus various scenes of dark comedy after his sons
die. felt like some of the style was overly affectational and would
have benefited from him writing more freely like in other parts of the
book. thought the mysterious romance of the past angle was uninteresting
and artificial. laughing at considering the ideal hemingway book one in
which some dudes go camping or fishing and don't talk about women ever,
which i think is what critics say is why he's bad.
the first collection of criticism by a living female rock critic
by jessica hopper: didn't finish, but enjoyed various parts. main
disappointment is how little criticism there is - it's mostly just a
collection of published stuff about music from various sites and
magazines, including short interviews, some personal essay stuff, and an
interesting article about indie bands getting commercial sync deals.
there are a few pieces specifically engaging with rock criticism, such
as misogyny in emo music, but mostly the interviews and reviews don't
seem particularly cohesive or engaging in terms of criticism. like,
there seemed to be very little of herself in the writing, mostly read
like stuff she wrote for a paycheck. not as in-your-face pot-stirring as
i'd expect based on the title and description. favorite part was the
profile of pedro the lion from 2009 with emphasis on his relationship
with religion.
the vacation by garth miró (expat): didn't finish. kind of wacky. lots of
exclamation points. has an emphasis on generically shittalking rich fat
people; the hero is an antihero drug addict who thinks he's better and
cooler than everyone. it feels weirdly inauthentic to me, kind of
contrived and repetitive with a frustrating back-and-forth pacing., some vague sci-fi thrill element in it. noticed a lot of noun compounding as a stylistic effect, like
'mind-fat.' when trying to think of an example of this i thought up
'poopstink', which i don't think is in the book but made me laugh. people (for various reasons) either publicly or in private compare it to body high, which i didn't like.
the morning star
by karl ove knausgaard (penguin): overall i liked it, and felt like it
lets his
many strengths shine, but in a lot of ways it felt like he was trying to
write it to be more of a polished, engaging standard litfic best seller
type novel. he's an excellent nature writer and emphasizes writing
about daily minutiae, specifically food, still, in the book, which is a
highlight for me. i felt kind of disappointed in what felt like a
cynically transparent attempt to shake off his autofictional baggage,
like
it could have been better if focused on just a few narrators, like the
book would be better as either closer to 300 pages or 1200
pages. i felt like the characters were more caricatures than real in a
lot of ways, although sometimes this leads to funny scenes/images, like
jostein cutting the line in the bathroom because he has to pee so bad
and him describing ejaculating as something like 'squirting out hot
juice'. i also felt like the attempts at creepy horror-y images and
twists at the end of chapters were kind of lame, and felt mostly at odds
with the larger theme of, i think, theological horror (i'm sure there's
a real/better term for this), which is the best part of the book (and
why i liked a time for everything so much, in part - making
angels terrifying in a sense, undermining the omnipotence of god with
emphasis on ritual and other autonomous, mystical beings). i felt like
the second half, which actually started to explore this theme instead of
allude to it, was more compelling. the last chapter (not the in-fiction
essay, but the last jostein chapter) reminded me of the haruki murakami
trick of characters entering mysterious worlds, although knowing how
much of a biblical scholar knausgaard is (and my lack of biblical
knowledge) i assume a lot of the mysteriousness is explained by the
external lore it builds on. i enjoyed the
essay at the end and the ruminations on life and death, in particular a
quote from a philosopher that says something to the effect of "for early
humans, everything was living - trees, rocks, water, houses, the air -
but for modern humans almost nothing is living - including our own
bodies, the idea of matter and space, etc."
the ax book by D. Cook: got as a present, along with an ax. didn't finish, but plan on going back to it sometime. some interesting history of the ax in america. diagrams and tips on cutting trees/logs/etc. interesting anecdotes about penknives. used it as a guide for cutting down a small tree. it was harder than i anticipated, but enjoyable.
the weather book by eric sloane: felt interesting in learning
about understanding the weather in a way that doesn't rely on reading
accuweather maps, which this book is billed as. i liked the
introduction, which emphasized connecting more with nature and the
outdoors and a brief overview of the science behind various folk wisdom
about the weather. ironically, the intro is dismissive of how boring
meteorology has become in terms of memorizing maps and equations, but
then i found most of the book just attempting to give the same kind of
overview, but the maps and diagrams are hand drawn and interesting.
learned a lot about identifying warm and cold fronts, how they work, the
different kinds of clouds and rain associated with them. enjoyed the
outdated emphasis on sailing and lightning rods being new. feel like i
need to reread it to better understand high and low pressure zones vs
warm and cold air zones. would enjoy reading more about understanding
the sky through direct observation, realized while reading i don't
confidently understand what a 'northerly' wind means, eg is it blowing
south to north or north to south. but overall enjoyed being able to
predict rain 12+ hours out based on observing the sky a few times.
Third World Magicks by Mike Kleine (inside the castle): i
enjoyed this book, comprising two very short stories/novellas (maybe
like 4k words total in the book?) connected by a couple-page fancy-word
soup. i felt like each story was interesting and engaging on its own -
one about music critics, one a sort of sci-fi farce on a mysterious
island. i liked the latter the most, though, and it made me laugh
several times. the emphasis on 'jobs' and, as i read it, arbitrariness in seeking purpose, was interesting and clever. i also liked the visual elements throughout the book.
