Am still digesting the new Radiohead album. This morning, while on the way to work, I started playing random Radiohead songs, especially ones that I don't remember, to see if I could find anything I'd missed the first time around. And wow. I just stumbled on this song "Go Slowly" which was released in 2007 on the extra 8-track e.p. that came with physical copies of In Rainbows. This second CD basically collected outtakes from those sessions which, for whatever reason, they thought not good enough for the actual In Rainbows album. Gorgeous obscurity from Radiohead:
Radiohead -- Go Slowly [mp3]
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Birthday
Today is my birthday. So ... I thought I'd write a few words about "birthday songs." The most obvious is, of course, the song "Happy Birthday" which has a pretty fascinating history. Apparently, the melody is from a song originally entitled "Good Morning to All" written and composed by Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill in 1893. This melody was eventually appropriated for "Happy Birthday to You" by 1919.My first real recollection of a song about birthdays was Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday" from his 1980 album Hotter Than July. The song was actually part of a campaign to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday and was released as a single in 1981.
Later, by my late teens, I heard the Beatles' "Birthday" from the White Album, a slightly insane song that seems a little bit tongue-in-cheek:
They say it's your birthday
Well, it's my birthday too
It was one of those silly songs off of the White Album that was probably knocked off in an hour.
Soon enough, when I became old and cynical, I heard the Smiths' "Unhappy Birthday," one of the most sublimely beautiful songs off their final album Strangeways Here We Come from 1987. That chord progression of Johnny Marr's is just stunning, and the song itself is just so weird and sad and almost pathetic:
As a final birthday song, I would put the Replacements' "Birthday Gal" which for years I thought was called "Birthday Carol." This song was recorded in 1987 during sessions for Pleased To Meet Me but never released until almost two decades later. I had the fortune to hear a bootleg version and I even had the chance to ask Paul Westerberg about it once. He just grumbled and said it wasn't that good. In fact, it's brilliant. I think the song is about a girl who's about to turn 30, i.e., nothing to do with me. But then again, it's kinda universal:
Birthday gal, did you wish yet?
Can you handle the turning?
The candles are burning low.
Birthday gal, do you wish that
There weren't quite as many candles
that you had to blow.
Anyway, so much for that. Happy Birthday to me! I hope I have a good year ahead. I really do. See ya.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Favorite Music 2010
This is my year end list with the caveat that these aren't necessarily the best albums out in 2010 but the ones I liked the most. And since I listen to like 0.005% of all available music in the world this is not even close to the definitive list of anything. Having said that, it was a cool year for my music listening. I do not discern any pattern in any of this stuff, except that almost all music I listen to these days is derivative, as in, everything sounds like something you've heard before. As I've mentioned before, this is not necessarily a bad thing, just that real sonic innovation has moved to the fringes of popular music while what is popular generally tweaks or updates or excavates (or all three) old formulas. There were a few eras when sonic/lyrical innovation moved into the pop area (late '60s, late '70s/early '80s) but these were short-lived phases.
A second comment: There were a lot of good albums but none that truly knocked the ball out of the park. As someone mentioned on some blog somewhere on the internet, this is actually a good thing in a way, cause that means there's a lot of good stuff instead of a few stellar records.
A third comment: A lot of music I listen to is from the past. My friends at Kick Out The Jams Mofo made the same observation. I don't know that what means beyond the fact that I am old. But then I asked one of my 19-year old students what they listened to, and to my horror, he answered Rush, Emerson Lake & Palmer, and Yes.
A final comment: A lot of year-end lists are floating around. I'd like to give props to Kick Out The Jams Mofo whose year-end lists were also mentioned in (gasp or shudder, depending on your perspective) Rolling Stone magazine. He has an awesome list; check it out. KOTJMF 's absolute best pick was Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid which also features on my list. There's also Paper Street Cinema, who is apparently some kind of obssessive movie genius freak who also has time to listen to music and have a job and a life.
Here is my list in some order that makes sense exactly right now but will be disowned by me ten minutes later. In fact, I already disagree with my list and I haven't even started to write it down.
1. Deerhunter -- Halcyon Digest: I put Deerhunter's last album as my top choice for 2008 so this is strange that they made it to the top for another year. I realize that kinda liking Deerhunter is pretty easy--after all, they make good pop music, the kind that just washes over you. On the other really liking Deerhunter is hard--after all, they make good pop music, the kind that just washes over you. Their modus operandi is not complicated: they write good pop songs with fantastic hooks with a deep tinge of nostalgia; the songs are impeccably arranged and produced, and every song has a strong hint of reverb. Their music harks back to the 1960s and 1970s in many ways; you hear shards of Motown, early 1970s pop (like Big Star and the Raspberries), pre-Who's Next Who, but are never antiques. The songs sound modern and old at the same time. The main songwriter of Deerhunter is Bradford Cox, a young and incredibly prolific songwriter who seems to live and breathe music. His side band Atlas Sound is a bit more 'experimental' (or demo-ish) but he seems to put his heart and soul into Deerhunter. Yet, the best song on the album, "Desire Lines," was not written by Cox, but by guitarist Lockett Pundt. Yes, his name is Lockett Pundt. Watch a fantastic live performance of the song here; watch especially as the song begins to spiral into the stratosphere at around the three minute mark. Heavenly stuff.
2. Swans -- My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky: In their original incarnation, Swans had two distinct phases: the blood-curling sludge noise phase of their early to mid-eighties phase, and the almost tender (and often pretty) but undeniably doom-laden latter phase which began with White Light From the Mouth of Infinity in 1991 (which was pretty much my soundtrack to that year). Sandwiched between these two distinct phases was the album Children of God, a work of mad genius that distilled the best of both phases into a potent tour de force, and The Burning World, the Swans brief foray into 'commercial' (and I use that word loosely) folk-ish music. I think I listened to all three albums non-stop in 1991. You can tell I was happy that year. In between all of this, they managed to influence just about every twisted musician in the world and sold almost nothing. For sure, Maynard James Keenan got something out of it. In a playlist on a radio show back in 2001, Keenan played Swans' "Coward" (from Holy Money) (right after he played Joni Mitchell's "Black Crow" (of Hejira). As The Guardian says:
Like the Velvet Underground 15 years before them, Swans were an affront to almost everyone of decent sensibilities, and were also remarkably influential -- most visibly as a blueprint for later US industrial artists such as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails.
