Continuing the "ex-Pixies members releasing a record in April" theme, The Breeders dropped Mountain Battles three weeks ago. If you haven't been following the Breeders (maybe you don't even remember "Cannonball"), I will recap for you here: Pod - Fantastic, but badly mastered; Last Splash - Wonderful, see esp. "Drivin' On 9"; Title TK - I almost cried.
Quick test to see if you would like the Breeders (assuming you have some real basic Pixies material): Listen to "Gigantic" and ask yourself "would I like to hear this voice singing inside my head?" If the answer is yes, you're in.
So, Mountain Battles. Title TK is a hard act to follow. It is a record-that-lives-in-my-car. Mountain Battles is not Title TK. It's a little less like having Kim Deal singing softly into your ear at night and a little more like going to see an obscure but well regarded band at one of the few venues in San Francisco that has parking figured out. It's a treat, but it won't make you shudder.
There are several songs that sound like The-Breeders-and-no-one-else-ever, and there are a few songs that explore new sounds and ideas (at least in the Kim Deal / Kelley Deal idiom, which includes the Amps and The Kelley Deal 6000 and a few others). It's well produced, in the sense that you can put the record on and let it run, with no jarring interruptions. I don't have a whole lot to say about it, but I have a generally pretty good feeling about the record. Perhaps you will like it.
Some Highlights:
"Overglazed" - the first song on Title TK was different and kind of memorable. The first song on Mountain Battles has been described as "not a song" by at least one other Breeders fan, but I enjoy it. I think it's a good lead into the record, whether or not you believe the lyric "I can feel it" constitutes a song.
"Night of Joy" - classic Breeders. If you liked anything on the first three Breeders records, you will probably like this. If this adverb even modifies this adjective, then it is even "slightly spooky."
"German Studies" - One of the harder tracks on the album, appropriately in German. But the vocals on this track are pure, pure Breeders. If you don't like this... it is possible that we can't be friends anymore. I just have so much less time for people than I used to. You have to draw your lines somewhere.
"Spark" - Could have been on Title TK and would have fit in pretty seamlessly. If this came on when I was out on the highway, it would calm me down.
"Walk It Off" - This is one of those songs where I like 90% of the song just ok, but every verse there is a run of about 5 seconds that I really, really like. I call these "Get Him Eat Him songs."
"It's the Love" - is not, despite the first 12 seconds, a Dinosaur Jr. song.
"Mountain Battles" - the title track, the last track on the record, and one of the most unusually instrumented songs on the record. But if you like Kim Deal's voice, you probably love this song. It's like she is standing behind you, singing into the back of your head.1
Rating: You should probably buy this record. I am 80% certain you should buy it.
There are two kinds of people in this world: the kind who like 4AD record covers and the kind who don't. Please use the image provided to sort yourself out.
1: Kim, I am available any time you wish to do this.
New this month from former Pixies frontman Charles Thomas is Seven Fingers... unless it's Svn Fngrs. It might be either. Also, you'll note that I didn't refer to this as a Black Francis record. It is, but at this point I'm so confused about what makes an album which... well, let's just say that it's easier to keep Stephin Merritt projects separate.
I was underwhelmed by the last record under this band name, Bluefinger, and I asked a lot of questions in that review about what made it a "Black Francis" record instead of a "Frank Black" record. I'm not going to coner that ground again. Instead, I'll just say that this record is definitely better.
It is only 7 songs long, and I got it for only $9, which is pretty good. Of the seven, we have, I think, 4 highlights:
"Garbage Heap," which is track 2, starts with some Pixies style instrumentation, and I guess you could even sell the verse as a Pixies song, but when you get to the chorus, we're talking about Frank Black, maybe even FB & The C's. But, as I've pointed out probably a hundred times, that's actually what I like best. So this is probably the second strongest track on the record.
"Half Man" is the shakiest entry on this list. It's about 2 and a half minutes long, and I like about 30 seconds of it enough to mention. It would have been the weakest song on, say, Dog In the Sand, but that's actually not terrible. I think anyone who doesn't like this is probably just going to say that it's boring.
"The Tale of Lonesome Fetter" took two or three listens to grow on me. The verses are weaker than the chorus, but I like this song.
"When They Come To Murder Me," the last track on the record, is probably the best of the seven songs. It's the one that should be a no brainer for Frank Black fans. If you like any of his other workk since, say, 1998, you'll probably like this (I allow for the existence of a fan who liked everything through Cult of Ray but nothing since, who may not go for this one.)
