the culturephiles

Martin's Top 10 Albums of 2011 Only Add Up To 5

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 04:06:00 +0000

When I performed my annual Sorting of the iTunes (typically one of the happiest days of the year), it became surprisingly clear to me that my Top 10 Albums of 2011 was actually a Top 5. Sure, I could flesh the list out with five or six perfectly fine albums, but you know what? This year was a Top 5-only year. Five albums stood out -- head and shoulders above the rest. And honestly, I don’t have the time or inclination to agonize over what other decent but uninspiring albums should fill the remaining slots. With that said, my Top 5 of 2011...

5. Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde

Insanely catchy rock & roll. That's that.

4. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
A little bit spiritual, a little bit jangly, a little bit CSNY. What’s not to like?

3. Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire

Even if it’s a little on the tame side, I’ll still take hushed, introspective, open-hearted Ryan Adams over most everybody else out there today.

2. The Low Anthem – Smart Flesh

“Oh My God Charlie Darwin” was a brilliant album; this is even richer from beginning to end, if you can imagine. I love this band more every day. (To show off of their range, these dudes get two embedded videos.)

1. Bon Iver – Bon Iver

I know it’s a divisive record, which I assume means that some people must hate it. I can’t stop listening to it.

Follies and Fever Year: a Weekend Full of Chicago Culture

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:52:00 +0000

In 48 hours this past weekend I got to enjoy two major Chicago Cultural Events: the new production of Follies at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and a new documentary about Chicago-based musician Andrew Bird.

Follies at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater features four absolutely dynamite lead performances. I went in fully primed for either a letdown or an unwieldy staging of this supposedly unmanageable show. What I saw was a character and mood-driven piece filled with great music, unconcerned with "plot." Maybe -- as fellow erstwhile Culturephile Brendan said as we left the theater -- we've been taught how to watch Follies thanks the movie musical of Chicago. And while I agree with that, I also think we've been taught to watch Follies by 1) listening to the music from Follies over and over again, 2) watching all the plotless, character-driven, music-filled shows that Sondheim &co have written since 1973, and 3) generally coming around to see musicals as plays with music rather than the corny & inauthentic Zigfeldian spectacles that Follies both eulogizes and buries. We've gotten to a place, culturally, where we don't always expect a Les Mis-style powerpack of plot when we go see a musical. Follies is interior, memory-based, and reflective -- full of great music and great songs strung in a row, sung by a crew of supersonic talents. What's not to like?

I was equally impressed with the artistry and beauty of Andrew Bird: Fever Year -- a concert film blended with a documentary film about one of our all-time favs here at the Culturephiles. It's an elegant and lovely film that has some weird controversy attached. Having seen the film now, I see no reason for there to by any controversy whatsoever -- it paints everybody in a lovely and musical light. Fully 65% of it is concert footage, but the best part of the film are the fascinating little peeks into Bird's creative process and a tantalizing smidgeon of personal life. I mean, I'm talking JUST a smidgeon. Nevertheless, I'm only more impressed now with Andrew Bird's talent and thoughtfulness -- and some of his theatricality onstage actually wouldn't be out of place in a modern-day follies.

On the one hand, it's too bad that Fever Year will only screen in festivals -- I would have liked it to find a wider audience -- but as the director Xan Aranda said in her talk-back after the showing, there's something lovely and communal about sharing the experience with a certain group in a specific time and place and a limited setting...kind of like the spirit and joy of an Andrew Bird concert.

The Art of Turning Stress into Page-Turning Art in The Art of Fielding

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:07:00 +0000

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really want to give this excellent book 4.5 stars, because as much as I loved the characters and writing, it was pretty freaking depressing and stressful. Now, I don't look for uplift from the novels I read, but the level of stress -- in combination with the level of reality -- got a little oppressive at points. In the end, though, given how much I cared about the characters and outcome -- not to mention the excellent subtle prose style -- I have to round up to 5 stars, rather than down.

Combining a collegiate setting, the topic of baseball, and a focus on interpersonal dynamics, this book turns a perfect triple play (barf, sorry) for me personally. It's Franzen-esque in its insight and writing, but skews younger and less preachy. (I certainly hope Chad Harbach is the next Jonathan Franzen...but no pressure there, Chad!) In fact, The Art of Fielding joins Freedom as the only two books I've purchased in hardcover in quite some time. This, of course, says nothing about their quality, only that I was equally eager to read both.

My only criticisms are:
1) the aforementioned way reading about all these lives unraveling made me a stress-case;
2) the absolutely preposterous cavalcade of ridiculous names: Henry Skrimshander, Geurt and Pella Affenlight, Adam Starblind, Miranda Szabo, et al. I'm sure there's both great meaning and various worthy Melville references in those names...but enough's enough. You can get away with Henry Skrimshander OR Guert Affenlight, not both. And Adam Starblind just has to go.

But these are silly criticisms.

As usual, I carefully avoided reading any reviews or anything about this book beforehand, but the hype surrounding it was unavoidable -- it was on every list of "books to read" I've seen for the last 8 months or more. Yet the careful narration, perfect pacing, and thoughtful characterizations made for an absolutely excellent book, well worth reading, regardless of hype. It felt like an important book, tackling important themes, without ever treating itself as Important and Tackling Important Themes. Some books -- even good or great books -- can become over-saturated, weighted down with their own worthiness. The Art of Fielding felt human and relate-able throughout. As much stress as it gave me, it gave me 100 times more joy and pleasure.

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Forget all the Acclaim and Simply Enjoy "The Goon Squad"

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 01:38:00 +0000

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A really wonderful book that somehow simultaneously manages to:
1) live up to sky-high hype,
2) deliver unexpected twists in spite of massive media coverage, and
3) be a page-turner while being about as uplifting as watching ten consecutive episodes of Frontline.

This is one sad novel-in-time-fragments, yet I couldn't put it down. There's no "plot" to speak of, just the exploration of characters and the connections between those characters over a huge swath of time and many different time-periods. Those connections, relationships and people are so carefully drawn and finely crafted that I could have kept reading forever.

Occasionally the book missteps into overly broad satire -- and by "overly broad" I mean that the satire becomes situational and somewhat heavy-handed for my liking. Most of the time Jennifer Egan's satirical instincts are deftly embedded in character and relationship, letting readers draw meaning for themselves, but in a couple of notable spots the characters get too thin, the situations too over-the-top, and the whole affair strains with effort. Most notably I'm thinking of "Selling the General" (which is the only chapter I disliked) but I also include in this the final chapter, which (while also being beautifully written and terribly sad and pretty daring) struggles to make its points within character & relationship, and moves outside of that successful formula to comment in ways I didn't love. The vast majority of the book was so absolutely gorgeous with subtlety, as perfectly subtle as anything I've read -- that I did find myself ever so slightly disappointed that, in the final chapter, the human characters were too shallow to sustain The Commentary.