For sure, they are an acquired taste. Not for the faint-hearted. So what does the new album sound like? Well, for starters, it grabs you into a vortex of null and void. Gira's idea of a party is to spew all sorts of venom at the world and at himself; his is a commentary on the ugliness and betrayal of life, and when ugliness and death and betrayal have reached a crescendo, he finds beauty, some sort of salvation. Without being religious, this is overtly spiritual music. There are few chords, there are only pummeling drones, repeated into oblivion until you lose yourself in the music. Gira explains the whole album track-by-track here.
Gira originally disbanded the Swans sometime in the late nineties, but continued to make music either solo or with his new band Angels of Light. I actually saw him live a couple of years ago; he showed up with an acoustic guitar and basically pummeled the entire crowd into mute submission. Now, suddenly, in 2010, he decided to resurrect the Swans moniker.
3. The Arcade Fire -- The Suburbs: I was not a big Arcade Fire (have never heard Neon Bible, for example) but I picked this up on a whim and I really liked it. I mean really. I liked every song and that's saying something for an album that has, like, 16 songs on it. The music is neither innovative nor revelatory but it is really brilliant, almost perfect 1970s rock. Yes, they do have a little of the early Springsteen in the them but they have really created their own sound. They are also much more versatile than people give them credit for. Here, the songs veer from gentle quasi waltzes (the title track) to four-on-the-floor punk ("Month of May") to an awesome synthpop number ("Sprawl II") that wouldn't be out of place next to Kim Carnes in 1981. The album is supposedly some sort of commentary on urban sprawl and perhaps it is. When I hear this album, I see in my mind 1970s American suburbia, the kind with ugly modernist houses and post-Wonder Years colors. The music pallet is rich, the production is lush, and Win Butler's voice is always yearning for something, often for something better, often for an imagined landscape of youth and expectation that exists only in an adult's imagination. This album is so good, I sometimes wake up to melodies from it, half-dreaming, with ghosts of melodies in my head.
4. Gorillaz -- Plastic Beach: Damon Albarn is now very deep into his second (third?) career as some sort of early 21st century David Byrne who has transcended pretty much anything he might have represented in the 1990s. Plastic Beach is the sound of an album rich, just rich, with unlikely sounds. Albarn and Jamie Hewell pretty much do what they do, it's the continuing adventures of the pomo band, lots of genres, lots of sounds, lots of ideas, lots of guest stars. But despite all this variety, it's really cohesive and surprisingly consistent; it maintains a mood throughout (vaguely pessimistic), grounded with a deeply electronic sheen. It's a superb album, and even the filler songs are listenable. The good songs are just brilliant. I don't know if this is the sound of the future. But it does feel like the sound of now.
5. Baths -- Cerulean: For sure, this is an acquired taste but something about it keeps nagging me, growing on me, taking me in. It's electronic music, a little bit glitchy, some weird vocals (the stuff that takes getting used to), and up front in-your-face electronic percussion. In fact, if there's one word that describes this music, it's that it's percussive. These are beats that hit you in the head. This is headphone music for 2010, meant as a distraction music (isn't all music distraction...?) for those long train rides into or out of the city. You stare out the window, you had a long day, the scenery rushes by, all urban grime. I've listened to this album a million times and I still have no idea what the songs are called. It doesn't really matter.
6. Broken Bells -- Broken Bells: Over the years, I've grown to like more and more the music and voice of James Mercer, the lead architect behind the Shins. It's been only recently that I've realized how amazing the pop of the Shins is/was. Mercer's voice can be chirpy and happy but there is a mournful quality about it. He's the guy you know as a teenager who seemed to think a lot but never let on that he was. Here, Mercer teams up with Danger Mouse to produce what is a great poptronica album that compels you to sing along after the third or fourth listen, the tunes are that good. This is a superb pop album full of imagination and odd twists and turns (the kind of stuff Mercer excelled at) that wouldn't be out of place in Beatles' White Album from an alternate reality.
7. Janelle Monae -- The ArchAndroid: Ah, the pop sublime. I totally accidentally heard this on Sound Opinions, resisted it, and then began to like it a lot more than I should ever have. I confess I don't know much about her but she seems to have a acute sense of the history of pop music. In fact, this album is like a short history of pop music as sang by a weird mutant between classic Motown and eighties R&B pop; throw in some rock, soul, Prince, Tricky, and hip hop, and you get this totally delicious album. Unfortunately, you can't embed her "Tightrope" video but you should check it out anyway. Is she a genius or is she voyeur?
8. The Radio Dept -- Clinging To A Scheme: I know absolutely nothing about this band but I do know that they made this song ("Domestic Scene/Heaven's On Fire"). The album is great. I'm a lame reviewer because I can't describe it. Or am too lazy to do so.
9. Wild Nothing -- Gemini: Anyway, so imagine you are spending a year in Cambridge (Massachusetts) for some reason. You rent an apartment somewhere. It's a good time. Imagine you took a picture of someone as she stood on Mass Ave near Central Square. She has sunglasses on, a scarf, with a giddy smile, young. Nothing can break her. Now imagine it's a 35 mm movie from a long time ago. People (you, her, others) are walking fast in the movie, the colors are a little washed out. That girl in the picture? You no longer know her, all you got is the movie. Now imagine that Wild Nothing's "Summer Holiday" is the soundtrack to that. Just wait for the break at 2.10. It will break your heart in two.
10. LCD Soundsystem -- This Is Happening: So I've written about these guys before and honestly there's not much to write about them. Everyone knows that their music sounds like something you've definitely heard before. You know you have. You've heard it before. You think it's David Bowie but it isn't. Is it Lou Reed? Is it some sort of Gang of Four ripoff? Hard to say. It's too melodic. If it's such a facsimile of the original, why is it so good? You keep listening to it over and over, and after a while, you don't even remember that it's a copy of something else. And you actually enjoy it.
OK, that's the top ten. Here are some other albums I liked. The order of the rest of it is rather arbitrary. Some quick one sentence reviews.
11. Four Tet -- There Is Love In You: Happier than the usual Four Tet
12. Call Me Lightning -- When I Am Gone My Blood Will Be Free. A bit like the Who circa Live at Leeds.
13. Oneohtrix Point Never -- Returnal. Almost as weird as Boards of Canada.
14. The Chemical Brothers -- Further
15. The Besnard Lakes -- The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night. A bit like My Bloody Valentine with Brian Wilson as a woman.
16. Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse -- Dark Night Of The Soul. So sad.
17. Flying Lotus -- Cosmogramma. This is a super fucking cool vibe. You need to be high.
18. Neil Young -- Le Noise. Well, you know he does whatever he wants.
19. School of Seven Bells -- Disconnect From Desire. Amazing anthemic blissout rock with a couple of chicks.
20. The Books -- The Way Out. As weird as ever but funnier.
21. Robyn -- Body Talk
22. Clive Tanaka y su orquesta -- Jet Set Siempre No. 1. I have been listening to this cassette nonstop for weeks. I have no idea who Clive Tanaka is but I assume he is googleable.
23. The Drums -- The Drums
24. Nest - Retold: Enjoyment of ambient music depends to a great degree to how little it forces you to pay attention. It's about mood, repetition, movement, sometimes at glacial pace, and yes, ambiance. Nest, a duo comprising Otto Totland and Huw Roberts, make music that crosses the delicate boundaries between modern classical music and modern electronic ambient genre. The album begins quietly, with tracks played often on a single instrument but builds up to orchestral swells by the end that would perfectly score a movie awash in deep melancholia. It's easy to dismiss much of ambient music as variations on a single (or couple of) themes; we have all heard the common complaint that "nothing much happened." But this is undeniably one of a kind, a beautifully constructed, meticulously executed set of music designed to transport you to a place where details don't matter anymore.
25. Robert Plant -- Band Of Joy
26. Summer Fiction -- Summer Fiction
27. Foals -- Total Life Forever
28. Grinderman -- Grinderman 2
29. M.I.A. -- Maya: I know, it's supposed to be crap. The other day, I went back and listened to it, and I liked it! I didn't want to, I really didn't. But I did. I can no longer show my face.
30. Beach Fossils -- Beach Fossils
Soundtracks
Clint Mansell -- Black Swan
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross -- The Social Network
Reissues, Live Stuff, Whatever
1. Bob Dylan -- The Witmark Demos (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9, 1962-1964)
2. Mogwai -- Special Moves
3. Various Artists -- The World Ends: Afro Rock & Psychedelia in 1970s Nigeria (Parts 1 & 2)
4. Serge Gainsbourgh & Jane Birkin -- Je T'Aime...Moi, Non Plus
5. John Spencer Blues Explosion -- Orange
6. Neu -- Neu! Vinyl Box
7. Orange Juice -- Coals To Newcastle
8. The Stooges -- Have Some Fun: Live At Ungano's
9. The Who -- Live At Leeds: 40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Collectors Edition
10. John Lennon -- John Lennon Signature Box
A second comment: There were a lot of good albums but none that truly knocked the ball out of the park. As someone mentioned on some blog somewhere on the internet, this is actually a good thing in a way, cause that means there's a lot of good stuff instead of a few stellar records.
A third comment: A lot of music I listen to is from the past. My friends at Kick Out The Jams Mofo made the same observation. I don't know that what means beyond the fact that I am old. But then I asked one of my 19-year old students what they listened to, and to my horror, he answered Rush, Emerson Lake & Palmer, and Yes.
A final comment: A lot of year-end lists are floating around. I'd like to give props to Kick Out The Jams Mofo whose year-end lists were also mentioned in (gasp or shudder, depending on your perspective) Rolling Stone magazine. He has an awesome list; check it out. KOTJMF 's absolute best pick was Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid which also features on my list. There's also Paper Street Cinema, who is apparently some kind of obssessive movie genius freak who also has time to listen to music and have a job and a life.
Here is my list in some order that makes sense exactly right now but will be disowned by me ten minutes later. In fact, I already disagree with my list and I haven't even started to write it down.
1. Deerhunter -- Halcyon Digest: I put Deerhunter's last album as my top choice for 2008 so this is strange that they made it to the top for another year. I realize that kinda liking Deerhunter is pretty easy--after all, they make good pop music, the kind that just washes over you. On the other really liking Deerhunter is hard--after all, they make good pop music, the kind that just washes over you. Their modus operandi is not complicated: they write good pop songs with fantastic hooks with a deep tinge of nostalgia; the songs are impeccably arranged and produced, and every song has a strong hint of reverb. Their music harks back to the 1960s and 1970s in many ways; you hear shards of Motown, early 1970s pop (like Big Star and the Raspberries), pre-Who's Next Who, but are never antiques. The songs sound modern and old at the same time. The main songwriter of Deerhunter is Bradford Cox, a young and incredibly prolific songwriter who seems to live and breathe music. His side band Atlas Sound is a bit more 'experimental' (or demo-ish) but he seems to put his heart and soul into Deerhunter. Yet, the best song on the album, "Desire Lines," was not written by Cox, but by guitarist Lockett Pundt. Yes, his name is Lockett Pundt. Watch a fantastic live performance of the song here; watch especially as the song begins to spiral into the stratosphere at around the three minute mark. Heavenly stuff.
2. Swans -- My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky: In their original incarnation, Swans had two distinct phases: the blood-curling sludge noise phase of their early to mid-eighties phase, and the almost tender (and often pretty) but undeniably doom-laden latter phase which began with White Light From the Mouth of Infinity in 1991 (which was pretty much my soundtrack to that year). Sandwiched between these two distinct phases was the album Children of God, a work of mad genius that distilled the best of both phases into a potent tour de force, and The Burning World, the Swans brief foray into 'commercial' (and I use that word loosely) folk-ish music. I think I listened to all three albums non-stop in 1991. You can tell I was happy that year. In between all of this, they managed to influence just about every twisted musician in the world and sold almost nothing. For sure, Maynard James Keenan got something out of it. In a playlist on a radio show back in 2001, Keenan played Swans' "Coward" (from Holy Money) (right after he played Joni Mitchell's "Black Crow" (of Hejira). As The Guardian says:
Like the Velvet Underground 15 years before them, Swans were an affront to almost everyone of decent sensibilities, and were also remarkably influential -- most visibly as a blueprint for later US industrial artists such as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails.