So I realize that that's not the strongest review, and after you read it, you're likely to reach the conclusion that this is a record for completionists, and everyone else would be better off spending $0.99 on one song on iTunes. That's a totally justified conclusion. But I feel good about the record nonetheless.
Rating: I feel good about the record, despite some weak songs.
2008 Begins with a bang, as the Magnetic Fields release their latest full length album, Distortion. The sound is different, the sound is heavier, but the songs are fantastic. Sure, my friend and former lead singer Rick says he likes the record best through his living room wall, where the sound is less harsh, but he is quick to admit that the songs are great.
The other big shock for fans of recent Stephin Merritt releases is that he splits singing duties on this record, something that he did on 69 Love Songs, to be sure, but I suppose we all considered that record an exception. Otherwise, it has been a long string of Merritt-only Magnetic Fields records: i, Charm of the Highway Strip, Get Lost, Holiday. Shirley Simms does a lot of the heavy lifting on the record.
A quick run down of my favorites from the 13 song record include "California Girls," "Old Fools," "Xavier Says," "Too Drunk to Dream," "The Nun's Litany," and "Courtesans." "Zombie Boy" almost makes it, but there is one line that really makes me cringe, which I will leave as an exercise to the reader. No obvious misses here, but I don't really need "Three-Way," the instrumental first track.
Fans of the Magnetic Fields should definitely pick this up. Most people considered i a missed step, but after a couple of listens, I believe most people will also consider Distortion a fine return to form. Me, I liked a lot of the tracks on i, and I consider this another fine record.
What: Jenn Grant's Orchestra For The Moon
How I found it: I saw a snatch of her song "Dreamer" on a documentary about the Weakerthans.
Why You Should Care: "Make It Home Tonight" is a perfect Jason Molina song... by someone else. Honestly, you will like this song. And "Dreamer." And the rest of it. Possibly the best debut record in a long time.
Where I have Been for the last month: Moving into a new apartment. Changing jobs. In Florida. The holidays. Not dead, not gone, not given up.
Last week I dusted off Stephen Chow's secret agent parody, From Beijing With Love. It isn't new, and it isn't well known, but hey, that's what the Hong Kong collection is for--stuff you just don't have.
Stephen Chow is best known here for Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, but he has been very prolific, and there is a large back catalog of his work available. One of his more recent efforts (prior to making it in the United States) is this spy movie.
The skull of a dinosaur is stolen by a man with bulletproof metal armor and a powerful golden gun. Declared a national treasure, it must be recovered at all costs, but for some reason the man in charge of resourcing picks pork butcher and reserve secret agent Stephen Chow (that may not be his name in this movie. I forget, but it usually is in his movies) despite his almost total incompetence. On the way to foiling the bad guy, Stephen meets and falls in love with a treacherous double agent, only to be betrayed.
Ok, so it's funny. But what's funny about it? Stephen Chow is a master of nonsense, and that humor abounds in the movie. At one point, going through his secret agent case, we discover that his shoe is really a hair dryer, his hair dryer is really a cordless shaver, his cordless shaver is really a hair dryer, and his mobile phone is really a cordless shaver. His gun first fires backwards and then fires forwards. He has a briefcase that launches him into the air, although not always at the right angle.
Subtitles and transfer are a little iffy, as is usually the case with his early Hong Kong works. Also, look out for ugly transvestites--the funniest thing in the world to Stephen Chow is ugly women.
Also recommended: God of Cookery, Flirting Scholar
Beowulf is an epic poem about a great Scandinavian hero, written in Anglo-Saxon (or Old English), over a thousand years ago in England. This translation, by Seamus Heaney, is pretty new and has been very well received.
Some notes on the story first, because why not: There is a great leader of Danes named Hrothgar, who builds a maginificent hall. Unfortunately, this disturbs a monster named Grendel, who, in revenge, takes to sneaking into the hall at night and mutilating sleeping men. Hrothgar's efforts to defend the hall are uneventful, and the happy place becomes sombre and empty. Eventually, the news reaches a great Geat warrior1 named Beowulf, who voyages with some warriors to Hrothgar's Aid. He takes on Grendel in single combat and rips his arm off. Grendel limps back to his mother's house to die, and his mother, enraged, comes back to the hall to get revenge. Beowulf follows her to the murky water she inhabits and fights her at the bottom, eventually defeating her and returning with Grendel's head as a trophy.2 Hrothgar rewards him happily and he sails away back to Geatland, where he eventually becomes king. Some years later, a dragon is aroused and Beowulf gives his life to defeat it. Then everyone gets really depressed, because they believe their land will eventually fall.3
The first part of the story, Grendel and Grendel's mom, that's good stuff. Good and epic and larger than life. The part with the dragon and 50 years later? Not so great. Feels kind of tacked on.