The Novelist by
Jordan Castro (soft skull): fun, inventive, bernhardian, shittalky,
cathartic. i liked a lot of the imagery and the meta aspects of it, and
felt compelled by the seemless way he embedded the 'novel' into this
novel, showcasing his talent as a novelist in a sort of dual way. i
enjoyed the philosophical discussions, the humor, the daily life
minutiae, the use of semi-colons, and the descriptions of social media.
feels like a fun book to have written. made me laugh a lot. have enjoyed
thinking of comparing the sound of making coffee in my chemex to the
sound of a woman peeing, after reading.
i've been having a hard time feeling motivated to read books lately. here are reviews for the most recent books i've finished
Notes from a Wood-Paneled Basement by Alan Ten-Hoeve (Gob Pile): I've spoken with Alan a few times on Twitter, about writing and publishing mainly, but also life stuff. I bought the book without knowing anything about it, vaguely thinking it would be a story collection, but it's poetry, or that contemporary mix of poetry and then some longer pieces that don't look like poems. It is a very earnest, memoiry, sentimental collection that revolves around a few common themes/topics: memories from his own childhood (usually featuring his grandparents and/or divorced dad), memories from his current life with emphasis on his own children/being a dad, and nature/domestic haiku or short poems. I really like this approach and I think it's very well done, though I think my appreciation for it is very much based on being a dad myself and trying to engage with/live in/think about nature more. I really like the quiet moments of domestic life, and the contrast between the fucked up things he experiences as a kid and his experience as a dad (seems like a good dad btw). The pacing and sequencing is good, and I felt engaged by the characters and their dynamics from piece to piece. There are a few melodramatic moments/turns at the end of some pieces, which I get but didn't think were too necessary - kind of jarring in contrast with the otherwise straight forward narrative style. I found the pieces about the mailbox really engaging, funny, and endearing, while the haiku often felt a little out of place and the meditations on nature without the context of his family were to me the least interesting parts, but I understand them and why he wrote them, and I enjoyed some of them for what they are; I can't really comment on what makes good haiku or poems about nature. I also felt distracted by the line breaks often, with many lines being only a single word long. I feel like framing these pieces as poems with a lot of line breaks isn't really necessary in terms of their rhythm and imagery - would have enjoyed it more just as a collection of (often very short) prose, maybe like Potted Meat. I recommended this book to jerome spencer, who just had another kid, by saying it's "a very dadly book."
The Sun Still Shines on a Dog's Ass by Alan Good (Death of Print): alan is a nice guy, and i've really liked his nonfiction writing in the past (eg on the neutral spaces blog) and various stories online. this is a book of fiction and it follows alan's general aesthetic outlined in his previous book the war on xmas: all the stories are about kind of angry, down-and-out smartasses navigating personal/structural setbacks, and they all sort of hinge on satirizing/shittalking contemporary conservative politics/caricatures. most of the settings are in texas, missouri, maybe kansas - the american heartland - and involve shitty cops, religious freaks, pro-gun maniacs, racists, and other kinds of often uniquely american rightwing assholes. while reading, i felt like this was generally a cathartic experience for alan as a writer. the jokes often get pushed to the extreme, the world in these stories is a very extreme place, but the main characters are left in as much disbelief as the reader, usually -- slavery-themed chain restaurants, for example, but also guys doing horse semen protein shake pyramid schemes, doomsday preppers collecting guns and stuff, etc. i feel like in spite of the common tropes and characters, the stories are generally very interesting and propulsive, action-oriented without reading like a car chase, and alan isn't afraid to let things wind up in weird or unexpected places because of some dedication to realism or literary devices. for example, the titular last story is also probably my favorite, and involves a bank heist, and, spoilers, the plucky idiots who just kind of improvised the whole plan end up totally getting away with it. writing this kind of ending requires a special desire of not giving a fuck, of pursuing what would be the most interesting or unpredictable path, which i like and appreciate. the total fuckedness of some of the characters leads to cathartic moments - a guy destroying a bunch of cop cars with a forklift, for example - and dramatic irony, like the ending of the really long story about a guy who takes out a bunch of loans because he's in love. something alan does that i don't like as much is let big story beats enter and exit without much transition, sometimes making it feel like i missed something because one paragraph will end and the next will start with an in media res hook, which would probably benefit from more scene breaks or something. there's a lot of emphasis on humor, wordplay, self-referential asides and jokes from the main characters, which i enjoyed, but sometimes they don't shine as much as they could because the settings and themes are so consistently about social/political commentary, and the sense of humor/attitude is pretty much the same across protagonists. trying to think of why i liked this collection more than, say, something else that seems really based on topical culture/politics, is that alan doesn't try to impress you with twists or unexpected takeaways, but just lets the story be what it is. while everything hinges on some absurd caricature, it doesn't feel artificial in its construction. and while a lot of the writing emphasizes humor, often straight up jokes, the humor feels unpredictable and insane, less calculated and more experimental. i'd be curious to see how he'd approach writing something less pointedly about contemporary politics with this humor and approach to character. pretty good book overall imo.
Bad Poet by Brian Alan Ellis (House of Vlad): i bought this...two years ago? or longer? and i guess i never read it, or didn't finish it. i picked it up this week to give it a real read through since i like BAE and house of vlad and the cover on this bad boy a lot (and the author photo). i remember someone snitch tagged BAE about the cover in a tweet to roxane gay, which was funny (the cover is a riff on bad feminist) (bad poet's cover looks better imo, with the black background). it's 3 sections - poems, tweets, then more poems. i feel like the tweets section is basically just a poems section without line breaks or titles. everything in the book is basically the same kind of thing, which is sort of BAE's thing, which is a pop culture pun mixed with self-hatred - lots of "call me maybe" references, for example, and images of living in squalor, feeling alienated, etc. The same-iness of the book is its main detractor for me, because I actually like a lot of the images, jokes, and some of the puns, but each (very short) poem is limited to a single discrete image + pun, which makes them feel template-based or formulaic, and the onslaught of so many of them makes it hard for any one image or idea to really shine. i feel like the really innovative things he does get drowned out - would like to see more metalinguistic things like the *winks* line and some of the throwaway jokes used to build something bigger, badder, and weirder. was thinking about this book and its approach to poetry when i wrote this tweet, about tweets and poems (tweets as poems?): "a lot of (viral) tweets feel like (bad) poems - a unique image/experience packaged up in some cliche, artificial convention to signify membership of the medium. thinking of things like "obsessed with," "shout out to," "i hope the person who...is ok," "good morning to" etc." in the sense that the poems (and tweets) in this book are a merge of poem and tweet, always framing some image (a bar patron throwing up, not owning furniture, having a shitty flip phone, weird interactions with people, etc) with a formal framing device to designate it as a poem. kind of rambling here. basically i think he should have pushed himself to experiment more with this, even something as simple as merging like 5 small poems into one long poem, as all the pieces are very much the same kind of thing (and length). on rereading this review, i've said the same thing in maybe 3-4 different ways. something i do like a lot is his willingness to treat titles as their own (often unrelated) poem-like object (often the titles are the best part of the poem). i marked a couple poems that i really liked, but i don't have the book with me. i like the one about thinking about calling the cops on people.