For sure, they are an acquired taste. Not for the faint-hearted. So what does the new album sound like? Well, for starters, it grabs you into a vortex of null and void. Gira's idea of a party is to spew all sorts of venom at the world and at himself; his is a commentary on the ugliness and betrayal of life, and when ugliness and death and betrayal have reached a crescendo, he finds beauty, some sort of salvation. Without being religious, this is overtly spiritual music. There are few chords, there are only pummeling drones, repeated into oblivion until you lose yourself in the music. Gira explains the whole album track-by-track here.
Gira originally disbanded the Swans sometime in the late nineties, but continued to make music either solo or with his new band Angels of Light. I actually saw him live a couple of years ago; he showed up with an acoustic guitar and basically pummeled the entire crowd into mute submission. Now, suddenly, in 2010, he decided to resurrect the Swans moniker.
3. The Arcade Fire -- The Suburbs: I was not a big Arcade Fire (have never heard Neon Bible, for example) but I picked this up on a whim and I really liked it. I mean really. I liked every song and that's saying something for an album that has, like, 16 songs on it. The music is neither innovative nor revelatory but it is really brilliant, almost perfect 1970s rock. Yes, they do have a little of the early Springsteen in the them but they have really created their own sound. They are also much more versatile than people give them credit for. Here, the songs veer from gentle quasi waltzes (the title track) to four-on-the-floor punk ("Month of May") to an awesome synthpop number ("Sprawl II") that wouldn't be out of place next to Kim Carnes in 1981. The album is supposedly some sort of commentary on urban sprawl and perhaps it is. When I hear this album, I see in my mind 1970s American suburbia, the kind with ugly modernist houses and post-Wonder Years colors. The music pallet is rich, the production is lush, and Win Butler's voice is always yearning for something, often for something better, often for an imagined landscape of youth and expectation that exists only in an adult's imagination. This album is so good, I sometimes wake up to melodies from it, half-dreaming, with ghosts of melodies in my head.
4. Gorillaz -- Plastic Beach: Damon Albarn is now very deep into his second (third?) career as some sort of early 21st century David Byrne who has transcended pretty much anything he might have represented in the 1990s. Plastic Beach is the sound of an album rich, just rich, with unlikely sounds. Albarn and Jamie Hewell pretty much do what they do, it's the continuing adventures of the pomo band, lots of genres, lots of sounds, lots of ideas, lots of guest stars. But despite all this variety, it's really cohesive and surprisingly consistent; it maintains a mood throughout (vaguely pessimistic), grounded with a deeply electronic sheen. It's a superb album, and even the filler songs are listenable. The good songs are just brilliant. I don't know if this is the sound of the future. But it does feel like the sound of now.
5. Baths -- Cerulean: For sure, this is an acquired taste but something about it keeps nagging me, growing on me, taking me in. It's electronic music, a little bit glitchy, some weird vocals (the stuff that takes getting used to), and up front in-your-face electronic percussion. In fact, if there's one word that describes this music, it's that it's percussive. These are beats that hit you in the head. This is headphone music for 2010, meant as a distraction music (isn't all music distraction...?) for those long train rides into or out of the city. You stare out the window, you had a long day, the scenery rushes by, all urban grime. I've listened to this album a million times and I still have no idea what the songs are called. It doesn't really matter.
6. Broken Bells -- Broken Bells: Over the years, I've grown to like more and more the music and voice of James Mercer, the lead architect behind the Shins. It's been only recently that I've realized how amazing the pop of the Shins is/was. Mercer's voice can be chirpy and happy but there is a mournful quality about it. He's the guy you know as a teenager who seemed to think a lot but never let on that he was. Here, Mercer teams up with Danger Mouse to produce what is a great poptronica album that compels you to sing along after the third or fourth listen, the tunes are that good. This is a superb pop album full of imagination and odd twists and turns (the kind of stuff Mercer excelled at) that wouldn't be out of place in Beatles' White Album from an alternate reality.
7. Janelle Monae -- The ArchAndroid: Ah, the pop sublime. I totally accidentally heard this on Sound Opinions, resisted it, and then began to like it a lot more than I should ever have. I confess I don't know much about her but she seems to have a acute sense of the history of pop music. In fact, this album is like a short history of pop music as sang by a weird mutant between classic Motown and eighties R&B pop; throw in some rock, soul, Prince, Tricky, and hip hop, and you get this totally delicious album. Unfortunately, you can't embed her "Tightrope" video but you should check it out anyway. Is she a genius or is she voyeur?
8. The Radio Dept -- Clinging To A Scheme: I know absolutely nothing about this band but I do know that they made this song ("Domestic Scene/Heaven's On Fire"). The album is great. I'm a lame reviewer because I can't describe it. Or am too lazy to do so.
9. Wild Nothing -- Gemini: Anyway, so imagine you are spending a year in Cambridge (Massachusetts) for some reason. You rent an apartment somewhere. It's a good time. Imagine you took a picture of someone as she stood on Mass Ave near Central Square. She has sunglasses on, a scarf, with a giddy smile, young. Nothing can break her. Now imagine it's a 35 mm movie from a long time ago. People (you, her, others) are walking fast in the movie, the colors are a little washed out. That girl in the picture? You no longer know her, all you got is the movie. Now imagine that Wild Nothing's "Summer Holiday" is the soundtrack to that. Just wait for the break at 2.10. It will break your heart in two.
10. LCD Soundsystem -- This Is Happening: So I've written about these guys before and honestly there's not much to write about them. Everyone knows that their music sounds like something you've definitely heard before. You know you have. You've heard it before. You think it's David Bowie but it isn't. Is it Lou Reed? Is it some sort of Gang of Four ripoff? Hard to say. It's too melodic. If it's such a facsimile of the original, why is it so good? You keep listening to it over and over, and after a while, you don't even remember that it's a copy of something else. And you actually enjoy it.
OK, that's the top ten. Here are some other albums I liked. The order of the rest of it is rather arbitrary. Some quick one sentence reviews.
11. Four Tet -- There Is Love In You: Happier than the usual Four Tet
12. Call Me Lightning -- When I Am Gone My Blood Will Be Free. A bit like the Who circa Live at Leeds.
13. Oneohtrix Point Never -- Returnal. Almost as weird as Boards of Canada.
14. The Chemical Brothers -- Further
15. The Besnard Lakes -- The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night. A bit like My Bloody Valentine with Brian Wilson as a woman.
16. Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse -- Dark Night Of The Soul. So sad.