Now, a word on the translation: Beowulf is probably the best surviving work in old English, so there is a lot of nitpicking about translation and a lot of choice. The original has a rigid verse structure that makes verse translations difficult, and of course translating verse into prose inevitably means losing something. This particular translation has been quite popular and is definitely better than whatever old translation I read in high school. It is in verse, and it maintains some of the alliteration, and in fact is close enough to be printed with the old English on the facing page.
Read it.
1. I couldn't resist this one (great Geat)
2. At no point in this story did Angelina Jolie show up naked. I double checked. I admit that I can't read old English and had to rely on the translation, but there wasn't anything in that facing block that looked like the words "Angelina Jolie." In this respect I feel slightly lied to.
3. For the eventual fate of the Geat kingdom, see a fucking map.
I was oh so tempted to write this in three lines. I think I have a fixed layout here and everything, so it makes sense. It would have ended up something like:
Novels in Three Lines, given as a birthday present, was read in two days by Judah Nielsen, Campbell, CA. A happy birthday.
Unfortunately, that doesn't really convey much. What we have here is a collection of short news items that were written by Felix Feneon, a Frenchman, in a distinctive style. There are some 1200 of them, many involving stabbings, shootings, suicides, drownings, and acid scaldings.
Scheid, of Dunkirk, fired three times at his wife. Since he missed every shot, he decided to aim at his mother-in-law, and connected.
So what makes them novels?
Well, nothing more than a French pun, really. The same word, nouvelles, can be used to mean either novels or news, and the translator has taken the approach that these are the novels Feneon didn't write. Many of them could be expanded into short stories or novels, and there is no doubt that the author makes his style felt in these very short spaces, but they are, in fact, non-fiction.
When this was given to me, it had a post-it note on it that said "This is the ultimate toilet book--you can read three novels while you take a leak." That seems like one of the two good solid uses for the book, the other being, perhaps, a coffee table book. Or if you choose to read it cover to cover, it shouldn't take long. A couple of hours, perhaps.
A Dress A Day and Dictionary Evangelist
Dictionary editor Erin McKean gave a talk at eBay several months ago and I started reading her blogs immediately afterwards. I don't make dresses or know anything about dress patterns, but I do like her writing, and she does update regularly. Check out "The Secret Lives of Dresses" on her dressaday site. I read these every day.
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The Brothers Brick
This is a photo blog of LEGO MOCs (original creations). LEGO fans like acronyms, despite the fact that LEGO itself is not one. Worth checking up on.
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Bad Astronomy
Bad Astronomy is a great blog--when Phil is writing about Astronomy. He has a knack for finding and explaining beautiful pictures. I get at least one new desktop background a week from this site. He does spend a fair amount of time talking about politics and creationism, which puts a lot of readers off, and I'll admit that I skim or skip those posts. But there is a lot of great astronomy content here.
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Worse than Failure
The Daily WTF became "Worse than Failure" some time ago. It is an amusing read, but it is probably most amusing if you work in the software industry, and perhaps is not amusing at all if you have little or no exposure to programming. Still, there is a lot of WTF in bureaucracy, so a knowledge of Python is not necessary.
Title: The Elements of Typographic Style
Author: Robert Bringhurst
The story: Following the model set by Strunk and White in their Elements of Style, Bringhurst presents a series of dos and don'ts of typography, covering font selection, page layout, use of bold and italic fonts, numbering, running headers, and so on. There is an interlude for the history of typography, and the book ends with a selection of fonts of different types that he feels are worth looking at. Also covers Greek and Cyrillic alphabets, but has relatively little to say about fonts which cover, for instance, Chinese characters (no doubt a whole book could be written on that subject).