this is a special expanded edition of my book reviews in which i review things that aren't quite books alongside books i've read, plus some bonus tracks (reviews of books i didn't finish and don't plan on finishing)
The Yellow Forklift, Notes on My Coworker Hank, My Mind is Not a Billboard, and Ketchup by Sam Pink (self-released): dr. pink had recently focused on some smaller, non-book-lengthed affairs of prose and poetry, and i worte most of this review before ketchup came out, so i thought i'd lump it all together. the yellow forklift is a hand-stapled (but 'professionally designed') 'zine' that features one story; notes is a single printed page with 9-point font mailed directly to customers in an envelope; and my mind is a 'professionally printed and designed' poetry chapbook released by Art We Are (they've put out various pink ephemera, such as his art book, i think, and some prints/shirts/etc). all three are, for the pinkman, pretty standard - the yellow forklift is a natural extension of his short story style, and could have come right out of the ice cream man or an earlier collection - it covers the foibles and characters inherent to some shitty menial job (delivering jugs of water), and to me the highlight was Gregorio's character. like with most of sam's stories it's pretty short - the 'book' is like a 5 minute read, maybe, but looks very nice. notes on my coworker hank is a little different in terms of formatting, anchored by a bulleted list of things about this guy hank. seems like a fun one-off goof that probably wouldn't make sense to include as-is in a collection. update: as pink has been re-releasing his old books with new covers and typesetting, he's included hank and forklift in i guess what is becoming a catch-all story collection from 2010-present which seems kind of strange but also fine, i think. anyway, it's funny, unique, and heartwarming in the typical sam pink way - a difficult-to-master balance of writing about some random dude with both humor and compassion. my mind is not a billboard is simply a very short collection of classic pink poems - i read it, enjoyed it, but can't remember anything specific about it. ketchup is good, although i can't imagine it'll go down as a pink classic like rontel or witch piss - it's more book-lengthed, although i think shorter than any of his other novels, and doesn't have many iconic characters or laugh out loud bits. i read it over a couple of days. it's good in the way his books are good and differs from his older books in some interesting, neutral ways -- notably, to me, there's more internal struggling with his 'say yes' persona, more internal conflict about liking/caring about the weird mundane bullshit the people he interacts with care about, and a higher tone of disdain for them (seems related), for example detachedly describing someone playing pokemon go, not using the name of the game to connote disinterest/superiority in/to pop culture. what's good, imo, is that, having spent a lot of time in michigan, the characters seem real and their interests/speech is familiar, which is what one should expect with sam pink's work. was hoping it would end with the main character getting killed in a sword fight in the park, kind of like "the stag" from ice cream man, but the ending as is is fine, something he does sometimes, a slow existential imaginative 'zooming out'. i liked the duck a lot as a recurring character, and the picture of the duck in the back. a few places made me laugh out loud but i can't recall which specific scenes or character names. felt curious about the behind-the-scenes aspect of the book originally being sold to soft skull and then, i guess, pulled for self-publication. i imagine he figured he could make more money from it using amazon KDP, and, i speculate here, didn't want to pad it out in length. the trade off has resulted in the noticeable inclusion of typos. felt interested in how the guy from kingshot press seems to have volunteered to design/typeset this and the recent re-releases, i'm assuming for free(?) -- they look good, definitely needed after the last versions were mostly pdf rips from the lazy fascist and house of vlad versions, but i'm feeling unmotivated to buy them currently - they would be my third set of sam pink's early/small press books.
a bunch of little zines and pamphlets by jerome spencer (public zoo press, self-released): jerome interviewed cavin and i for popscure about back patio press. we had a good conversation and discussed sharing addresses to mail each other books. i sent jerome 50 barn poems and some art, and he later sent me an envelope full of these little hand-made zine things. some are the very small 'single sheet cut in the middle and folded' style zine, some are hand-stapled a-few-8x11s-folded-in-half-and-stapled. the cover art and design is engaging and striking, and i like how they all look, basically. my favorites are a little poem about giving blueberries to a bird and the short story 'veruca', about a guy driving to see his ex-wife and discovering some kind of sinister doppelganger situation - a good mix, i think, of gritty slice-of-life with some mysterious/horror vibes without leaning too hard in either direction. would enjoy a book by jerome.
wait til you see me dance by deb olin unferth (graywolf): this
was recommended/sent to me by tao lin, who describes it as one of his
favorite story collections. the stories are mostly very short - noticed
several have appeared in places like wigleaf, the esquire flash fiction
thing, etc. Noticed a trend in (main) characters being mostly unlikeable
and rude, sometimes in a mix of kafka strangeness and bernhardian
madness/shittalk to humorous effect (like one where the main character
inexplicably shittalks some magicians, calling them "bozos"), but also
there's generally a sense of 'severity' or seriousness and a sense i
can't really articulate well of maybe trying to be seen as clever or
thoughtful for its own sake via listing off alternatives/possibility/questions, not
for the sake of the story being told - sometimes in a deflating way (the
aforementioned magicians story ending with the 'magic' being how
language can allow us to imagine impossible things, i think), sometimes
in a tedious way (one story that feels like a writing exercise based on
oblique strategy cards, although i liked one small section from this a lot), sometimes in a melodramatic way (longer story
about a guy shooting a kid). lots of stories about relationships with
problems and being an adjunct creative writing professor. i think i
liked the story about the turtles, the one about the couple captured by a
revolutionary in the jungle, and some of the very short ones toward the
end, where things are allowed to be strange and evocative in their
shortness, the most. i liked the one that's a sort of post-modern take
on a dirty joke, but it is also an example of this emphasis on
cleverness in the text that i didn't connect with much. the vibe i get
is that these are subversive but only in the context of establishment
mfa literary fiction or, like, the kind of stuff you read on the
jellyfish review and wigleaf, for the most part, where people seem
really into the idea of 'flash fiction' as a form instead of a length. coming off as overly negative in this review. i liked it, feeling curious to read more by her.