That said, 95% of this book is writing so pure that it fills my heart with both appreciation and rank jealousy. "Elegant" is the word that most aptly comes to mind. I devoured this book in a week flat, am filled with thoughts and reactions to it, and have just had a long, thoughtful discussion about it with my wife (who also loved it). It's hard to ask for anything more from a book. Further, it's hard for me to think of a book recently I've enjoyed -- or engaged with -- more.

I'm a Mac -- are YOU?

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:35:00 +0000

Comedy's own Ross Bryant can't contain his Apple love or his Mac magic...

Winner, Winner, Chicken Beginner

noreply@blogger.com (BD) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:37:00 +0000

"Beginners" poses the age-old question: is it worth having your dad die a painful death from cancer if you get to date Melanie Laurent afterwards? Of course, your initial response is no, you love your father and barely know Melanie Laurent. But then your mind wanders to afternoons spent roller-skating through luxury hotels with the most winsome woman since Audrey Tatou, making love in said hotel with said Audrey Tatou heir-apparent, and Audrey Tatou 2.0 dressing up as Harpo Marx for no real reason. Which makes you think, well, we all gotta go at some time.

"Beginners" is a big, moist Kleenex of a movie, and not necessarily for the reasons you're expecting. Oliver's dad, Hal, has just passed away and Oliver, having spent the last several months caring for him, is understandably in a funk. As Oliver embarks on a new relationship with an actress he meets at a costume party, he sorts through the events of his father's illness and begins to re-examine his parents' complicated relationship (I probably should mention Hal came out of the closet shortly after Oliver's mom died).

But the movie is not, as you might expect, the After-School Special about accepting our Elderly Parent's Blossoming Sexuality. All of the characters struggle with love: how to get it, what to sacrifice for it, and how it elevates you. Hal has a seemingly great relationship with a goofy guy Andy, who is 30-40 years his junior. Yet Hal hides his illness from Andy and lets him date other guys, because he is, after all, 30-40 years Hal's junior. Oliver is all coiled apprehension around his girlfriend, never fully relaxing around her because, as he sees it, love never seems to work out. In a few brief scenes Mary Page Keller creates a fully realized character as Oliver's dead mother, a woman alternately bucking the conventions of her time while clinging to her son for emotional support.

The movie trips over time, bouncing back and forth from present to past, as seemingly innocuous phrases betray their roots. Big, vibrant colors fill the screen, reflecting Oliver's work as an artist and Hal's career as a museum curator. I haven't even mentioned the subtitled dog, who has no reason to work but totally does. This dog is so absurdly adorable and heartbreaking that if the movie was hyperlinked you'd touch the screen to adopt a Jack Russell terrier. Plus there's Melanie Laurent, who basically treats sadness the way Hawaiians treat "Aloha," conjuring 100 different meanings with a single look. So go see it, preferably with your dad. At the end, clutch his hand, look him in the eye, and say, "I'd never give you up, man. Not for all the Melanie Laurents in the world."

A Moment in the Sun That Just Won't End

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 02:44:00 +0000

A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

You say: Epic. I say: Endless.
You say: Sweeping. I say: Scattered.
You say: Rollicking. I say: the Opposite of Rollicking.

I can't explain how excited I was to find a copy of John Sayles' acclaimed new novel at a book fair in downtown Chicago for a reasonable price. It is both a huge and beautiful book -- kudos to the reliable McSweeney's Publishing house. (Although just about everybody who saw me reading had the same quip: "is that a Bible?") It's exciting to heft a big, epic, summertime book and think: I'm really gonna sink my teeth into this one.

If only.

Deep breath, here goes. This is a 955-page novel that feels twice as long to read. I picture Sayles at whatever quirky, anachronistic typewriter he uses, clattering out page after unedited page, throwing them all into an enormous stack of tree-pulp and treating it all like Rumpelstiltskin's gold. This is a book where every other sentence could be cut, where what could be accomplished in a word takes a chapter (or three), where "plotting" is more like "plodding." And I say this with full self-awareness as a needlessly verbose guy. By page 700 I had so completely lost patience that I was unabashedly skimming whole chunks of book at a time. I didn't miss a thing.

The sad part is that there IS a rollicking historical epic somewhere inside this bloated mess. (It's just buried under layers and layers of preachy social-justice talk, endless numbers of discursive subplots, and shrill, monotonous descriptions.) Many of the characters are sympathetic and well-drawn; the turn-of-the-(20th)-Century setting is absolutely fascinating. The part of this book that is actually wonderful conveys the compelling sense that There is Nothing New Under the Sun, and that all the social ills we wring our hands over and decry -- the sensationalized state of journalism, American military involvement overseas, an economically and racially stratified society, et al -- has always been part of the American experience. Parts of the novel chillingly echo everything from Vietnam to Afganistan, from Fox News to deregulation. It all comes from a obviously liberal perspective, but I have no qualms with that necessarily: purposeful echoings that allow the reader to forge their own connections and conclusions are fine. But heavy-handedness is death for pointedly political works. Compare this to another clearly political book published by McSweeney's -- Zeitoun -- and the shortcomings of A Moment in the Sun are all the more stark. Alternatively, if you give me an absolute thrill ride of a book that I can't put down, you can stick any looney politics you want in there and I'll greedily overlook it (here's to you, Tom Clancy!).

My anger with this book stems from pure disappointment. My expectations were too high -- the reality of reading couldn't sustain them. Would that it were not so...

As a Pyrrhic art-project, I'm tempted to remorselessly cull this book to a lean, mean, 350 pages just to see if it would be a bestseller and win a Pulitzer. I bet it would. But I'm so excited finally to be free of this leaden albatross that I'm moving on to new fictional climes without another backward glance.

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Jeremy Messersmith Rocks Schubas, Reinforces Marital Bonds, Prompts Purchase of Vinyl LP

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 02:24:00 +0000

Jeremy Messersmith - The Reluctant Graveyard

If the only bad thing you can say about Jeremy Messersmith is that he rips off the Beatles, at least he has the smarts and skills to rip the Beatles off better than anybody else. (And who else should he be ripping off, really?)

Long-lost Culturephile Greg introduced me to Messersmith last year, just after his most recent album, "The Reluctant Graveyard," came out. Distributed as a "pay whatever you want digital download" (my favorite model! I pay $5!) I admit that I was slow to warm to the first half of that record. (I have now warmed to it.) But the second half of "Graveyard" is an absolute smash. Whether you're into Messersmith's sweeping orchestral 60s-pop aesthetic or not, I defy anyone to listen to tracks 5-11 on "The Reluctant Graveyard" and not be absolutely charmed. Now, with the benefit of hindsight and many, many re-listenings, I am also a huge fan of the entire album from first to last. But if you want (need?) to get hooked, play the second half first. These are some catchy, jaunty songs about death. Sound tough to swallow? I guarantee you it isn't.