17. Flying Lotus -- Cosmogramma. This is a super fucking cool vibe. You need to be high.
18. Neil Young -- Le Noise. Well, you know he does whatever he wants.
19. School of Seven Bells -- Disconnect From Desire. Amazing anthemic blissout rock with a couple of chicks.
20. The Books -- The Way Out. As weird as ever but funnier.
21. Robyn -- Body Talk
22. Clive Tanaka y su orquesta -- Jet Set Siempre No. 1. I have been listening to this cassette nonstop for weeks. I have no idea who Clive Tanaka is but I assume he is googleable.
23. The Drums -- The Drums
24. Nest - Retold: Enjoyment of ambient music depends to a great degree to how little it forces you to pay attention. It's about mood, repetition, movement, sometimes at glacial pace, and yes, ambiance. Nest, a duo comprising Otto Totland and Huw Roberts, make music that crosses the delicate boundaries between modern classical music and modern electronic ambient genre. The album begins quietly, with tracks played often on a single instrument but builds up to orchestral swells by the end that would perfectly score a movie awash in deep melancholia. It's easy to dismiss much of ambient music as variations on a single (or couple of) themes; we have all heard the common complaint that "nothing much happened." But this is undeniably one of a kind, a beautifully constructed, meticulously executed set of music designed to transport you to a place where details don't matter anymore.
25. Robert Plant -- Band Of Joy
26. Summer Fiction -- Summer Fiction
27. Foals -- Total Life Forever
28. Grinderman -- Grinderman 2
29. M.I.A. -- Maya: I know, it's supposed to be crap. The other day, I went back and listened to it, and I liked it! I didn't want to, I really didn't. But I did. I can no longer show my face.
30. Beach Fossils -- Beach Fossils
Soundtracks
Clint Mansell -- Black Swan
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross -- The Social Network
Reissues, Live Stuff, Whatever
1. Bob Dylan -- The Witmark Demos (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9, 1962-1964)
2. Mogwai -- Special Moves
3. Various Artists -- The World Ends: Afro Rock & Psychedelia in 1970s Nigeria (Parts 1 & 2)
4. Serge Gainsbourgh & Jane Birkin -- Je T'Aime...Moi, Non Plus
5. John Spencer Blues Explosion -- Orange
6. Neu -- Neu! Vinyl Box
7. Orange Juice -- Coals To Newcastle
8. The Stooges -- Have Some Fun: Live At Ungano's
9. The Who -- Live At Leeds: 40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Collectors Edition
10. John Lennon -- John Lennon Signature Box
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Blog Posting
Emo emo emo emo emo emo emo emo emo emo
Ironic comment
More emo emo emo
Knowing comment with a wink with reference to totally obscure pop culture reference
More emo emo emo emo emo emo emo emo emo
Derisive comment about life
Pitchfork sucks
More emo emo emo emo emo emo emo
Woe is me woe is me woe is woe is moe
Ironic comment covered in emo
Emo comment covered in irony
Unintelligible list that no one will read
San Francisco sucks
Further meditation on my emotions
Emo emo emo emo emo emo emo
That band rules
The other band sucks
That band used to rule
Now they suck
My feelings
Emo emo emo emo emo emo emo
Anger at post-capitalist order
Careful note of works of Marcuse, Gramsci, Marx
Also: Curious George, the Three Stooges, Nicolas Cage
Further comments about how I'm sad
Emo emo emo emo emo emo emo
Oblique reference to lyric by Morrissey
Medieval history not all that bad
My feelings
Further emo emo emo
Dénouement
Ironic comment
More emo emo emo
Knowing comment with a wink with reference to totally obscure pop culture reference
More emo emo emo emo emo emo emo emo emo
Derisive comment about life
Pitchfork sucks
More emo emo emo emo emo emo emo
Woe is me woe is me woe is woe is moe
Ironic comment covered in emo
Emo comment covered in irony
Unintelligible list that no one will read
San Francisco sucks
Further meditation on my emotions
Emo emo emo emo emo emo emo
That band rules
The other band sucks
That band used to rule
Now they suck
My feelings
Emo emo emo emo emo emo emo
Anger at post-capitalist order
Careful note of works of Marcuse, Gramsci, Marx
Also: Curious George, the Three Stooges, Nicolas Cage
Further comments about how I'm sad
Emo emo emo emo emo emo emo
Oblique reference to lyric by Morrissey
Medieval history not all that bad
My feelings
Further emo emo emo
Dénouement
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Best Music/Pop Culture Reading On-Line 2010
I read a lot this past year. 99% of it comprised student papers, student exams, tax forms, office paperwork, e-mails, and bills. So a real top 10 list of things read would give wide coverage to those aforementioned things. However, I'm choosing to focus on the other 1% of my reading matter. Only one caveat: I'm not including anything that is political, just because I think it would turn people off; ironically some of the best writing I've read this year has been political in nature. Anyway. Culture:
• Mark Grief, "The Hipster in the Mirror," The New York Times, November 12, 2010: This is a surprisingly interesting take on the 'hipster' phenomenon, which goes behind the obvious aphorism that no hipster would be caught dead admitting that they're a hipster.
• Zadie Smith, "Generation Why?," The New York Review of Books, November 25, 2010: Remember there was a time when everyone who was on Facebook was complaining about being on Facebook? This is not an article about that. This is a review of that movie about Zuckercorn, I mean Zuckerburg, by Zadie Smith, the very young British novelist who wrote White Teeth, who is now apparently a tenured professor at NYU.
• Eliot Weinberger, " 'Damn Right,' I said," London Review of Books, January 6, 2011: The author makes the obvious comparison between George W. Bush and Michel Foucault.
• David Bromwich, "The Fastidious President," London Review of Books, November 18, 2010: Completely nails it as to why Barack Obama is strangely uninspiring and like a ghost.
• Steven Hayden, "What Happened to Alternative Nation?," The A.V. Club: Somebody had to do it. Twenty years later, this guy is brave enough to revisit the frenzy over 'alternative' music in the early to mid-nineties, a period that seems slightly embarrassing in many ways now. This is a six-part article taking the story from the pregnant-with-expectation of something-big-about-to-happen circa 1990 on the cusp of Nevermind, all the way through Seattle, to the inevitable and inexorable slide to Bush in the mid-nineties. There's all sorts of unexpected detours in the essay, and even if the topic doesn't interest you, it's worth reading as a reasonably good example of rock'n'roll history as personal memoir done without nostalgia.