in our time by ernest hemingway - i read a bunch of hemingway in high school and early college, and enjoyed it. last winter thought it'd be fun to get some of his books to see how they hold up, now, as an adult, and because i remember liking his scenery, snippets of european life, and sports and leisure from the early 1900s. so it's that level of escapism that i sought from this story collection, which includes several Nick Adams stories and some other random stories. in this sense i feel like it's just what i wanted - stories about fishing, skiing, getting drunk with a friend, walking around european towns, etc. In fact I was surprised most by one story simply being about two 20-something (maybe?) guys going skiing, eating apple strudel, and feeling sad that they have to go to school or whatever after - this feels like something someone would make fun of, now, for being too simple and earnest (heh), especially in the context of hemigway's masculine whatever whatever whatever. basically, reading them now as an adult, knowing more about hemingway and what he's known for, etc., i felt surprised by a lot of the humor, tenderness, and sense of nostalgia inherent to the stories themselves. there's definitely a theme of things already being shittier than they used to be along the value system he employs in these stories - a relationship falling apart on a beach surrounded by second-growth timber, childhood adventures and irresponsibility, washed-up boxers slumming around, and so on. this is confirmed by what i remember about parts of the sun also rises and death in the afternoon, e.g. him talking about bullfighting already sucking by 1920 or whatever. i also feel like, at least in these early stories, his style is less minimal and concise as he's credited with, and he actually has a lot of complex constructions, flights of fancy, and weird jokes. the emphasis on war stories - specifically the interstitial vignettes about war - didn't interest me and i typically skipped them, although some are pretty funny in a very dark way. some of the pieces read a little too melodramatic and some feel a little too simple to really resonate with me. felt interested in this being his first collection. being involved/interested in contemporary publishing means, i think, i'm more used to thinking of story collections as releases centered in time, while for older authors like hemingway, you most often encounter their work in large comprehensive collections, separated from the publishing cycle and sense of time.
bonus tracks: books i gave up on reading because i didn't really like them
the cult in my garage by duncan birmingham (maudlin house): mallory sent this too me in what felt like an overly-forward request for me to read and interview duncan and pitch to a selection of magazines. i told her i wouldn't interview him or pitch it to magazines but i might read it and review it on my blog, and she sent it. duncan is a comedy tv writer and the stories read like it. he also writes about comedy writers. some of the attempts at humor were comically bad and already felt super dated, like in the first story, where a character says "amazeballs" and says that patrick stewart "fucks" - these lines are obviously satirical, meant to make fun of millennial women, or something, but in its lazy topicality made me feel embarrassed for him. i had a really hard time wanting to read more of the book after this story, so i skipped around. the stories generally felt "normal," some interesting characters facing some kind of unexpected thing, usually with a kind of serious/somber turn toward the end, eg the title story, where a guy starts a cult in this woman's garage and she decides to join the cult, and the first story i think ends with someone getting stabbed, etc. I got a lot of television show plot vibes from it, like a sort of zaniness mixed with twists in contemporary settings. One story about comedy writers is like a character sketch of an old guy who feels threatened by young people and their new sense of humor. i dunno i personally couldn't give less of a shit about ruminations on generational divides but it seems popular for some reason, and lots of the humor strikes me as topical caricature - aging frat bros, woke zoomers, wine moms, that kinda shit. feeling a low level sense of dread about comedy tv people putting out uninteresting books, which seems to be happening with a few presses.
what is the what by dave eggers: found this for a buck at a garage sale. hadn't read it before, but i think it's like his first book after AHWoSG. felt weird about it because it's written from the point of view of an african refugee living in america, so i couldn't shake this sense of like, all of it being kinda racist in a way that would prevent it from being published today. some of the prose is gripping but it definitely slogs and i couldn't
shake the weirdness of him writing this character for a whole book, the
early conflict of him being robbed by Black americans, thinking about
race and heritage and stuff. getting the vibe that people praised it for
being a famous author giving visibility to the story of african
refugees. felt unsure whether the framing it was more post-modern stuff
or real - just looked it up, apparently it was actually a collaboration
with this real guy. strange book. it's also very slow, the main plot interstitched with like endless, repetitive tragedy porn about the guy seeing people killed by lions in africa and going on refugee marches and stuff. enjoyed learning that several colleges required incoming freshman classes read it 2007-2009. put it down after maybe 50 pages.
the brothers by frederick barthelme: have enjoyed almost all of his books i've read, but felt like this one was starting to get a little redundant in topic. while reading it, i felt confused/surprised by the introduction of the character and romance from his book painted desert, and then i looked it up and discovered this book came first, and painted desert is kind of like a sequel, based on the same characters. i felt my motivation to finish it dry up during the introduction of their romance and the repetition of ideas/plot points. the prose is good, as it usually is for barthelme - i probably would have enjoyed both books more if i read them in order. felt confused by the lack of marketing/information about this relationship between the two books.
i have recently admitted to myself that i feel very interested in late night talk show musical guest performances. in several situations in recent memory i've found myself recommending that people watch some of my favorite late night talk show musical guest performances, and i sometimes find new ones that i like that i hadn't seen before. during the writing of this post, i found a lot of new favorites.
i feel like, when i was a young teenager, the idea that an 'indie' band i
liked would perform on a major television channel for any reason was
exciting, surprising, and strange. this includes modest mouse performing on The OC once, that my dad told me about because he read about it in TV guide or the newspaper, maybe.