Like catnip to this Culturephile, Messersmith's high, crystal-clear singing voice and extraordinarily catchy, melodic songs put him slightly in the mold of a longtime Culturephiles fav, David Mead. His is a nerdy, approachable, friendly persona; picture a perfectly clean-cut Paul McCartney sporting Buddy Holly glasses. The Beatles' influence is pervasive, yet forgiveable because:
a) Jesus, who doesn't love the Beatles?,
b) come on, who doesn't want more really good music that sounds Beatles-esque? and
c) EVERYbody rips off the Beatles in one way or another, only most people don't do it half as well.

On a personal note, my wife and I tend to have slightly dissimilar musical tastes; while we agree plenty, we also disagree frequently. For instance, no bluegrass music can come within 15 feet of her. (I'm working on it.) Yet "Graveyard" almost immediately took up residence in our car, from whence it has yet to be dislodged. So it was with great excitement that the two of us decided to stay out late this past Saturday night to see Messersmith play Schubas, here in Chicago. We were not disappointed.

While I often feel that musicians and bands should feel more free to experiment with their songs in concert -- on the theory that everyone can go home and listen to the recordings over and over if they want -- Messersmith took the exact opposite tack: recreating his lush studio album in exquisite live detail. And while Schubas was probably not set up to accommodate a rock band
backed by a 3-piece (sometimes 4-piece) string section, the occasional audio/levels problem could be easily overlooked in the wall of wonderful sound. In addition to being a great singer and songwriter, Messersmith is an obviously talented musician; he even plays McCartney's famous bass.

Most of the evening centered around "The Reluctant Graveyard" -- and I confess that I also bought a vinyl copy because I just couldn't help myself from being That Guy -- but the additional songs were good enough that I've gone back to his website to pay-what-I-want for his previous two albums as well. And you ought to go pay what you can for these albums too, if you like things such as: huge hooks, grandiose tunes, lovely vocals, sweeping melodies, superb songwriting, and superior musicianship. Sound like any other famous bands you know?

The Real Problem With Record Labels (Well, One of Them Anyway)

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Fri, 06 May 2011 02:44:00 +0000

Any record labels that want to somehow salvage their flagging CD sales (or at least stem the tide), should take note:
I, your average, music-loving consumer, am willing to pay! Yes, I will pay for high-quality content. But here's the catch: the content has to be good. Specifically, it has to be better than any and all available free content. Preferably much better.

I bring this up because I recently paid a premium to buy a hard copy of Emmylou Harris's new album on the promise -- straight from Nonesuch Records, who I really do want to like -- that with the CD I would also get an exclusive DVD featuring live performances interspersed with interviews.

The trouble is that these "interviews" are less than 60 seconds apiece, and add up to maybe five minutes total. Don't you see, record labels: I am actually willing to pay you my money! But the deal is that you then have to provide me with something awesome that I can't get anywhere else. If I can go onto YouTube and get better interviews -- much better interviews -- then your DVD is not worth any additional money. What's more, you've pissed me off with flimsy promises and halfhearted efforts. This just makes me that much more likely to torrent an album, download it when it's onsale at Amazon for $3.99, or rip it from a friend.

The explosion of content doesn't, in fact, mean that people are no longer willing to pay for content. On the contrary, the explosion of content is generally such an explosion of crap that if you give me something of high quality, I'm actually likely to value it even more highly. Case in point: I was willing to pay $20 for a CD/DVD combo when I could have downloaded the songs alone for $8. Now that I feel ripped off because the interviews were superficial, fleeting, and worthless, I'm that much less likely to pay for something like that ever again.

What special brand of idiots are the record labels today? They (still) have the resources (for now), and should be at the absolute top of the content food chain -- able to provide me with amazing stuff I can't get anywhere else. The trouble is that they end up spending more time figuring out newer and cleverer ways to rip people off than ways to provide cool content. Or great value. Or both! It's just bad business, and any moron can tell you that bad business is a whole lot worse for record labels than any new technology -- MP3s, torrents, whatever -- ever was.

All this just makes me that much more willing and likely to work outside the labels' "system." When the "system" sucks so hard, who can blame me?

Happy Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:13:00 +0000

Also, since it's April, let's wish a Happy 4th Birthday to The Culturephiles -- est. April 1, 2008. While readership has maintained steady at around zero for the last four years, we want to thank anyone that's ever stopped by, and especially those who may have stopped by more than once. To those of you who have gone so far as to leave a comment: our hearts are too full for words. And even though nobody besides myself has even posted since January, let's all take a brief moment to celebrate this meaningless milestone and raise a nonexistent glass.

Happy Birthday to you, you rich source of joy and guilt, you overlooked, under-tended garden of ideas, you ode to Andrew Bird, you stupid blog we lovingly call The Culturephiles.

Three Very Different, Very American Albums

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:59:00 +0000

Emmylou Harris - Hard Bargain
Without trying to sound like I'm damning with faint praise, Emmylou Harris' album is much better than her last few -- Red Dirt Girl, Stumble Into Grace, All I Intended to Be. After a career as one of the premier interpreters of others' songs, Emmylou has started a late-career push as a songwriter, with some pretty varied results. (It reminds me of Michael Jordan trying to switch to baseball...you just think: why?) But while these songs are stark (a kinder synonym for simple), the production complements/augments them nicely -- though producer Jay Joyce probably owes Daniel Lanois a quarter for all that he has "borrowed" from the sound of Wrecking Ball.

My biggest problem is simply with the songwriting. The rhymes remain almost exclusively on the monosyllabic level: me-free, end-friend, chart-heart -- someone send along a rhyming dictionary or something. The deepest Emmylou manages to reach into the pool of multisyllabic words is to break out one partially satisfying "muzzle-puzzle" rhyme in the bouncy, childlike "Big Black Dog." (I guess if you're looking for complex wordplay, just go with Sondheim.) The best one can say about these straightforward lyrics is that they have a simple, homespun flavor. Complex? No. Satisfying enough? Sure. It's when she reaches beyond the simple emotional expressions of grief, love, longing, melancholy, etc, that the album really stumbles: "My Name is Emmett Till" and "New Orleans" spring to mind. Simple (and let's be honest, limited) songwriting skills necessitates keeping songs simple. Historical tragedies like Emmett Till and Katrina require a lighter, more skillful touch, while heartfelt, plain songs about Gram Parsons and Kate McGarrigle pull at the heartstrings without needing filigree. Most of these songs are satisfyingly simple and sad and heartfelt, put over with the classic style and grace we all expect from one of the all-time greats.

Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane
Paper Airplane is another album that works to reverse the middling trend of the last few Alison Krauss albums. While I could never turn my back on AK+US (as those in the know abbreviate them), their last couple efforts -- New Favorite, Lonely Runs Both Ways -- were fairly lackluster. Paper Airplane, without being a masterpiece, is a ton more satisfying than either of those last two records. It feels more focused and consistent -- like a purposeful step forward rather than a meandering series of steps sideways.