• The A.V. Club, Gateways to Geekery: There's so much good shit on the A.V. Club that it's kind of pointless to identify specific articles, but I've always liked this feature. You know how for years your friends would talk endlessly about a band or a director or a TV show or a genre and you'd kinda picked up on it but you never really committed to it and so you were never 'in the know'? And now ten years later it just seems too overwhelming to enter the canon anymore? (I feel like that with Buffy, Lost, Leonard Cohen, Frank Zappa, for example). Well, these folks give you an excellent introduction to that thing, complete with how to start, where to go deeper, and where not to go. These lengthy articles, my friend, are the finest examples of public service. They have good ones on Anime, French New Wave, Roxy Music, Paul Weller, The X-Files, Humphrey Bogart, John Waters, the Fall, and a gajillion other things. By the way, I really don't like Leonard Cohen even though I've only heard one song by him. Just the concept of Leonard Cohen completely rubs me the wrong way.
• "Retroactive Listening: Perspectives on Music & Technology," PopMatters.com
"The Secret History of Technology and Pop Music," NPR
Recently, I've become interested in the relationship between popular music and technology. Both PopMatters and NPR do a great job of distilling down the main issues in a series of articles/radio clips. If you are at all interested in the history of popular music, this is as insightful as it gets. Great stuff.
• Dana Steves, "The Heat Seaking Panther: A Few Thoughts on the Mannered Weirdness of Nicolas Cage," Slate.com: Just cause I think Nicolas Cage is a genius; and I don't say that with irony or with a wink. He seems to possess some ineffable force within him that compels him to do things that make no sense at all. One day, they will give him a lifetime achievement award or something and I pity the person responsible for putting together the set of clips that make up his oeuvre.
• Annalee Newitz, "A History of Zombies in America," io9.com: I was teaching zombies this past semester. This was a fairly interesting exposition on the phenomenon which appears to have reached a zenith in the past few years.
• Phil Freeman, "Captain Beefheart: A Beginner's Guide," The Village Voice: Yes, they all say the same thing: for the love of God, DO NOT BEGIN WITH TROUT MASK REPLICA.
• Mark Hogan, "This Is Not a Mixtape," Pitchfork.com: I've been suddenly thrust back into the world of cassettes because of two things: first, the other day, as a way of educating my progeny, I was searching for the sounds that whales make underwater and I remembered that I had a cassette tape from the early '90s of said sounds. I dug it out of a box, and lo and behold, it sounded strange and beautiful (if a little muzak-y). For those interested it's called Beneath The Waves: Vocals By Humpback Whales. The other reason I am into cassettes is because of Jet Set Siempre No. 1 by Clive Tanaka y su orquesta, available here. It was recommended by someone at work and it is only available on cassette. Beautiful music. This essay by Hogan kind of parses through the history of the cassette as an artform and its supposed resurrection these days. I'm not sure I buy the fact that it's "coming back" but I will always have an old fogey's fondness for the cassette, both in premade form and as a mix(ed) tape.
• Joe Tangari, "Africa 100: The Indestructible Beat," Pitchfork.com: This was a great introduction for me into the world of African pop, especially stuff from the 1970s.
• "All Things Reconsidered: The 35th Anniversary of Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks," PopMatters.com: Not that there needs to be more written about Blood On The Tracks, but the set of essays makes for interesting reading. In the last decade or so, there has a been a massive mainstream media fetish for all things Dylan related, and I'm not sure I understand why this has happened. It's actually kind of annoying in a way. Dylan (like the Beatles) has been overwritten into our collective pop consciousness in way that has almost completely denuded them of any kind of mystery. All this media attention has made them less interesting, not because of the volume of it but because of the tenor of it; you know that when Martin Scorsese produces a documentary about Bob Dylan that the PBS-Starbucks-NPR-ization of Dylan is not far behind. So much for "Play It Fucking Loud." When I listen to Blood On The Tracks (which I try to do sparingly), I feel removed from it. It no longer blows my mind or makes me weep. It's still one of my favorite albums of all time (probably in the top 5) but this is because the music and words are utterly beautiful, not because they make me feel weak at the knees. I know that made no sense.
• "Detours: The Strangest Albums From the Biggest Artists," PopMatters.com: I've always been fascinated by completely mainstream artists doing absurdly weird albums ever since I heard Fleetwood Mac's Tusk. The articles here break it down, and although I don't agree with many of their choices, I still feel like conceptually it's an awesome topic. What makes Tears for Fears produce a b-side like this or Paul McCartney do this? Who knows.
• Mark Grief, "The Hipster in the Mirror," The New York Times, November 12, 2010: This is a surprisingly interesting take on the 'hipster' phenomenon, which goes behind the obvious aphorism that no hipster would be caught dead admitting that they're a hipster.
• Zadie Smith, "Generation Why?," The New York Review of Books, November 25, 2010: Remember there was a time when everyone who was on Facebook was complaining about being on Facebook? This is not an article about that. This is a review of that movie about Zuckercorn, I mean Zuckerburg, by Zadie Smith, the very young British novelist who wrote White Teeth, who is now apparently a tenured professor at NYU.
• Eliot Weinberger, " 'Damn Right,' I said," London Review of Books, January 6, 2011: The author makes the obvious comparison between George W. Bush and Michel Foucault.
• David Bromwich, "The Fastidious President," London Review of Books, November 18, 2010: Completely nails it as to why Barack Obama is strangely uninspiring and like a ghost.
• Steven Hayden, "What Happened to Alternative Nation?," The A.V. Club: Somebody had to do it. Twenty years later, this guy is brave enough to revisit the frenzy over 'alternative' music in the early to mid-nineties, a period that seems slightly embarrassing in many ways now. This is a six-part article taking the story from the pregnant-with-expectation of something-big-about-to-happen circa 1990 on the cusp of Nevermind, all the way through Seattle, to the inevitable and inexorable slide to Bush in the mid-nineties. There's all sorts of unexpected detours in the essay, and even if the topic doesn't interest you, it's worth reading as a reasonably good example of rock'n'roll history as personal memoir done without nostalgia.