in general, these kind of performances are bad - they often suffer from sound engineering problems, or they strive to do some kind of gimmick that plays out poorly. for example, bloc party sounds really bad during this kind of performance (guitars are hard-panned with no reverb, for example) and the pixies gave a lackluster and confusing performance during which they didn't really play their own instruments, that i've seen. i've looked up performances i remember seeing live on tv and then feeling underwhelmed, later, for example with broken social scene and clap your hands say yeah.
but sometimes the performance is great, and i find myself being drawn into certain performances even if i don't know the band or the song very well. i've recently tried looking up 'top rated' late night talk show musical guest performances and noticed a lot of people referencing the same few (sometimes uninteresting/bad) examples - i don't get why anyone likes the future islands letterman performance, i was bored by the white stripes one, etc. so this is me documenting ones that are interesting to me personally.
something i've noticed, too, looking up lists of who played what shows on wikipedia, and looking up different performances, that frequently my favorite performers put on uninteresting late night talk show musical guest performances, and some acts i don't care about much (like the beastie boys) surprise me in a good way. i've also been interested in seeing bands i'd never assumed were on these kinds of shows - Hum, Jesus and Mary Chain, Cake, etc. Writing this, i found myself googling more things, reading blogs, and watching playlists. i felt surprised at how many different shows and hosts there are - randomly remembering jimmy kimmel, jimmy fallon, uh, that british guy. i felt overwhelmed at the prospect of watching like 500+ hours of late night musical performances. i also realized that snl and chappelle's shows are sketch shows, and not late night talk shows, so, like...i guess this post is kind of all over the place. not sure what i'm doing.
musically,
i like the vocal manipulation done live via the little pedal board on a
stand, and i like how out of tune most of omar's playing is. the
performance itself is energetic and involves lots of entertaining
movements and eventually omar throwing his guitar and running off the
stage at the end, which is very comedically-timed and entertaining still
after several rewatches. i don't know ATDI's music too well but i do
also like this song a lot.
the
vines, i think i remember, were notoriously 'dysfunctional' because of
the guitarist/singer's personality or something. i feel like this
performance is probably a big contributing factor to that notoriety. i
like this performance a lot because of how badly he fucks things up and
how visibly frustrated the other members seem. early on, he rolls around
on the floor, which, i think, knocks the guitar out of tune, so the
majority of the song, when he does try to play it correctly, sounds like
shit. he then fucks up his microphone a lot, rolls around some more,
and really hucks his guitar at the drum kit - the drummer then seems
very visibly pissed off and throws his sticks over his head and walks
off. the guitarist/singer does a roll over an amp, picks up another
microphone to howl for no reason, then leaves something plugged
in/fucked up so there's a loud feedback squeal during the cut to
commercial. something small that stuck out to me is that i don't think
he's being entirely disengaged, which i noticed around 1:50, where he
slows down a lot playing by himself, but follows the drummer's lead back
to the correct tempo. at the very end, a stage hand comes out to switch
off the amp that's emitting the loud feedback squeal. A+ television
performance.
i like this one a lot because of the energetic jumping, maybe, but also i feel like it's energetic and engaging to see the beastie boys perform their rap songs live because there is always someone rapping, due to them trading off. i also like the presence and performance of dj hurricane, who, compared to the small white beastie boys jumping ridiculously the whole time, is a tall black man who stands mostly still and stares down the camera, and his verse is very well delivered. i think i also just like this song. i like maybe 4 beastie boys songs, as far as i know.
after working on this list for a while, i tried watching more random live performances, especially things form the arsenio hall show. i like a tribe called quest and busta rhymes, and i like this performance. i also like it, basically, for all the same reasons i liked the beastie boys performance, and i enjoyed (predictably) thinking in terms of musicology and influence, how it seems dumb to have thought the beastie boys were doing anything very original, especially in the context of hiphop. so i put it here, to sort of bookend that thought right at the top. in this performance, i like busta rhymes' outfit a lot, and the part where someone holds his mic so he can invert his hat. seems like a sort of needless and complex goof which appeals to me for its sincerity of spectacle. i wish there was a higher-quality recording of this one.
i loved the first DFA1979 ep and album, some of the remixes, and then very little of what they've put out post-hiatus. i think they were (are?) incredible musicians and and their production on those albums is really engaging. this performance is from that era and is interesting primarily to me because of 1) how the bassist sways while playing, 2) the drummer's outfit, and 3) the gimmick where the conan bandleader comes in to play drums. this version also has a good intro interlude that isn't on the album. i'm further always very impressed/excited by musical performances that include very few people and no pre-recorded parts.
i simply like das racist a lot and think most of their live performances are entertaining. this one in particular has a lot of effective goofs - heems rotating slowly while rapping, the reveal of kool ad's wig and subsequent playing of the piano with his head (which seems to only be plugged in for this one single goof), and dap's podium. musically, i like the delay on the snare, the digitech wammy vocal manipulation on dap's vocals, and the low bass note. also, one of the cymbal players looks like kat giordano. i do usually stop watching when the michael jackson impersonator comes out. i recommend das racist's KEXP performances, with the guy lying on the couch.
probably the only talking heads song i really like that's not on remain in light, but this is from the remain in light tour, i think, based on the live players. i really like how it's in black and white against a purple background for some reason, and i like how david byrne dances. and i like how everyone plays - very expressive, enthusiastic, and tight.
i like public enemy a lot, in general. in this performance, i like flava flav's outfit and dance moves, and i really love the early scene of the paul guy eating a big ass plate of food. i like the look of the militant-looking background dancers, and i'm always interested in rap performances that use a live band - this is a good one.
i spent some time googling for the most interesting late night talk show musical guest performances and this one came up - basically a hardcore punk show from 1976. there's a mosh pit and everything. and one point the singer/guitarist loses the mic, and so abandons his guitar to pick up the mic off the floor just in time to start singing again. they also play a few songs and it's a great performance, too - i like the saxophone a lot, and the guitarist's use of the whammy bar. enjoying sounding like an idiot who doesn't know anything about cool/punk music in writing this.