I like the song and this album enough that I will even forgive this ludicrous music video, with its contrived neo-civil war aesthetic and Krauss' prarie-girl gingham dress & apron COMBINED WITH FOUR-INCH STILETTO MINIBOOTS!?!?!:

Bill Callahan - Apocalypse
After Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, I picked up this new album from Callahan sight unseen. And while it provides the requisite deep-voiced Americana-inspired weirdness I love, there's something less immediately pleasant/pleasing/engaging about this album; there's more experimentation here than on Eagle. Yet it's a rich record full of musical and lyrical complexity -- um, hello, jazz flute! I feel like you need to climb to the top of a wooded hill on a beautiful day, alone with your iPod, to give Apocalypse a proper listen from beginning to end in the appropriate environment. Ideally, you'd have a pricey stereo system set up at the top of that hill, but I'll let that slide for the sake of convenience. Please let me know how it goes.

The Weird, Wonderful Keep: Egan Does Borges

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 00:40:00 +0000

The Keep by Jennifer Egan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Keep captivated me (no pun intended?) from the start. An exceptionally well-written book that surprises, thrills, and elegantly weaves perspective, mood, and the act of writing itself into one great big Borges-ian psychological thriller. If it went off the rails somewhat in its final, short section, I can forgive it many times over because I truly enjoyed the act of reading every page. A page-turner both in the sense that I wanted to turn the page to find out what happened next, but also in that I enjoyed each page more than the last. Rare is a page-turner of such quality.

The tricks Egan plays with point of view, narration, and stories-within-stories offer plenty of fodder for thought and dissection, all the while creating rounded characters and a sustained, pitch-perfect mood; I was tense but never scared, anxious but never turned off. My highest compliment goes to the way in which Egan gives you authentic-feeling peeks into her characters without ever letting you feel like you are inorganically inside their mind, hearing their thoughts and feelings.

The people in the story, creepy and weird though they may be at time, seem real -- yet all have rich, mysterious lives extending beyond what the novel tells us. It's a book rich in ellipses: the unknown and unseen is just as compelling as what is said and known. I can't recall a book I've read quite like it. Or one I've enjoyed in the same compulsive, thrilling way. A really unique, wonderful read.

A Review of Amanda Leigh by Mandy Moore, or: Gaze Into Hell's Unforgiving Maw

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 01:50:00 +0000

For some reason I can't fully explain or even comprehend, I just downloaded Mandy Moore's most recent studio album, Amanda Leigh. Why did I do this, you ask? Maybe it was the surprisingly positive reviews I saw, maybe it was her (semi) recent marriage to Ryan Adams (one of my true favs), maybe it was just weird and idle curiosity on a thursday night. Why is she still making music, after all? Does she still have fans? Does anyone buy her music? Or even listen to it? She seems to be terribly interested in positioning herself as a legitimate musician, and it seems, underneath her trying-too-hard exterior, like she MAY be actually talented. And there's no doubting her beauty. So why not give this album a shot -- hell, maybe she's turned an artistic corner and is the modern day Linda Ronstadt we've all (I've) been waiting for.

Needless to say, Amanda Leigh it's one of the worst albums I've ever heard. And I'm truly trying not to exaggerate when I say I wish that I could gather every existent copy of this music and destroy it for the good of all music which exists now and may ever exist in the future, to protect Music as a theoretical, as well as a commercial, enterprise. This is kitchen-sink, no-holds-barred, Titanic-level failure -- these songs are so sonically overstuffed, so precious and overproduced, so childish, so glossy, and so shitty that it's almost like you're listening to a parody of a Girl Talk mashup as you listen to a single track. Surely, you think, surely, this is a Joni Mitchell song mashed up with a Fiona Apple song mashed up with a Kristin Chenoweth showtune mashed up with a Linda Ronstadt song mashed up with a Celine Dion song mashed up with Rebecca Black. In striving to be everything for all people, it is the worst disaster I've ever listened to straight through. And credit where credit is due (I guess): I have been mesmerized by how bad each and every track is, as I've written this post.

Amanda Leigh is working so hard I hope everyone involved got paid overtime. Everything is overly studied, overly produced, overly written. And the sad thing is that there are honest-to-god decent musical ideas buried deep within these mish-mashed, soulless, sonically-discombobulated tracks -- cool sounds, cool instrumentation, cool references. I'm astounded how unlistenable it all is. The production is terrible; nothing is coherent. I could not hate this album any more. I literally just drove my wife out of our living room, with a cry of "What are you listening to? I hate this music!"

On the opening track alone, some kind of cool sounding steel (??) guitar leads into Mandy's soulless vocal, quickly followed by an anonymous duet partner straight out of the Peabo Bryson School of Duets, shortly after which I notice lovely background pedal steel guitar (which I could never do anything but love) which unfortunately gives way to a hugely unsubtle string quartet sawing away, all of which sloshes around in the mix simultaneously, accompanying the stupidest lyrics written since, well, since Rebecca Black. The song lasts 4:27 yet never manages a single coherent musical idea.

The whole thing is like a lovably nerdy, overly earnest, musical-theater-loving drama kid who has never felt an authentic emotion or experienced an original artistic idea in her life got a million bucks to make one album and left nothing out.

Instructions for creating Amanda Leigh by Mandy Moore:
1) Take all your records from the 1970s as well as the 1990s and blast them with a sawed-off shotgun.
2) Melt the disparate, tiny shards back into one album.

Instructions for creating follow up album to Amanda Leigh by Mandy Moore:
1) Don't.

Nether Netherland

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 01:51:00 +0000

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A lovely, lyrical book, full of beautiful writing and an almost poetic compression of mood, word, and theme. Also, at times, slightly boring, if we're being honest (and we are). I found it instructive that virtually all the reviewer-blurbs at the front of the book trumpet the parallels between Netherland and The Great Gatsby. I confess I'm not as up on my Gastby as perhaps I should be -- I read it in high school; most of what I remember about it now is a vague feeling of being bored and not quite getting it -- which is actually fairly similar to how I felt about Netherland, so maybe that's the connection the reviewers were making. I appreciated many of the long, wonderfully written passages, while at the same time feeling vaguely as if I were missing something larger: you know that the Big Important Themes are all in there somewhere, but teasing them out felt like trying to grab a plume of smoke. There was something ephemeral about this book, as much as I liked it; nothing made a huge impression on me beyond the language itself. There was no real plot to speak of, and the characters (the few there were aside from the narrator) were thinly, if lovingly, sketched. The book as a whole is a feast of language and ideas, melancholy and elegiac, vital and mournful...yet it all left me somewhat -- just a bit -- unsatisfied.

More Time for Sondheim? Sondtime?

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Even with the glut of Sondheim shows I've been taking long hard looks at recently, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, has long been my favorite. It’s the most consistent in tone and crisp in focus of the oevure (yet I still wonder if it isn't my favorite solely because, as a virtual opera, it is more complete and makes more sense in recorded form than some of the other Original Cast albums). Featuring huge characters, great performances, revenge, over-the-top drama, and a huge amount of coal-black hilarity, the key for this show to me is actually that the music is not so self-conscious and precious as in many other of Sondheim’s shows. There are some great tunes to go along with some of the absolute best, most intricately rhymed lyrics ever.

