Weekend Music Roundup

Summer has been beating down the door, melting the windows and cooking me from the inside out over the past week. For some reason that meant folk in the morning and rock or hip hop in the evening. In between was spent listening to old sunshine classics and mood music. Luckily it was a good week for some unexpected releases in each of these genres. I also included one old album that I dusted off and have been loving all week long. Enjoy.

Jean Grae - Cookies or Comas: This new mixtape came out a few weeks ago and I finally got it this week. For those who don't know, Brooklyn's Jean Grae is probably the best underground rap slinger around and deserves mainstream acclaim. On these songs, she once again demonstrates her exceptional lyrical skill with one intelligent rhyme after another. Ranging from laid back rap to straight up hardcore, this album is pretty fresh and reminds me of Digable Planets' Blowout Comb without the jazzy elements. Talib Kweli (of Black Star) appears on a few tracks and the two flow together very well. Not as amazing as The Evil Jeanius, but damned good.

Wugazi - 13 Chambers: When I saw this new mashup of Fugazi and Wu Tang, I nearly burst a gasket. Conceptually, it sounds like it could be brilliant. In actuality, it has very mixed results. When it succeeds, it achieves what every good mashup should, making both sound new. "Last Chance for the Clientele Kid", "Nowhere to Wait" and "Killa Hill" are perfect examples of mixing the right songs together. Where it fails is typically when a slower Fugazi song is used and it slows down the Wu Tang intensity. Definitely worth checking out, even if you end up slimming it down eight or nine chambers.

Beirut - The Rip Tide: The third full album, and first since 2007, from Brooklyn's Zach Condon sees the songwriter venturing ever farther into the chamber pop sound which has developed out the more chaotic genre bending earlier efforts. Though I miss a little of the messy adventure of the earlier albums, I very much enjoyed this album. It has a bit of an Andrew Bird style to it and it's a great album to wake up to in the morning.

The Raveonettes - Raven in the Grave: I've followed this Danish band since their fist album back in 2003. With this, their fifth album, the band has progressed from earlier more garage rock sound into much more of a dreamy shoegazer band. It suits them well and I've seemed to enjoy each album a little more than the previous. There's also a bit of Pat Benatar vibe on some of the songs that truly works well. A nice airy sound that's good for summer because it has the power to create an imaginary breeze.

Josh T. Pearson - Last of the Country Gentlemen: I picked this up on the insistence of the dANIMAL and was not disappointed. This is a very bare bones singer songwriter album with minimal music and salvation type vocals from Pearson who sounds like a wandering preacher. It's reminds me very much of J. Tillman. Another wonderful and heartbreaking album to listen to in the morning before the sun ruins everything.

Kaizers Orchestra - Violeta, Violeta Vol. 1: I've been a huge fan of this Norwegian band since their debut in 2001. They play a frantic variation of indie rock, with the same dark edge as their other great countrymen Madrugada. This album is a little more gypsy punk than indie rock, but somehow doesn't feel as fiery as earlier albums. Still it's quite good. Volume 2 is due out soon, with Volume 3 set to follow next year. I'll withhold final judgment until all three are released, but so far the project is off to a decent start.

Volcano Suns - The Bright Orange Years: I first heard the Volcano Suns when I was 15 after buying a 7" of their based on the cover. I then bought an album of theirs, which I didn't care for. After listening to the 7" again a few months ago, I decided to check out more of their work. This is the Boston band's 1985 debut and it's quite a bit better than their 1989 album which I used to own. This has that post-punk sound that inspired early grunge. You can hear the influence this had on early Mudhoney songs such as "Touch Me I'm Sick". This is raw rock n roll done right.

Alice in Chains - Unplugged: This is the old album that made it into a fresh review after listening to it pretty much every day. Highly underrated, this is easily my second favorite MTV Unplugged album after Nirvana. Layne Staley, well into the junkie oblivion that would claim his life six years later, is barely able to sit upright during the performance, but still sounds incredible. Like someone singing with one foot in the grave, his voice haunts these originally hard rock songs, transforming them into spiritual epics. Each song is phenomenal. Just a super evening album to listening to as the sun is setting.

Last Exile (Episodes 13-15)

(Catch up on previous episodes here)

Yesterday morning I buckled up and climbed back onboard the Silvana after being away too long. I'm officially entering the middle of the 26 episode series and as I suspected, these three episodes started to provide some answers to the many mysteries raised in previous episodes. As I've mentioned in the other posts, the storytelling is following a the narrative style of a novel. And as I wrote in a post last week, one of the key elements of a novel is the middle. Traditionally the middle is where some questions are answered, only to bring new questions to light. Last Exile achieves that nicely here.