as far as i can determine, most jools holland performances are relatively free of spectacle. so this is a pretty straightforward performance, but for battles, this means it's still pretty interesting. this is my favorite version of battles and one of their best songs, even though it's probably their best-known song. i like that the performance is 7 minutes long, when usually for late night musical guest performances, long songs are cut down, and i like the emphasis on live-looping in conjunction with live performing, using multiple instruments.
ok this probably doesn't 'count' since it's not a late night talk show, but a short-lived variety show, but i still think about it frequently. there are a few interesting things about this performance: 1) that's sean lennon on one of the fattest-sounding distorted bass lines ever, 2) the drummer looks like steve burns playing a very paired-down drum kit, 3) they use the horse neigh sample to cover up the word 'fuck', and 4) i like yuka's outfit a lot. i also think they do well in spite of the large, unadorned stage, and power through what could be an awkward performance.
i'm mostly attracted to seeing wayne's really big goofy smile throughout. i feel like that's a really endearing and understandable look, like he thinks it's really funny they're playing on letterman, and thinks the song is funny, because it is. this is also just a very good performance - ronald is/was an incredible guitar player and makes just the wildest sounds. i wish he were featured more in the video footage. i'm also a sucker for distorted bass. the whole performance sounds good, full-sounding, and engaging.
i laughed a lot when i first saw this and i've since rewatched and laughed several times. it's simply a terrible performance with a really lazy attempt at spectacle, but that's what makes it charming. i like how they really have a hard time getting through a 'tv friendly' version of the song and slip up a lot anyway. i like their awkward dance moves and the poorly balanced "skrrt" ad-libs. and i like kanye's big goofy grin the whole time, especially when he proudly/comically gestures to their outfits during the 'sparkling or still' line, like saying, 'see? this is why we have these costumes on. get it? lol', and then he starts laughing while bumbling through a profanity-less version of a part about getting his dick sucked.
this isn't the one where they walk down the street. this is sabotage, played with live instruments, and is interesting to me for several reasons. i like the outfits a lot - the drummer looks like the main character from malibu's most wanted, almost identically, i think, and the bassist has a really stupid hat on and doens't move much. i like how the guitarist/singer is standing awkwardly while playing, complemented by his baggy pants. i like seeing it played live to give context to its composition - it's mostly one powerchord over a minimal bassline, but is still engaging and novel-seeming throughout. i like the live percussion mixed with dj scratching as well. feels like music that is both very dated but still very unique and stands up well.
troy james weaver linked me this one. i love built to spill and this song especially. i dont' think this performance is especially 'charismatic' but i wanted to include it simply because of how good it sounds. having three guitars live really fills it out the sound, and it sounds really on par with the studio recording. i think they're a great-sounding live band, in general, and it's good to see them maintaining that for a tv performance. i like how the guitarist in the middle looks like an angsty goth teenager, but also that toward the end, he's doing a lot of what i think wes borland would later get credit for 'innovating' with the 'divebombing' effect (which i mention in my other blog post about limp bizkit).
troy also sent me this, which isn't from a late night talk show, and isn't good, but is fascinating because it's so bad, from the vocal performance, to the lackluster bongos, to the guy wearing pajama pants: puddle of mudd covering nirvana.
this
is one of my favorite arcade fire songs and i was reminded of it during
the phoebe bridgers guitar-smashing controversy. i think win's guitar
destruction in this performance is very effective - staring at the
camera, being slow and methodical. it comes off as bleakly resigned and
pairs well with the message of the song. it feels like one of the more
effective protest songs you could perform on SNL and the performance in
general matches it well. i feel like it is a pretty moving performance,
in spite of what people think about arcade fire in 2021. also, the organ
sounds good, and fills out the sound well - probably one of the
best-sounding snl performances i've seen.
i remember seeing this in high school and feeling then, and still now, that the chorus of this song is incredibly powerful in its simplicity. it feels, depressingly, timeless, relevant, and unselfconscious in a way that i think a lot of people would consider bad, but i'm thankful i remembered it and went back to watch it for this. it's a great song and the performance is very effective, i think.
i'm curious to know what performances people who read this think of and have enjoyed.
at 6:54 AM on Sep 3, 2021, while cooking breakfast, i tweeted:
interested in writers i know and/or like emailing/messaging me about a song they associate with autumn, so i can compile a blog post and companion playlist
when people reached out to send me a song, i requested a little write-up, saying something to the effect of "wonderful. thank you. could you provide a little write-up as well? a blurb would be ideal, some kind of personal story or anecdote, or analysis, something. thank you" so that there could be interesting content to go alongside the playlist itself. some people responded quickly with a song, but required more time to write something, or basically ignored my request for a write-up. i enjoyed laughing at the idea of writers not wanting to write.
reading the write-ups, i like the common themes people mention in their relationships to these songs: depression, melancholy, and transparently thematic lyrics or song titles. i also enjoyed seeing different things people associate with fall that i associate with other seasons - for example, i delivered pizzas in the spring and summer mostly, but nathan dragon associates delivering pizzas with fall. i also enjoyed only really being familiar with only a few of the songs people sent me.
Fall music for me doesn't have the qualities of a category I can name,
unlike, say, summer music. Just know it when I hear it. This is one of
my favorite songs, and I feel it is a song exemplary of the fall—walking
through an empty park while wearing a light jacket, etc. I do not know what
the lyrics say, as I do not speak Japanese, and I have not looked up a
translation. I suppose that is another somewhat-maxim I feel about
music: lyrics don't really matter, unless they do. The arrangement is so
beautiful. I really treasure this song. That's all I can say.
The first Animal Collective song I heard was "My Girls." I saw a
video of three old people reviewing contemporary music. Breakfast at
Sulimay's Music Reviews
is a program from Scrapple TV from Philadelphia. Which is weird because
I lived in Raleigh at the time and had never heard of Scrapple. Now
scrapple's my second favorite pork and corn based breakfast meat and I
live in Philadelphia.