This video below suffers from a lead performance (George Hearn, replacing the original Sweeney, Len Cariou) totally devoid of mordant wit and nasty charm, two things Sweeney Todd has to have. Yet I'd take it any day over the abysmal Tim Burton film version. At least Angela Lansbury still kills it here, in spite of her zombie-partner:

Sunday in the Park With George is another favorite, even though it can be annoying to listen to at times for just that aforementioned reason of self-consciousness; the attractiveness of the music is sacrificed for the greater purpose of the show. I can intellectually appreciate the pointillism of the score -- musically representing Georges Seurat's painting style -- without necessarily always loving it. Yet it’s still one of the easiest shows to simply enjoy. The meditation on creativity, sacrifice, and art (self-conscious as it may be) captivates without getting too heavy-handed, and the show tackles its central themes and explores its main characters with more verve and charm and heart than in other, colder Sondheim efforts. Though it peters out in the second act, the first act is pure, perfect dynamite, and great, eccentric performances from Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters add sparkle.

And of all the shows I've newly discovered in this Year of Sondheim, Follies is probably the show I've learned the most about and have come to appreciate, and enjoy, a great deal. Though utterly impossible to understand in the format of a cast album, the Sondheimian wit and a surprising amount of versatility is on generous enough display that it almost doesn’t matter. (Almost.) Writing in the style of many different eras and genres of the popular songs, Sondheim gets to show off a little without it seeming overly calculated. In a career seemingly built on biting off more than could successfully be theatrically chewed, Follies seems the pinnacle of unachievable ambition.

This song, sung by an aging former showgirl, is intended to ape the style of a Gershwin ballad, but in so doing, Sondheim actually ends up striking that all-too-rare-for-him balance of head and heart. Barbara Cook performs from the 1985 all-star concert version of Follies:

I think I'll probably take a
little
major break from Stevie Sondheim now. Part of me looks forward to, and part of me dreads, October when Volume 2 of his annotated lyrics come out. Will reading it help me get into major flops like Passion and Assassins? Only time will tell. I wish I could say I was on the edge of my seat. See you in October!

Sorry For the Length of This Post on Stephen Sondheim; I Lacked the Time to Write a Short One

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 22:00:00 +0000

Since receiving Stephen Sondheim's book-of-lyrics (and more!), "Finishing the Hat," for Christmas, and pulling his long-neglected biography, by Meryle Secrest, off its dusty shelf, 2011 has been a surprising year-of-Sondheim for me. I've been familiar with his famous early collaborations (West Side Story and Gypsy) and his most famous works (Sunday in the Park With George, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods) for some time. But I've been far from a completist; only in reading both books I've gone back to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and listen to the songs from shows like Anyone Can Whistle (never heard of it, right? Turns out you're not missing much...) and Follies and A Little Night Music and Merrily We Roll Along...and the list goes on. And that's just the first half of his career; Vol 2 of his autobio-lyricbook will be out in October when I assume I will finally have to listen to all of Assassins (can't even get through the cast album) and maybe Passion (the mind recoils).

Anyway, my hat is off to Stephen Sondheim for crafting some of the best, smartest, most beautiful songs ever written -- genius-level stuff -- and making them generally unpalatable to the world at large. This is, in some senses, a gift -- how can someone so talented be so colossally unpopular (and essentially a synonym for "effete") while also being so revered (AND so famous!). It's a fascinating situation: the vast majority of his shows have been flops -- some more abject than others, but precious few have been hits -- while he is nonetheless regarded as a genius. And I firmly believe that he is. Even as I can't get into plenty of his work. Nobody has ever written more tightly packed, intricately rhymed songs. Or integrated songs as inextricably into character and the show as a unified whole. Sondheim’s abilities as a wordsmith alone would rank him as a genius, but his thoughtful, erudite consideration of mature, and often dark, subject matter seals the deal.

Learning about his life -- in his own words and the words of Meryle Secrest, in “Sondheim: A Life,” certainly one of the worst biographies I've ever read -- illuminates his work to a large degree: the guy was a Broadway composer to the manor born, literally growing up in the family of, and being mentored by, Oscar Hammerstein III (just the dude who brought you Oklahoma, South Pacific, and The Sound of Music, among many others). Sondheim's family life was fractured, yet he never wanted for anything and found himself rubbing elbows with Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins right out of the gate, writing the lyrics for West Side Story at age 26. It's hardly your hardscrabble, up-from-the-bootstraps, Johnny Cash-style story.

I bring all this up not simply to vomit onto this blog my future wikipedia contribution (god willing!) about Sondheim's life (though I would heartily recommend wikipedia over the Secrest biography) but rather to suggest that "success" was never a motivating force for Sondheim, regardless of how stung he says he was (or wasn't) by all his commercial flops and critical pans. This guy was hanging with the in-crowd from day one; who worries about "making it" when they’re already made? His is an interior, intellectual pursuit -- a careful and thoughtful craft which aims mostly at the head and plucks at the heartstrings only occasionally, as if by accident. Never having concerns of money, I posit, loosed Sondheim from the shackles of commercialism before ever being bound -- freeing him for essentially his entire career to Tackle Weighty Issues and Redefine the Possibilities of the Musical and, basically, Always Be a Gigantic Fucking Downer.

The lesson I've taken from reading Sondheim's biography and his own book (which is not a proper memoir, but includes reminiscences and some interesting critiques of other famous songwriters) is that complex doesn't sell. The complex songs (and mature, depressing themes) in virtually all of Sondheim's shows don't make much of a first impression, but manage to creep up on you; the more you listen, the more you understand, the more you get the jokes and/or appreciate the intricate craftsmanship. I conclude from this that his shows flopped so frequently because people come to the theater -- and especially the MUSICAL theater -- expecting to be entertained and wowed (from Gilbert & Sullivan to My Fair Lady to Phantom of the Opera to Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark today). Musicals traditionally weren’t about having to think, and certainly didn’t force you to come back over & over again in order to glean all the layers of meaning and appreciate the songwriting! (Who could afford to go to a Broadway show over and over again anyway?)

In short, "Original Cast Recordings" are Sondheim's best friend; basically, people can pay ten bucks and listen to his songs enough times in the comfort of their own homes to figure them out. At the same time, Sondheim explicitly prides himself on writing his songs from a character-driven perspective – writing from a specific point of view at a specific moment of the dramatic arc – and integrating them with the show as a whole, making them difficult to extract and isolate. (This is one reason why so few Sondheim songs entered into the realm of popular song. "Send in the Clowns" is the lone, notable exception. Further, I have seen precious few Sondheim shows in production, so I also acknowledge my own limitations here.) These songs in a vacuum, while still brilliant, don't pack the same punch as they do within the context of the depressing shows from which they came. Oh compounded irony of ironies!