When I last left off, the Silvana had apparently sunk--not that I truly feared it's destruction. We soon discover that it is simply hiding, playing possum until it is repaired and ready to set off on its real mission which has been kept vague until now. Meanwhile, after crashing their vanship in the desert, Claus and Tatiana (a sideline character who emerges more to the center of the plot in these episodes) grow closer and manage to repair their ship. During their time together, we learn that Tatiana was an 'abandoned noble', a member of a noble family in one of the conquered towns in the ongoing war. We also learn that Claus and Lavie's fathers were famous vanship pilots who attempted to cross the still mysterious Great Stream in order deliver a peace proposal that would have ended the war. They failed nobly and the war still rages on. Claus and Tatiana encounter that first hand as they run into the Disith and learn that Lavie and Claus's hometown has fallen.

Following another novelist's trick for storytelling, the middle episode is devoted almost solely to telling the story of Claus and Lavie's fathers and how they were friends with the Silvana captain, Alex Row. One rule to telling a long story is never to bore the audience in the beginning with tons of back story. You always want to jump into the middle of the story and reveal important pieces of the back story over time. That's what this episode is, we see Claus and Lavie as children who soon become orphaned children. We watch them teach themselves to become pilots. We see as they first become messengers and build the house in which we first encountered them. Basically we learn everything about how they ended up where they were in the beginning of the series. This segment not only provides us with some key clues to the larger story, but it also serves as reminder of just how close these two characters are, especially since they have been drifting apart in the the last few episodes...which leads us to the next episode.

The last of these three episodes is where all the new questions start to rise, just as the Silvana rises once again into the skies. Almost unaware of it, Claus is the center of a love triangle between him, Tatiana, Lavie, and possibly even the first officer Sophia. In a whirlwind of revelations, the Silvana's true mission is revealed when Claus confronts Alex about knowing his father. Alex admits to having been on the mission and seeing Claus's father die. He also confesses that his mission is to steal the Guild's exile and destroy it, thus ending the Guild's control over the world. In another twist, it is revealed that Sophia is actually the Emperor's daughter and has been asked by a close advisor to step in and stop the Emperor from waging a war with the Guild as he's planned.

The second half of the series promises lots of action and shifting character alignments. Should be a great finish. Stay tuned.

Two of My Favorite Girls

Last week I wrote a short piece of original fiction where CatKid met Alice in a Wonderland maze. I hadn't written in CatKid's voice in a few years, but she's always there in the back of my head yapping at me to pay attention to her. And Alice is one of the reasons I became a writer. So needless to say, it was a bit of a dream project and very fun to write.

You can read it here if you like...I promise you'll laugh (or at least chuckle).

Inner World

Dreams and writing have always shared a link in my work. It seems that one easily influences the other, not just in images but also in form. I've included dreams I have had into books I've written. I have had dreams where characters I've written become characters in a dream.

Both writing and dreams attempt to create worlds that don't exist. Recently I've noticed that some elements of my narrative style are showing up in dreams. I've always written extended metaphors into my books by using small details that occur and reoccur in different ways. I'm finding something similar happening in my dreams lately.

A few repeating elements have sprung up in otherwise unrelated dreams. There's the ancient pyramid and spire temple located on a hill behind the buildings lining 57th Street in Manhattan that can only be glimpsed from certain angles. There's the dream apartment that my one friend has had in several dreams, located in the same dream part of the city. Whenever I dream about my yard, the landscape isn't at all as it really is, yet it's frequently altered in the same way. It's as if my dreams are attempting to write a serial novel. I'm interested to see where it goes.

I think the connection between dreams and my work is easily explained. The imagination has a natural inclination for story telling. Writing is simply a tool by which to provide it structure.

Weekend Music Roundup

I've been listening to a lot of new music once again now that the annual slew of summer releases is making it's way onto the market. Since I've been gathering the new albums by bands that I've followed for a long time, it's made for a wide-range of musical stylings for the week. I've saved some of them for next week and threw in some other albums that been hanging around waiting for their day in court. All in all I think list represents a good selection of summer listening. As always, it also goes along with the current project I'm writing which takes place during the afterlife. Enjoy.