The old people
didn't like "My Girls." They said it was too repetitive and that nothing
would come of the band. Despite their opinion, Animal Collective became
my favorite band for a long time.
I
worked backwards through the discography. Their music made me feel
excited and somewhat insane because each album seemed better than the
last. I remember telling friends, "They never miss, they can't make a
bad album."
Feels was the album I
liked the most. It's mostly analog sounding instruments looped and
sampled. I liked the way Geologist talked about the album. How the band
tuned their instruments to an old piano their friend had. It was
experimental and strange but still pleasant. It was music I could put on
and win people over with eventually. It was music that made me feel
like dancing.
The drums and keys and
guitar on "Banshee Beat" remind me of a campfire. Leaves cracking under
feet on the brick campus. Rain falling while walking to class. A bowl in
my jacket pocket.
There's also something
lonely about the song compared to the others on the album. It's
whispered. Avey sings on it with Geologist and Panda Bear doing
harmonies and ad-libs. But the type of loneliness in the song is only
possible with friends. It feels like stepping away from party noise to
wash your face in the bathroom and think what's waiting outside.
If you google “jackson c frank october lyrics” you’ll get a version that has the first line as “Halloween is signal I received in France”, which should really be “Following” but now I always listen for Halloween instead, see if I can make it out or if I can get it to sit in that colorblind space of perception where it could totally be one thing or the other, you have no idea which.
Halloween is my grandma’s birthday, followed pretty close on by my wife’s birthday, then her mom’s, then mine and Thanksgiving and my nana’s and then Christmas. This makes it kind of sad to hear JCF sing “And it's already over in October / Already Christmas every year”, skipping that whole procession, so now when I listen to the song I just think of a slow march of cake.
Honestly the whole album, Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV, Part Two: No World For Tomorrow is an autumn album for me. I'm pretty sure I've listened to it every autumn since it came out in 2007. It came out on the 23rd of October, so that's an easy enough reason. It came out in the fall and I listened to it obsessively as I had with their three previous albums. I was a freshman in high school at the time, 15, and had started to move away from being more of a bring fantasy books to school to read in class nerd to a wear all black and hang out with the kids with weird hair and Tripp pants who play smash bros in basements while listening to System of a Down nerd. Only one of my friends was into Coheed and Cambria at the time, and my interest in the band surpassed his very quickly.
This being the fourth Coheed and Cambria album made the rotation of albums fit in perfectly with the seasons. Their first album, Second Stage Turbine Blade is a spring album, their second, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: Three is a winter album, their third, Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV Volume One: Fear Through The Eyes of Madness is a Summer album. I still go through each of these albums once a year, usually during the season I associate them with.
I have lots of music that I associate with seasons, I have a roster of summer artists, I generally also go through and listen to a bunch of psychobilly and horror punk during the fall as well.
The song itself, "Radio Bye Bye," is a great autumnal song. It's got their proggy basslines, a very poppy melody, cheesy lyrics, but a dark tone and overall theme. There is still the brightness of summer, but a longing sadness, knowing that something is coming to an end. I usually listen to this song whenever a relationship of any kind I'm in ends, by the way. It's a great song for endings. The whole album is the apocalyptic end of the band's original storyline. (I assume you're aware of Coheed and Cambria's schtick, but, if not, they're a concept album band with a running story throughout almost all of their albums.) This album also came out during a tumultuous time in the band's history, it was barely made, and with it being the "end" of the story, a lot of fans were anxious to know if there'd be another album or if the band would go their separate ways. A spate of solo albums from members was coming out around this time too, adding to the anxiety.
My primary way of listening to music is the CD player inside my 2009 Honda Civic. I enjoy viewing my car as a ~$6000 CD player, or alternatively also as a 3000 lb CD player. I own about 10 CDs. I get anxious changing discs while driving and maneuvering 3000 lbs of steel, highway hurtling so fast everything, concrete and sky alike, looks torn—during a blizzard, I once crumpled a car like a beer can simply by swerving at a slug-like crawl into a guardrail—so I often just let the same CD repeat for the entire drive, sometimes for hours. For this reason, I like listening to disc one of the compilation album Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe and Reduxe by the band Pavement, because it has 24 tracks. Track 23 is “Secret Knowledge of Backroads.” It sounds like a breakdown on the side of the highway. Nothing abrupt and fiery, but rather the slow, prolonged halt of an 18-wheeler, like a whale’s moaning. I spent my youth beneath the earth in mildewy basements, so I chart life in terms of video games and anime, summer the cicada flash of Neon Genesis Evangelion, winters cold with Metal Gear Solid’s fortresses. This song, to me, is the “Metroid Prime 2: Echoes” of Pavement’s music (Metroid Prime 2 is also the “autumn” of video games). Whereas the original Metroid Prime was almost cartoonish with its video game tropes, lava levels, forbidden space research labs, sentient plants spitting acid as boss fights, Prime 2 is a bleak sequel, its world husked: smog-fogged skies, polished killer machines patrolling lifeless corridors…A few lyrics I like from “Secret Knowledge” are Kick the sand / Kick the can. A Honda Civic crumpling like so much aluminum. Kick it in the face of another man / So you kick it out, it’s out of town. Robots, long outliving their creators, relentlessly pace a gleaming necropolis. I’ve never felt like I do now.
This song reeks of fall. The music video, which I just watched in preparation for this message, actually opens with sun shining through barren trees, and people scavenging through fallen leaves. The song builds to what I would call a crescendo of melancholic euphoria, which is a feeling I associate strongly with autumn. There’s also a line in the song that goes “There comes frightful news from town / Of great evil abound” which makes me think of October and Halloween, and there’s a sort of Wicker Man vibe to this song, like the villagers coming together to perform something sinister.