• The A.V. Club, Gateways to Geekery: There's so much good shit on the A.V. Club that it's kind of pointless to identify specific articles, but I've always liked this feature. You know how for years your friends would talk endlessly about a band or a director or a TV show or a genre and you'd kinda picked up on it but you never really committed to it and so you were never 'in the know'? And now ten years later it just seems too overwhelming to enter the canon anymore? (I feel like that with Buffy, Lost, Leonard Cohen, Frank Zappa, for example). Well, these folks give you an excellent introduction to that thing, complete with how to start, where to go deeper, and where not to go. These lengthy articles, my friend, are the finest examples of public service. They have good ones on Anime, French New Wave, Roxy Music, Paul Weller, The X-Files, Humphrey Bogart, John Waters, the Fall, and a gajillion other things. By the way, I really don't like Leonard Cohen even though I've only heard one song by him. Just the concept of Leonard Cohen completely rubs me the wrong way.
• "Retroactive Listening: Perspectives on Music & Technology," PopMatters.com
"The Secret History of Technology and Pop Music," NPR
Recently, I've become interested in the relationship between popular music and technology. Both PopMatters and NPR do a great job of distilling down the main issues in a series of articles/radio clips. If you are at all interested in the history of popular music, this is as insightful as it gets. Great stuff.
• Dana Steves, "The Heat Seaking Panther: A Few Thoughts on the Mannered Weirdness of Nicolas Cage," Slate.com: Just cause I think Nicolas Cage is a genius; and I don't say that with irony or with a wink. He seems to possess some ineffable force within him that compels him to do things that make no sense at all. One day, they will give him a lifetime achievement award or something and I pity the person responsible for putting together the set of clips that make up his oeuvre.
• Annalee Newitz, "A History of Zombies in America," io9.com: I was teaching zombies this past semester. This was a fairly interesting exposition on the phenomenon which appears to have reached a zenith in the past few years.
• Phil Freeman, "Captain Beefheart: A Beginner's Guide," The Village Voice: Yes, they all say the same thing: for the love of God, DO NOT BEGIN WITH TROUT MASK REPLICA.
• Mark Hogan, "This Is Not a Mixtape," Pitchfork.com: I've been suddenly thrust back into the world of cassettes because of two things: first, the other day, as a way of educating my progeny, I was searching for the sounds that whales make underwater and I remembered that I had a cassette tape from the early '90s of said sounds. I dug it out of a box, and lo and behold, it sounded strange and beautiful (if a little muzak-y). For those interested it's called Beneath The Waves: Vocals By Humpback Whales. The other reason I am into cassettes is because of Jet Set Siempre No. 1 by Clive Tanaka y su orquesta, available here. It was recommended by someone at work and it is only available on cassette. Beautiful music. This essay by Hogan kind of parses through the history of the cassette as an artform and its supposed resurrection these days. I'm not sure I buy the fact that it's "coming back" but I will always have an old fogey's fondness for the cassette, both in premade form and as a mix(ed) tape.
• Joe Tangari, "Africa 100: The Indestructible Beat," Pitchfork.com: This was a great introduction for me into the world of African pop, especially stuff from the 1970s.
• "All Things Reconsidered: The 35th Anniversary of Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks," PopMatters.com: Not that there needs to be more written about Blood On The Tracks, but the set of essays makes for interesting reading. In the last decade or so, there has a been a massive mainstream media fetish for all things Dylan related, and I'm not sure I understand why this has happened. It's actually kind of annoying in a way. Dylan (like the Beatles) has been overwritten into our collective pop consciousness in way that has almost completely denuded them of any kind of mystery. All this media attention has made them less interesting, not because of the volume of it but because of the tenor of it; you know that when Martin Scorsese produces a documentary about Bob Dylan that the PBS-Starbucks-NPR-ization of Dylan is not far behind. So much for "Play It Fucking Loud." When I listen to Blood On The Tracks (which I try to do sparingly), I feel removed from it. It no longer blows my mind or makes me weep. It's still one of my favorite albums of all time (probably in the top 5) but this is because the music and words are utterly beautiful, not because they make me feel weak at the knees. I know that made no sense.
• "Detours: The Strangest Albums From the Biggest Artists," PopMatters.com: I've always been fascinated by completely mainstream artists doing absurdly weird albums ever since I heard Fleetwood Mac's Tusk. The articles here break it down, and although I don't agree with many of their choices, I still feel like conceptually it's an awesome topic. What makes Tears for Fears produce a b-side like this or Paul McCartney do this? Who knows.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Best TV in 2010
I don't watch that much TV but I thought I'd do a best of 2010 in terms of TV shows. The AV Club did a list and honestly I haven't seen most of what they put it in it. But it sure seems like a lotta good TV was on last year. I suffer from a severe disability in terms of writing about movies and/or TV so I will not say much about these shows beyond a few cursory comments.30 Rock (NBC): Continues to be very funny. Tracy Morgan may be a genius.
Being Human (BBC America): This is a British TV series originally shown on BBC Three. The premise sounds stupid: a werewolf, a vampire, and a ghost share an apartment in Bristol. Uh-huh. But you know, it kinda sucks you in.
Boardwalk Empire (HBO): Slow burner of a show about early 1920s east coast America. Meticulous attention to detail. You wouldn't think a show set in 1920 would be interesting. But it is. Even a young Al Capone is in it.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central): Well, you know the drill. It's still hit and miss and Stewart can be often be obsequious to his guests but, John Oliver continues to be a genius.
Louie (FX): This is a show starring the awesome standup comic Louis C.K. It is not the kind of sitcom that one would expect of a standup comedian. Very subversive. Synopsis of the first four episodes here.
Mad Men (AMC): Yeah, I know, everybody thinks it's great. I was introduced to it by a friend a couple of years ago. I thought the first episode was great. Fell asleep to the second one but then couldn't stop watching it. It's the only show I've downloaded onto my iPhone. I know, I'm very uncool.
Modern Family (ABC): The family sitcom mockumentary gets a new twist. Sharp writing. Ed Norton showed up in one episode as the fake bass guitarist for Spandau Ballet.
The Office (NBC): Still has not jumped the shark. Still very funny and makes you squirm to watch.
Party Down (Starz): Criminally canceled after two seasons, this was the perfect vehicle for Adam Scott, a dude who looks just like the junior swim instructor at my son's swimming class at the JCC. The show was about a catering team in LA who work a new event in each episode. It's more funny than you would ever expect.