The Horrors - Skying: This is the London quintet's third album, each coming in two year intervals. The space between releases seems appropriate for the dramatic changes that have occurred from one to the next. Only two weeks ago, I re-reviewed the band's groundbreaking debut which really lived up to the band's name. The second album saw them mellowing and expanding. The same can be said for this album. This is a more swirling Britpop sound than the horror feel of the debut. If you played the two albums in a row, nobody would be able to tell it was the same band. However, both are pretty spectacular in their own genre. It's hard to pin down the sound of this, but it's more the child of late Stone Roses and early Ride mated with The Cure. It's has a wonderful open sound that is simply great to get lost in on a sunny afternoon.

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - There Is No God: I've been a dedicated follower of Will Oldham (aka Bonnie) since the mid-90s days of his band Palace. He's easily among my twenty favorite songwriters of all time. But as with anyone who is so prolific, a new release is sometimes greeted with a sense of unease. I'm not sure why because more often than not, I'm rewarded. This new two song single plays as an interesting concept piece with the A-Side being an up-tempo song renouncing God in his typical Americana sound. The B-Side, "God is Love" is then a redemption song (and the better track), featuring Will's keen ability to write modern spiritual folk songs. A solid addition to his ever-growing catalog. (NOTE: cover edited due to nudity)

The Flaming Lips - Gummy Song Skull: Though only four songs, this is an extended EP from the pioneer nu-psychedelic indie rockers with all songs clocking in over 5 minutes. My relationship with this band was mixed for a long time, but after 2009's two stellar releases Embryonic and Dark Side of the Moon, I kind of fell in love with them all over again. Released in April, this EP continues the kind of claustrophobic soundscapes found on Embryonic but in a much more experimental style. It feels a bit like a work in progress, but that helps lend a bit of excitement to it. "Drug Chart" and "Walk With Me" are exceptional tracks. The other two I could live without.

pandoras.box - Monomeet: This is the second album from one of Germany's new crop of prog rock psychedelic bands. Their 2009 debut Barriers was on my best of list for the year. It had a spacey Echoes era Pink Floyd vibe. This album continues that tradition, but certainly makes more use of electronic elements. I've enjoyed it's spaciousness. It's certainly reminiscent of earlier Porcupine Tree records.

Trouble Andrew - Dreams of a Troubled Man: The second album from snowboarder turned Mr. Santogold, turned incredible beat master. For over a year, I've been jamming to "Chase Money" the single from his first album and it never gets old to me. That album had been a nice surprise, but with this one I had expectations and it has surpassed them all. I was hoping a few good synth gems and ended up getting an entire album of consistent goodness. Certainly meant for club play, this is album full of great beats, but there's also depth to it. Any fan of updated '80s new wave is sure keep this on steady rotation. "Run Hide" is stellar.

William Elliott Whitmore - Field Songs: I first encountered this Iowa native on a compilation a few years ago and was struck by the old timey feel of his voice. I always meant to check out more of his work, but never did until this week when I listened to this, his new album. As the title states, this is a collection of roots field songs that hark back to Woody Guthrie. They are heartfelt and sincere and quite moving at times. It's very much a roots revival record, but it doesn't feel gimmicky at all. A solid offering.

Kanu - Transgress: I got this four song EP for Christmas back in 2004 and it felt like one of those albums that had always been in my head. Hailing from Switzerland, Kanu has a harder indie sound. The music is haunted by a dark shadow that reminds me of the great B-Sides from In Utero era Nirvana. Sadly as far as I can tell, this is only music they ever released. It's certainly worth checking out if you ever come across it though. I seem to pull it out at least once a year and always find it refreshing.

Brian Jonestown Massacre - Your Side of Our Story: This compilation was released in 2004 to accompany the release of the wonderful documentary DIG! It covers the band's creative peek years and includes some of their best material. But what's great about it is that it's mixed and arranged to feel like an album rather than a comp. Though I know all the material, I've still enjoyed listening to it all this week. Every time I listen to this band, I'm reminded of how amazing they really were through the '90s with their beautiful psychedelic California sound. A good place to start for newcomers to these dysfunctional geniuses. Listen to "It Girl" and you'll be hooked.

Somewhere in Midair

The other day, I reached the mid-point in the book I'm currently writing. It wasn't a planned middle. I didn't reach any arbitrary number on an outline or some magical word count. As I was writing the scene, I began to struggle and I realized it was because I'd reached the point where the story must take a turn. The scene needed to bring a few conclusions, but those answers needed to lead the main character to even bigger questions. The middle and I had finally met.

One of the aspects of novel writing that you cannot teach is how to have a handle on the pace of the story. It's one of those things that comes over time. When you've done it enough, you get the feel for telling a story of novel length. You know when you reach these moments and therefore can make sure each scene is achieving what it needs to. It took me a good two days to get it right, but I'm happy to say I've turned the corner.