My take: I will admit that I am less interested in typography than the average owner of this book probably is--I do put a lot of text on the web, and I have some thoughts about that (a quick look at any of my writing [hey, there is a link over there <--] will show you that I use some css properties that many people ignore, increasing my line-height to give my characters a little more room to breathe), I am mostly an Elements junkie. Aside from the copy I was issued in college, I have a more recent edition, an illustrated, hardbound edition, and when I saw this, I was too tempted to pass it up. I read it cover to cover, and much of it was interesting.
Last thoughts: I was hoping that when I got to the list of noteworthy fonts I would find one that really appealed to me, but really the most attractive one to me, as they were layed out, was Futura, and I already knew I liked that one. I'm not sure what that says about me.
The Lord of the Rings is a book about hairy midgets by J.R.R. Tolkien, written, you know, just ages ago. The little guys are called "Hobbits," and they have some incredible adventures in a made up fantasy world called "Middle-earth."
The fun all starts when one old "hobbit," named Bilbo Baggins of all things, has a birthday party and puts on a magic ring that he stole from a nasty little midget called Gollum. The ring makes him disappear, to everyone's amazement, and he goes back home to plan one last adventure. Gandalf, a wizard, comes by and convinces him not to take the magic ring with him, because he thinks it is up to no good. So Bilbo leaves the ring in the care of his nephew, named Frodo (who told him these were good names? Maybe if your name is Jrr, you start to get crazy ideas about what names are good), and leaves Frodo in the care of the wizard, Gandalf. Gandalf later reveals to Frodo that the ring is no good™, and sends him on a quest to see some elves and determine what to do about it.
Frodo takes his best "hobbit" friends and goes on a journey that leads him through a scary forest and over rivers and hills, all the while pursued by evil ghost men who stab him, and manages to get to Rivendell (where the elves are) in time for their leader to heal his poisoned wound. Then he takes part in a council of men, elves, dwarves, and gandalfs, where they decide that the ring must be destroyed in order to defeat their great enemy, Sauron (I think this means "Lizard man"). There is much debate about who will carry the no good ring, but in the end, Frodo the "hobbit" volunteers. That very day he sets out with 8 other adventurers--three "hobbits", two men, one elf, one dwarf, one gandalf--to destroy the ring.
The fellowship comes to the land of some other elves, who give them presents and cornbread and boats, and then down the river to a fork in the road, where they have to decide where to go. One of the men decides he wants the power of the no good ring, and tries to take it from Frodo, and then everybody is attacked by orcs, and the group splits into two. Frodo and his gardener, Sam, go on to destroy the ring, and the rest of the party (except the bad man who is dead, and Gandalf who was killed by a whip monster) go on to the big kingdom of men in the south to prepare for war.
On the way to war, the big party meets Gangalf, who has come back from the dead even stronger than before (and in different clothes), and they fight another wizard, and they help some horsemen defeat a bunch of orcs, and they talk to trees. Then half of them go on to the war in the south while the remaining man in the party, who is secretly a descendant of kings, rounds up a bunch of ghosts to help protect the southern shores. Just in time, the king man gets to the battlefield with the ships he has won in battle, and the enemy is staved off. Then, in the wild hope that the ring will be destroyed in time, the party decides to mount a last desperate battle at the gates of the lizard man.
Meanwhile, Frodo and the other "hobbit" discover that they are being followed by the Gollum, and enlist him into their service as they attempt to get to the mountain where the no good ring was made. On the way they meet the brother of the bad man, and fight a giant spider, and spend a lot of time crossing terrible ruined lands, and Gollum betrays them and steals the ring for himself, but, well, it all works out in the end.
Finally, for some reason, there is a lot of genealogy in the book, dealing with the ancestors of the king man, and of dwarves, and a whole almanac of calendars and alphabets. This was my least favorite part of the book.
If you like to read about stuff that doesn't exist1, then you will probably like this book. There is some violence, but no sex. And considering every third person in the book is highly magical, there is very little magic. I'd say it is PG at worst, for its apocalyptic themes.
I understand that some movies were made about this, and that they were well received. Perhaps I will review them one day too.
1. See my review of "Harry Potter," a series of books about junior Gandalfs in school.
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Judah said:
Well, it's not Black Sheep Boy. But yeah, I'd say stick with it. read more
on The Stage Names -
Jessica said:
I need to give this album a few more listens, because it just didn't hit me the same way as... read more
on The Stage Names -
Jessica said:
Thanks, Judah. I've been meaning to get around and taking a listen. read more
on Quickly: The Tragic Treasury
That's the only sensible position to take. :) read more
on Quickly: The Tragic Treasury