The Walking Dead (AMC): Strangely shown at the exact time slot as Mad Men, this show is also about mad men (and women), just ones who are zombies. Based on the long-running graphic novel of the same name, this show started off with a bang and has been more or less outstanding through its short six episode run. It has a similar premise to 28 Days Later (or at least begins the exact same way) but veers into completely unexpected territory. Stark realism meets the post-zombie apocalypse.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Desiderata
Lizzy Mercier Descloux died on April 20, 2004 from cancer at the age of 47. She was a French singer and musician (and sometime writer and painter). I really didn't know much about her until a few months ago I ran into this:
The song ("Room Mate") is from her 1981 album Mambo Nassau. Amazing stuff. Some kind of weird mutant no-wave disco post-punk Afro music hybrid.
I look at her picture and I'm not sure what to think. I love these old black-and-white pictures from the first punk generation in New York in the mid-1970s. They're so rich with expectation.
Mercier Descloux first visited New York in 1975 and became close friends with Richard Hell and Patti Smith, both of whom contributed to her first book Desiderata. A biography reads:
Self-taught as a guitarist, Mercier Descloux revealed herself as a supreme minimalist within the no wave genre, concentrating on spindly, single-note lines combined with wrong-note harmonies and funky rhythms. Mercier Descloux's singing voice, while limited in terms of carrying a tune, was devoted to rhythmic chattering, humming, and chanting lyrics that serve to cheer the music on and to build a quirky sense of excitement.
I actually read about her long before I'd ever heard of her. A long long time ago, I read Richard Hell's novel Go Now (1997). It's a really brilliant book--beautifully written--which I'm sure lots of people read when it came out and then promptly forgot. William Gibson (he of Neuromancer and cyberpunk fame) called it "vile, scabrous, unforgivable, and deserving of the widest possible audience." The main character is a dude named Mud, clearly modeled on Hell himself. A review noted, "Capable of moments of profound personal insight and revelation as well as acts of profane indecency and sexual deviance, Hell's character both seduces and repels."
Hell himself, of course, had been ground through the New York punk scene in the 1970s, forming the incredible Television with Tom Verlaine, and single-handedly creating the punk aesthetic of ripped shirts and safety pins that would be appropriated by the Sex Pistols. After Verlaine fired him from Television, Hell formed Richard Hell & The Voidoids, recording one of the best songs of the class of 1977 ("Blank Generation"), before succumbing to an eon of heroin addiction. Believe it or not, he was was a brilliant prose writer, much better than he was a musician.
Anyway, what does this all have to do with Lizzy Mercier Decloux? When she died, Hell published a statement on his website:
Lizzy Mercier Descloux has died. She was diagnosed with cancer a year ago. I met her in 1975 when she came to New York from Paris at the age of eighteen to investigate what musicians were doing on the Bowery (she would eventually make some albums herself). She was the primary model for the "love interest" Chrissa in my novel Go Now. These lines from that book are based on those first weeks I knew her:
Richard & Lizzy, sometime in the mid-1970s
The song ("Room Mate") is from her 1981 album Mambo Nassau. Amazing stuff. Some kind of weird mutant no-wave disco post-punk Afro music hybrid.
I look at her picture and I'm not sure what to think. I love these old black-and-white pictures from the first punk generation in New York in the mid-1970s. They're so rich with expectation.
Mercier Descloux first visited New York in 1975 and became close friends with Richard Hell and Patti Smith, both of whom contributed to her first book Desiderata. A biography reads:Self-taught as a guitarist, Mercier Descloux revealed herself as a supreme minimalist within the no wave genre, concentrating on spindly, single-note lines combined with wrong-note harmonies and funky rhythms. Mercier Descloux's singing voice, while limited in terms of carrying a tune, was devoted to rhythmic chattering, humming, and chanting lyrics that serve to cheer the music on and to build a quirky sense of excitement.
I actually read about her long before I'd ever heard of her. A long long time ago, I read Richard Hell's novel Go Now (1997). It's a really brilliant book--beautifully written--which I'm sure lots of people read when it came out and then promptly forgot. William Gibson (he of Neuromancer and cyberpunk fame) called it "vile, scabrous, unforgivable, and deserving of the widest possible audience." The main character is a dude named Mud, clearly modeled on Hell himself. A review noted, "Capable of moments of profound personal insight and revelation as well as acts of profane indecency and sexual deviance, Hell's character both seduces and repels."
Hell himself, of course, had been ground through the New York punk scene in the 1970s, forming the incredible Television with Tom Verlaine, and single-handedly creating the punk aesthetic of ripped shirts and safety pins that would be appropriated by the Sex Pistols. After Verlaine fired him from Television, Hell formed Richard Hell & The Voidoids, recording one of the best songs of the class of 1977 ("Blank Generation"), before succumbing to an eon of heroin addiction. Believe it or not, he was was a brilliant prose writer, much better than he was a musician.
Anyway, what does this all have to do with Lizzy Mercier Decloux? When she died, Hell published a statement on his website:
Lizzy Mercier Descloux has died. She was diagnosed with cancer a year ago. I met her in 1975 when she came to New York from Paris at the age of eighteen to investigate what musicians were doing on the Bowery (she would eventually make some albums herself). She was the primary model for the "love interest" Chrissa in my novel Go Now. These lines from that book are based on those first weeks I knew her:
In the course of the three weeks she first spent here she'd moved me and removed me and then moved into me, leaving me gasping--I can still feel it in my stomach when I think about it--like I was the invaded victim in a space-parasite movie, as if my heart and lungs were furniture she might be throwing out but would certainly rearrange at whim. She seemed to come from another dimension.Having read what Hell had to say, I went back, listened to her album again. Looked at the picture above and tried to discern some secret of life. A life. A death. And all that came inbetween.
She was little, with matted hair. She had--she has--a strong jaw and these big marshy lips. Eyes like drains, like reality drains, like in Psycho where Janet Leigh's blood whirlpools away down the tub along with everything else in the movie. Her nose is flat, her whole face is flat. A slim body, nearly hipless [...]
She was a spectacle: carnivore and prey in one, like a walking wildlife film, with that riveting amoral charisma of nature. A complete mystery. At 17 she was more sophisticated than anyone I'd ever known, while also seeming utterly unaffected. Or at least her affectations came from such a stubborn confidence and will to defy convention that they were irresistible [...]
Richard & Lizzy, sometime in the mid-1970s
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)