Here's hoping the path ahead remains clear.

Weekend Music Roundup

This was a week of listening to mostly new music, which as regular readers know has been something that hasn't happened all that much of late. Some of these albums are things I'd been looking forward to, but a few of them were things which I didn't even know were out, but would have been anticipating them had I known. That said, there were still a few older albums that made it into the rotation and I decided to review those at the end as well. Hope you all find some good tunes to listen to on this long holiday weekend. Enjoy.

Moonface - Organ Music (Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped): This falls into the category of albums I had no idea were coming out. Moonface is basically just a Spencer Krug solo project (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes). The EP put out under the Moonface name was one of my favorite EPs of last year. It was just one 20-minute song, but it was fantastic. This is a full album of five songs, all over 7-minutes long, which keeps the feel of the EP. These are definitely story songs, told in Spencer's wonderful Neil Young-esque howl and experimental instrumentation. Of all Spencer's other projects, the Moonface tracks remind me most of early Sunset Rubdown in structure, but with later day Wolf Parade soundscapes. The combination is excellent, like most everything he does.

Low - C'mon & C'mon (Acoustic): Another album, though it came out in April, that I kind of missed. I've been a fan of this Minnesota slowcore band ever since I heard their version of "Down by the River" with the Dirty Three in my friend's apartment in Queens, circa 2001. Their blend of indie spiritual songs played sometimes at a such a slow pace that you feel the tension between notes is addictive. This is one of their best albums in a few years, and the bonus acoustic EP, with versions of half the songs included, makes it spectacular. "Witches" is one of the best songs they've ever done in my opinion. Great stuff this. Great stuff.

Manchester Orchestra - Simple Math: The fourth full length album from the Atlanta indie band doesn't stray too far from 2009's Mean Everything to Nothing. As usual, Andy Hull's voice is the center that holds their albums together. There's definitely and Elephant 6 influence on this band's sound, though these days it's matured into a more radio friendly structure. That's kind of the one problem I have with this album is that at times it feels too safe and too safe often sounds bland. When this band takes risks, they are at their best. That said, the title track "Simple Math" is most likely their best song to date and I highly recommend checking out the video.

The View - Cutting Corners EP: It's nice to see that after a year or more off, The View is back in the business of releasing a lot of material. Earlier this year they released Bread & Circuses, their third album, which has grown on me with every listen. They also released a great 7" for Record Store Day. Now comes this five song EP. Two songs are off the album and another track is just a remix, but there are also two original tracks "Alone" and "Sideways" which are nice little gems that could easily have been on the album. They are quieter tracks, a sound they do very well...then again, they do all sounds very well.

Thin Lizzy - Bad Reputation: Over the past few months, I've been into the early Thin Lizzy albums dating to the period when the band was one of those on the forefront of transforming the hard blues genre into the hard rock genre. This album dates from 1977, a few albums after the band had really established their hard rock sound and radio success. At times it's a little too groovy for my taste, but then there's always the blistering guitar and an amazing sense of song structure that makes it impossible not to enjoy on some level. Not my favorite stage in their career, but a decent album nonetheless.

Black Mountain - Black Mountain: Released in 2005 (and a favorite of mine ever since), this debut is one of those type of albums that assured I would listen to every album the band would make in the future. There's a heaviness that runs through the undercurrent, giving it a Black Sabbath weight, but it's not a metal album at all. There's too much of a stoner pulse bringing it back to an indie sound. Easily one of my favorite albums of the last decade and one I've been listening to a lot over the past few weeks. "Don't Run Our Hearts Around," "Druganaut" and "Set Us Free" are phenom. If you don't know this album and you like rock music, then you need to get it, pronto.

Built to Spill - There's Nothing Wrong With Love: I have a habit of listening to entire catalogs of bands soon after I discover that I enjoy them. This was the case with Built to Spill. After ignoring them through the late '90s, I was listening to their Live album (in the same friend's Queens apartment, possibly on the same day in 2001) and once again it was a Neil Young cover that helped me see the light. Over the next year or so, I explored their other albums, which back then meant buying them. This is their second album and probably the one that got the least attention from me back then as it isn't quite as remarkable as Perfect From Now On or Keep It Like a Secret. But I've been listening to it this week and being long removed from those other albums, I could finally appreciate it for what it is. They're still developing their sound, and often feel a little more like a Guided By Voices spin-off band than their later fully realized indie pop greatness, but that's still quite alright with me. "Cars" is my favorite track on here.