I'm a fuckin halloween boy, so just ignore the fact that "summer" is
right there in the title for a goddamn second, okay Zac? I live in
Southern California, where the differentiation between summer and fall
is slim (Levi's 511) as hell, so what is a season to you might not be a
season to me (so defensive). But one thing that always seems to
break with the equinox is nights cooling down to sweatshirt-based
wardrobes, wind blowing rustling leaves that may or may not fall, and
spooky movies. Though kind of a shit film, I Know What You Did Last Summer features
a Type O Negative cover of Seals and Crofts' "Summer Breeze" that
should not bang/drone as hard as it does. This song reminds me of
nights turning cold and the fear of death lurking just around the
corner. Happy Birthday Zac, and remember age is just a number.
possibilities feel endless and they are, because you're fifteen and haven't fucked up yet. you don't even know fucked up yet. you kiss softly, laugh loudly, weep in the middle of the night. you get mad over nothing and forget it the next day. someone gave you adderall or some acid. someone else gave you a hickey. someone else gave you a handful of CDs, whose songs will be burned into your psyche until you die, the first time and the last time. everything feels important right now. the way summer slides into fall, making each breath you take more thrilling. the way it feels to make three sandwiches for two hungry friends who got stoned off a coke can in your backyard. the way pop-punk still pays homage to hardcore even though it definitely isn't anymore. you think it's all pretty sad and wonderful, and you're right. you think you know all a person needs to know about love and sorrow and joy. you do know all you need to know. it's saturday.
Heard the song for the first time in the fall of my senior year of college. Went through a big Magnetic Fields phase that summer and someone tipped me to Jens Lekman. The sample sounds lifted from Saturday morning cartoons, but Jens performs like a weary lounge singer. I worked at a coffee shop at the time and I remember a weeknight closing shift. The place was packed, but it was just a bunch of studying students so it wasn't busy and I remember this song coming on my iPod which was hooked up to the soundsystem and I watched the leaves blow across the street and waited for someone to ask me who sings this song.
This is the perfect song to listen to while skipping middle school, strolling through the streets of suburbia and dodging cops on a crisp fall day. The visceral riff is perfect for tightening your hoodie strings and stomping on crunchy pine cones. The driving melody pairs well with angsty mischief and the smell of fresh spraypaint. J Mascis’ melancholy, bittersweet vocals are the perfect soundtrack for picking through cigarette butts in front of Kroger, hoping to find a long one. I don’t even remember who gave me that mixtape, but I remember playing this song until it warbled and never quite making it to school as the landscape turned from orange to grey and the rhythms became more sprawling and earthy. I suppose it’s a really poignant breakup song too, but I was 13 so I didn’t know anything about that.
In its tempo, pacing, the vocals, the classic bass riff, the tambourine, it all feels chilly but sunny. Being in a car bopping around. Like I'm delivering pizzas again or doing errands. September/October music. Definitely not November music.
I associate this song with autumn because I listened to it on my weekend trips to the city. I was fifteen years old, and I would be staring out of the window, admiring the bokeh forming on the window. For some reason, I will only listen to this song during the autumn and winter seasons. The lyrics in the intro discuss disillusionment and falling out of favour with the world around you. I was very depressed in high school, and those weekend trips were the only things that kept me going. It was a whole other life that I dreamed about. I watched handsome older men drink wine under heat lamps outside bars. In some ways, I feel as though I lived vicariously through this song. It’s a song about feeling hopeless and alone which is something I can relate to. I flourish in the nights of autumn, and Some Nights gives me visions of how I imagined life to be when I walked the streets of the blurred city.
I cheated a little bit
when choosing this song. The first thing that came to mind when thinking
of "fall songs" was something off U2's October because the album is
called October and has a picture of the band looking cozy and I have the
record and like to put it out next to my record player in October. But I
don't especially love any songs from that record, and plus, even though
early U2 is magic, they're super unhip now and I'm a little bit
embarrassed about liking them, though clearly not embarrassed enough not
to still mention it here, first. My second impulse was Modest Mouse,
but I don't want to keep being exclusively associated with them. My
third instinctual impulse was The Microphones.
I looked at last.fm to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything, scanning through logs of
what I listened to in fall months over the years, starting in 2006 when
my data on that site began (after an earlier purge of embarrassment over
what portrait my listening painted of me as a person—revealing a
recurring theme of anxiety over musical tastes here). Those were my
"formative listening years," and left the biggest impression/shaped my
enduring tastes, etc. And I have a horrible memory.
My
anecdote/memory is: every time I hear or feel or think about pretty
much any natural force/seasonal cycle (wind blowing, rain pouring, first
snow falling, etc. etc.) this album comes to mind. And I love the way
the songs run together such that, unless I'm looking at the tracklist, I
don't always know when one ends and another begins, or that one stretch
is actually two songs. Fall feels folksy to me, so acoustic guitars
seem right, and fall feels like the time to be "in your feels," and the
crunchy drums and pianos all feel really emotional. There's something so
relatable about the body ache/surrender of "I Want to Be Cold." I like
that this one rocks pretty hard. I love the declarative simplicity of
saying "I want [something about a natural force outside of my control to
overwhelm me]."
In the fall of 2015, I think, I was very depressed and was getting into more slower and sadder music. For whatever reason I saw that Numero Group was releasing this Bedhead box set and I was really interested in spite of never listening to the band before. It was a lot of money at the time, but I bought it anyway, feeling dangerous and manic, and I listened to the digital download while I waited for it to arrive. I spent a lot of time walking around that fall listening to music, and especially Bedhead. All of it really spoke to me - the mumbling, the quietness, the space, the simplicity, the lyrical themes. To me, it was very new and exciting, and paired well with how bad I felt all the time. The quiet and slow approach they had calmed me against the often overwhelming anxiety, especially as it related to the academic year starting again, when I generally felt the worst, and the depressed lyrics made me feel understood and less lonely. This song is from their third album, Transaction de Novo, where they experimented the most - some more uptempo songs, different time signatures, some more folksy Americana - but this is a more or less 'classic' Bedhead song, perfectly encapsulating their oeuvre, I feel, and so in that sense it encapsulates the entire season of fall.