Yet his astounding talent and thoughtfulness (and financial independence) allowed him to work on show after show, no matter how non-commercial. A lesser talent, and a more starving artist, would have had to tailor his songs and shows to find an audience in order to pay the bills and eat. Sondheim can afford (literally and figuratively) to follow Pacific Overtures, a weird and bloodless intellectual exercise centered on the opening of Japan to international trade in the mid 19th century, with Sweeney Todd, a quasi-opera about murder and cannibalism in Victorian England, and follow that, in turn, with Merrily We Roll Along, a show which set out to be explicitly commercial and turned out to be a depressing morality tale about losing your soul to commercialism AND told in reverse chronological order for good measure! Stevie, baby, it’s like you’re not even trying.

Whatever else they were, these shows weird, sophisticated, smart, and took on big ideas and themes. Love them or hate them (or, if you’re like me, feel free to do both), but Sondheim’s shows were changing the boundaries and definitions of musicals. Indeed, when one examines Sondheim within the traditions of what we commonly consider "musical theater," neither he nor musical theater is much advantaged by the association; lumping Sondheim in with everything from Show Boat to Guys & Dolls to The Lion King to Avenue Q does no service to him or to those other worthy shows. It’s telling that Sunday in the Park with George is one of only a handful of musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama – and one of only two to win the Pulitzer while not winning the Tony Award for Best Musical. One must almost consider Sondheim’s shows as separate and distinct from the rest of the musical theater tradition. They are perhaps closer kin to King Lear or to Carmen than to Wicked and The Music Man.

Sondheim’s characters are rarely likable, which is perhaps why the songs they sing are brilliant but brittle – too much Real Life, with all its difficulty, uncertainty, and pain is reflected in them. These shows don’t have happy endings – the best you can hope for is melancholy ambiguity. And you tend to need an advanced degree in Musicology to sing along with most of the tunes. Let’s put it this way: when I need some music playing as I do the dishes, I rarely reach for the Original Cast Recording of A Little Night Music, which was inspired by an Ingmar Bergman film, set in 1900s Sweden, and written entirely in 3/4s time. Sheesh! I like musicals that are tuneful and witty and fun as much as the next guy, while Sondheim's work takes some time to understand and appreciate, and isn't everybody's cup of tea. It is sui generis.

Reading Sondheim's own book offered the best insights -- he's whip-smart, arrogant, dismissive, and also very funny. His ability to self-deprecate, even in the midst of his great ego, makes him a likable and charming self-narrator; being allowed access to some of his thought processes and creative processes goes a long way towards humanizing and warming up some of his cold, standoffish music. He explicitly sets out to innovate the form and content of The Musical, and certainly succeeds in that regard -- even if he sacrifices popularity and accessibility to do it. Yet I think, for all his protestations to the contrary, popularity and accessibility were never his focus. Too smart, too proud, and too innovative to be cowed by critics, and too independent to be cowed by audiences, Sondheim blazed his own trail.

Perhaps much of that trail was a depressing string of icy-cold work, but the genius is undeniable, and when his songs do manage to penetrate the emotional sphere at last, they are truly transcendent. In those rare moments when Sondheim’s interiority includes the heart, not just the soul, of his characters, his songs become almost overwhelming. Every so often he strikes that balance he never explicitly seeks – managing to equalize the scales of experimentation and steadiness, intelligence and emotion. And when he does, look out. Yet for the most part the inventive rhymes and clever, caustic, accurate lyrics – diamond-like in compression and cut – do most of the work on their own. As a side note, it’s fascinating that someone so explicitly aware of the limitations of clever lyrics alone really lives and dies solely by his lyrics. I guess it’s one thing to be aware and another thing to be able to do something about it.

My Year of Sondheim has certainly made me appreciate much more of his music than ever before. Some of it I still can’t get into, some of it I really love, but, like all great art, it’s worth the effort.

TBR: The Custom of the Country

noreply@blogger.com (BD) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 03:33:00 +0000

To kick off the "To Be Read" challenge, I selected one of the book albatrosses that had been hanging longest around my neck: "The Custom of the Country," first purchased in 1993. I've read the first paragraph several times since, but somehow remained impervious to the charms of Edith Wharton's pitch-black account of turn of the century high society. In the end, I'm glad I put forth the effort, but have no idea who I would recommend the book to.

For one, it's tone isn't light enough to qualify as a comedy of manners. Awful things happen to rich people who make cowardly choices, but there's no breezy manner to distance yourself from the pain, as in "A Handful of Dust" or "The Bonfire of Vanities." Wharton resolutely keeps the narration objective and clinical, pushing you right into the lives of people you don't like very much. Sometimes the pace slugged along, and I'm not sure that's a product of her time or if she's showing us how boring the lives of the idle rich are. I suspect it's a combination of the two.

Also, I hate it when people say that they "didn't like" the protagonist or found them "unsympathetic," as if books should only be about virtuous Pollyannas. That being said, I hated Undine Spragg, the main character. Like, I wanted a building to fall on her. She's an early twentieth century Kardashian, allergic to self-reflection and yet completely self-absorbed. Yet Wharton gives you glimpses of understanding of how Undine became the annihilating gold-digger she is, and while you never like her, you realize how she is the product of her time. By the end of the novel, when Undine has reached her pinnacle of monstrosity, Wharton has elegantly shown how this is all the result of "the custom of the country": society's insistence that the inner lives of men and women be kept separate.

But Edith, that sly fox, teases you along, offering the palest hope of redemption. I eagerly turned each page hoping for some small morsel of good news: the thwarted artist would publish his book and find love, Undine's little boy would be raised by his grandparents, a building would fall on Undine. But no, Edith kamikazes the plot into the only direction it can go - into total moral bankruptcy. So this summer, pour yourself a cool glass of Pinot Gris, nestle into the hammock, and crack open "The Custom of the County." A great pick for your next book club!!!!!!

Mockingjay Sticks the Landing, Though Both the Landing and the Flight are Depressing

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 23:23:00 +0000

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

And so this bleak, sad, action-packed series comes to an end. I tip my nonexistent cap to Suzanne Collins, who did, in fact, stick the landing as well as I could ever have expected and better than I dared to hope. There were some slow moments -- the thrill of putting together wartime propaganda pales in comparison to the thrill of battling it out in the war itself, though I understood the point being made. That the battle for TV-airtime is of nearly equal importance to the actual battle of the insurgency is both telling and a little ham-fisted in this third volume. The battle of information and the battle of independence may be inseparable, but one is certainly much more exciting to read about than the other.

At any rate, some of that ham-fistedness peeked through in this last book -- I especially wished Collins hadn't explicitly called out her "panem et circenses" references and her many rotten-Roman-empire parallels -- but most of the points were elegantly made. I regret that at so many critical junctures in the series our hero, Katniss, is somehow incapacitated and we're offered breathless recaps of what is supposed to have gone on during her convalescence; her strength, keen moral sense, borderline action-heroism, and, most importantly, her narration is literally the entire story; taking her out of commission very explicitly stops everything in the book. Yet these are quibbles. (Granted, I have a lot of them, and think I could come up with a whole bunch more if I sat around and really tallied up the plot holes and authorial conveniences, but I'm not in that kind of mood. So there.)

Overall, the conclusion (and series) satisfied and engaged. I like the questions the book(s) raise(s), and the full-throttle adventures help some pretty sad medicine go down. Issues of what is public vs. what is private, the importance of media and image, power and control, authenticity and deception and the challenges of distinguishing one from the other while acknowledging the necessity of both -- these are heady topics for any book, and The Hunger Game trilogy handles them with aplomb, from within a digestible, exciting framework. Kudos to Collins for the coal-black (pun intended, for those of you who've read the books), nihilistic view of humanity she unflinchingly puts forth; there are no happy bows in the wrap-up and no smiling contrivances to sweeten the taste of a Pyrrhic victory. It's almost certainly a contradiction in terms to say that this nihilism is tempered by cautious hope, but that's how I'd describe the worldview of these books. It's certainly not a happy place to spend a lot of time, but the caustic reflection of our current times is illuminating, and the breathless pace keeps you invested till the (bittersweet) end.

Redirection and Renewal: Three Albums for the Spring Thaw

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 02:29:00 +0000

The 1900s - Return of the Century
This local Chicago band has long been a favorite for their high-energy, tight, live shows, but that hasn't necessarily translated to their recordings, until this most recent album, "Return of the Century." The songs here are compact and melodic, simplified from meandering and overt experimentation -- it's a strengths-based approach that pays off, big time. It's a great, young, up-and-coming band retooling and purposefully focusing their sound in exciting and catchy ways. If you have ever been underwhelmed by some of their recorded material, or ever enjoyed their shows, (or if you've never heard of these guys before,) this is a great record to put in your collection.

The 1900s - Amulet from The 1900s / M/\ZES on Vimeo.

The Decemberists - The King is Dead
Here's a band I had totally given up on, with a lead singer whose voice had started reflexively irritating me. Then out of nowhere -- following a heady, boring, joyless, fairy-tale concept album -- they turn around and surprise with great, rootsy, country-inflected indie-rock record. Gone are the epic, weirdo, precious experimentations and mostly gone are the bouts of nutty, archaic, verbal diarrhea. This is almost a truly great album -- the occasional backslide into ponderous lyrics like "Had a dream/You and me and the war of the enzymes" (!?!?!?) holds it just short of greatness. But the sound is an awesome fusion of country music with what is readily recognizable as "The Decemberists." The songs are focused, simple, stripped-down. And lead singer/songwriter Colin Meloy sounds robust and energetic without a trace of the whiny sneer that drove me crazy! [As a side note, let us pause to celebrate the return of Gillian Welch's recognizeable, long-missed voice, last seen on 2003's "Soul Journey." Give us a new album, Gillian!]

The Low Anthem - Smart Flesh
I loved The Low Anthem's previous album, "Oh My God Charlie Darwin," and "Smart Flesh" picks up where that great record left off, while still creating a fresh and coherent feel. It's a direct album-sequel; unlike The 1900s' and Decemberists' retooled efforts, this feels like a linear and direct progression. But I also don't need or want the Low Anthem to change up what they are doing -- namely, a fascinating study in the sonic oppositions of folk-rock: mixing haunting, beautiful weepers like "Ghost Women Blues" with driving rockers like "Boeing 737" (which Greg and I came to describe as "Dylan-fronts-early-Pogues"). The balance on this record might lean more towards weepers, but that only further solidifies it as one of my favorites of this young new year.

Hoping to be Satiated by the Hunger Games' Conclusion

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 03:53:00 +0000

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Catching Fire" suffers from a little bit of the "Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" syndrome of stuffing a shitload of exposition into the end of the book to make everything make sense. [What is it called when an author chucks an ugly hunk of explanation into the END of a book -- postsposition??] That Collins "manages" to wallop the reader with this "postsposition" in just one (long, jam-packed) paragraph is both a testament to her rock 'em sock 'em, down & dirty style and her concurrent absolute disregard for the tenets of good writing. My hat is kind of off to her either way.

Anyway, the rapid-fire pace flags a little bit here from book #1 as well, although there is still plenty of action and violence and intrigue and incessant (not to say yammering) narration. It also felt like there was both some needless padding and some increasingly weird contrivances (again, shades of Stieg Larssen), but I'm withholding most of my judgment until I finish book #3. Which I am starting immediately, as a testament to the gripping nature of these books. (Don't lose me, Suzanne...stay with me!)

I'm also increasingly unsure of how well Collins' future world coheres -- I don't think anyone will ever confuse it for the intricately crafted worlds of Tolkien or anything -- but I'm still hanging on. I'm hoping that all the things that seem right now like weird, gaping plot-holes are either tidily filled in by the end of the series, or that the breathless adventure kicks so much ass that I don't spend any time caring.

So I really, REALLY want her to stick this landing. You can do it Suz! C'mon!! Dazzle me!!!

Here we go...

The Hunger Games is Not For the Faint of Heart or Actually Young "Young Adults"

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 03:47:00 +0000

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everything that my friends told me about this book being a nonstop thrill ride was right on. Gripping, incessant, first-person narration makes this impossible to put down, and Suzanne Collins packs more action into this slim volume than I've enjoyed in the last ten books I've read, combined.

Yet, I have to ask about the marketing of this as a Young Adult book. It's a Young Adult book for the Young Adult that really loved Cormac McCarthy's The Road. And that's honestly only a partial joke; overall, this book is just about .35 shades lighter than The Road, and certainly features more violence. The MWBA (Martin Wilson Book Association) rates this book a hard R. Appeal it if you like, but the violence and bleakness are way beyond anything I'd allow a young adult under my purview to read. I suppose this all hinges on the question of what, exactly, constitutes a Young Adult. And I guess I'm removed enough from my early high school career to truly recall my maturity level and ability to digest fiction. But wow. This is a pretty brutal, nasty, post-apocalyptic YA novel.

I sort of wish we could just call it a plain old novel, but then we'd have to criticize some of the simplicities that Collins gets away with by shielding herself under the nebulous YA umbrella. It's an interesting dance of marketing, expectations, writing, and popularity.

The cynical part of me wants to say it's nothing but a poor-man's Cormac McCarthy, written shamelessly and openly begging to be adapted into a movie (franchise) by a writer who can't hang in the big-kid playground of Science Fiction and so hides out as an 800-lb gorilla in the sandbox of Young Adult Fiction.

The more reasonable side of me thinks that while it could be a little more nuanced for the adult side of the young adult spectrum (and could stand to enumerate every single feeling of the sixteen-year-old protagonist/narrator a little less) it's still a thrilling and enjoyable sci-fi tale with plenty of contemporary resonance -- in the manner of all the best science fiction. An ass-kicking female protagonist, a richly imagined (if depressing) future world, and nearly perfect plotting add up to a great read for anyone of any age. And by "any age" I mean anybody old enough and mature enough not to get terrifying nightmares from all the brutal violence (like I did).

Max Gerber Returns and He's Still Got a Building

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:22:00 +0000

The long wait is over. Max Gerber has returned...

See Max's first appearance here.

Winter's Bone Up on New Music

noreply@blogger.com (GH) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 03:48:00 +0000

Winter is a perfect time for frivolous spending on music. I find myself ripping through Amazon $5 Mp3 samplers and albums at a rate of a few per week, and there are inevitably some great finds among the otherwise random pile of weird world music and rap mixtapes I'll never replay.

Sea Wolf - "Leaves in the River"

Sea Wolf might be one of the few bands I have heard on my Pandora station that I actually followed up on and bought the album. I heard "Middle Distance Runner" and the rest was history. Reminiscent of Eels, I love the string backing here. The album is generally haunting and quiet - and I imagine if I get lost in a blizzard over the coming weeks, it will be Sea Wolf and not White Fang that will go through my mind. (Jack London reference, anyone??? I thought not.)

Christian Scott - "Yesterday You Said Tomorrow"

If you are a Radiohead/Thom Yorke fan, New Orleans trumpeter Christian Scott and his cover of "Eraser" is bound to blow your hair back. I am generally suspect of jazz covers of pop songs - but this track is perfect. If you like it, then you would like the album too.

David Dondero - "# Zero With a Bullet"

It's impossible to not see singer/songwriter David Dondero's influence on Conor Oberst. I am new to Dondero after hearing about him for years and I must say, I was an easy convert. His lyrics are masterful - funny and twisted, with the healthy dose of pathos needed for the genre. I can't wait to get his new one coming out in February and compare it to the new Bright Eyes, also coming round in February. This is a recording from an NPR Tiny Desk Concert.

See Sex With Strangers, Then Talk About It for Days!

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 21:13:00 +0000

Sex With Strangers couldn't be any more timely if it were a watch. On the one hand (pun intended), one wonders how the play will age -- the leader of our post-show discussion (YES, we stayed for the discussion) mentioned how much the play has changed in language and detail just in the year or two it has been in development at Steppenwolf. Consider, for instance, that an actual, onstage iPad plays a major role in the plot.

On the other hand, this play is relevant and current and talks in a relateable, human way about What is Happening Right Now (much like Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, which is seredipitously discussed in an essay in the playbill). Of course it helps that the discussion about What is Happening Right Now revolves around the changing world of writing and publishing, living online and offline, public and private information -- all fascinating enough issues in the abstract. Then, add some hot & heavy sexual chemistry, perfectly calibrated dialogue, and great performances from Stephen Louis Grush and Sally Murphy...we'll it's almost too much good stuff, as they say. (Nobody says that.)

At the same time, I don't want to give this impression that this is a big, ISSUE-y play where cardboard-thin characters take turns getting up and spouting high-flown monologues about philosophical issues du jour, impressing the audience with what a rigorous intellect the playwright must be. A tip of the cap to playwright Laura Eason for writing some of the best, most natural, most authentic dialogue I've heard onstage -- at Steppenwolf or anywhere else -- in ages. And yeah, I saw August: Osage County! My personal pet peeve is stylized, poetic, theatrical dialgue inside a realistic play; 99.9% of Sex With Strangers sounded like it had been transcribed from recordings of my wife and I inside our home. (That is, IF this blog had made me a millionaire douchebag with a movie deal and we were both aspiring novelists. So, pretty close.)

I do have some small quibbles: the Tucker Max-esque male character, Ethan, lapsed into playwright-speak in just one or two lines, choking out the phrase "her inner life was...blinding." I edited that line out in my mind, replacing it with: "the way she thought about things was...so fucking cool" which makes the same point in a way that a real person -- especially a 24-year-old blogger like Ethan -- would say it. Also, aside from the absolutely bravura opening scene, the rest of the scenes felt like the same length as television scenes; the lights-up/lights-down rhythm felt synchronized with the commercial break we expect on TV, not the theater. And my biggest quibble is the staging of the final moment in which -- I don't think it's much of a spoiler out of context -- the female character, Olivia, pantomimes indecision so broadly as to suddenly appear to be straight out of commedia dell'arte. After the play, the discussion leader specifically mentioned the ending as being tweaked recently, so my hope is that the kinks are still getting worked out and the last moment will end up as elegantly underplayed as the rest of the show.

But these are REALLY minor quibbles. Both actors did exceptional jobs working their way through and around each other in real and interesting ways. Nothing felt awkward or forced or fake. Issues arose naturally, compellingly. Neither character felt like a cipher or mouthpiece for a particular philosophy; as in the best of thought-provoking art, issues were simply raised through the lens of character and the audience was left to make their own decisions, or perhaps reexamine their existing beliefs. That BOTH characters were so sympathetic is another testament to the playwright, the actors, and the director, Jessica Thebus -- the play never tipped its hand, never fell into preachiness, never forced the issue. It was, truly, masterful. A great pleasure to watch. It was the best, most fun, more interesting play I have seen in...well, in a really long time.

Sex With Strangers is also just about the best "date play" ever written: sexy, snappy, and thought-provoking enough to get you through any number of post-show drinks. If you're not stimulated by all the making out onstage, you'll certainly be energized by the passionate discussion the play inspires. That is, unless you're a big fan of ponderous theatrical monologues that don't sound like actual humans talking. Then you might need to look elsewhere for your dates. And you might not go on too many dates, because you are weird.

The Long Goodbye Hasn't Said Goodbye Yet

noreply@blogger.com (MW) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 17:49:00 +0000

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The first thing you notice in The Long Goodbye is that classic Raymond Chandler style – everyone on the Planet Earth is at least familiar with the parodies, but the real thing is elegant and sturdy. You’d think after a million years and a million imitations and a million spoofs that the authentic original would be diminished somehow, transformed into self-parody. Couldn’t be further from the truth. Even as the slang has dated and a few of the details have become quaint (telephone operator “girls”), the language itself and style is captivating, muscular, and even beautiful. It does much more than just hold up 58 years later; it’s still current, still entirely relevant. I was surprised there was so much thought – even philosophy – in The Long Goodbye; I expected languid dames and tough broads and hardboiled dicks – revolvers, brass knuckles, and booze (and got it all and then some) - but what I didn’t expect were thoughtful and thought-provoking meditations on power, money, politics, and America.

Published in 1953, but if you transformed the telephone operators into iPhones, it could have been written last year. Chandler’s description of the LA Sherriff could be any number of present-day politicians (fill in your own according to your ideological preference):

Sherriff Peterson just went right on getting re-elected, a living testimonial to the fact that you can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face, and a closed mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable.

Unraveling the mystery in the story was fun, but far, far better were the characters, the dialogue, the settings, the descriptions, the musings and digressions. Every single character, no matter how minor, no matter how bizarre, felt amazingly authentic. I cared much less about whodunit than about the cast, the strains of dark nobility and cynical romanticism, and the pitch-black, pitch-perfect peek into an America that once was, and in many ways, still is.

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