"A fast-paced, suspenseful dystopian picaresque, part Huck Finn and part bizarro-world Swiss Family Robinson..."
---Kirkus
Long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and finalist for the Crawford Award. Title short story listed for the 2000 O. Henry award.
What Kanye West’s new set of songs remind me most of–and this might be highly idiosyncratic on my part–is Fleetwood Mac’s 1979 classic album, Tusk. Easily their best in my opinion. It blends together the manicness of Lindsey Buckingham’s jangling pace and spooling intricacies with the serene, ethereal harmonies of Christie and Stevie. For Kanye, [...]
Sat, December 11 2010 » Music » 1 Comment
Your mileage may vary highly, and the rankings especially at the top are more or less arbitrary. If you want that “descending/ascending” order variation, you might want to start at the bottom. 1 Discovery, Daft Punk (2001) A perfect amalgamation of 1983 and the 23rd century–which, come to think of it, is the blueprint for [...]
Sat, November 7 2009 » Music » No Comments
I should be able to get in the spirit of Van Vogt blogging once I get the novel handed in, but I wanted to blog a bit about THRU YOU by Kutiman. I’m sure a lot of you have come across this already. Aside from the amazing music mashed up from various YouTube sources, which [...]
Sat, April 11 2009 » Music » No Comments
Can’t wait for the new Tommy Stinson album. Wait, this is the sequel to “All Shook Down”, right? Uh… (But seriously, I’ll probably like it. And by “it”, I mean, a half to 2/3rds of the songs on the album, which is about as much as you can hope for these days. “Tusk” — the [...]
Wed, November 19 2008 » Music » No Comments
It makes sense, to me, that Girl Talk is from Pittsburgh–he’s making a little nest of shiny musical things from the rubble of industrialism aka the pop industry. I can’t get enough of Feed the Animals, working as an album I can’t quite explain. So I’ve been busy, laying low (like, in a tunnel or [...]
Mon, July 14 2008 » Music » No Comments
I sometimes wonder, in the back of my subconscious, why it’s hard to take Pitchfork at all seriously, i.e., as a serious source of music criticism in the early 21st century. Then I remember that they published this review. And then it all makes sense.
Sat, June 21 2008 » Music » No Comments
From here: “Among at least a subset of (the younger) musicians and fans, this class separation has made indie more openly snobbish and narrow-minded. In the darkest interpretation, one could look at the split between a harmony-and-lyrics-oriented indie field and a rhythm-and-dance-specialized rap/R&B scene as mirroring the developing global split between an internationalist, educated comprador [...]
Sun, December 16 2007 » Music » 2 Comments
So Joanna Newsom’s Ys has been getting quite a lot of praise lately for its lush, orchestral iconoclasm and symbology. The praise for this album has been pretty breathless. But I wonder whether this is the real deal or another manifestation of “The Sideways Effect”. I’m just suspicious, in that way, of effusively praised works [...]
Mon, February 12 2007 » Fiction, Music » 3 Comments
Okay, some linkage; this IM interview with a music publicist has some interesting food-for-thought in terms of publishing–perhaps? Or is it apples and oranges? Excerpts below: “VivSavage1984: ok, so what about pitchfork? do they really have the power to make/break a band? MusicPublicityBigWig: depends MusicPublicityBigWig: their power is sort of the opposite of the major [...]
Fri, January 12 2007 » Fiction, Music » 1 Comment
How Justin Timberlake’s latest album is slash. On a related, somewhat inverted note, Busta Rhymes started to get less interesting when he stopped doing cosplay.
Tue, October 24 2006 » Music » 1 Comment
I just had my head blown. I had no idea that “Fascination,” one of my top-5 favorite Bowie songs, was co-written by Luther Vandross. It makes total sense, esp. considering its placement on Young Americans.
Tue, October 10 2006 » Music » No Comments
Wed, May 24 2006 » Music » No Comments
So I’ve been using Pandora at work f0r music a lot. Very fun. I like mixing and matching in a single station. I had an MIA/Scary Monsters-era Bowie/Daft Punk/Annie station going that I quite liked–but eeevil lurked within. I got up to go to the mailroom, and when I got back I saw that the [...]
Tue, January 10 2006 » Music » 3 Comments
Wait, I’m not in Glasgow. Damn it. DAMN IT! OK, I guess I have to non-con blog. And resort to bad title puns. I was listening–speaking of which!–quite inadvertently to the “new” Alanis Morrissette acoustic album of Jagged Little Pill, and if there isn’t a more useless album on the planet, I don’t know what [...]
Fri, August 5 2005 » Fiction, Music, Poetry » 4 Comments
I despise Coldplay, so luckily there’s an anti-coldplay article in the New York Times that helps to assauge my despisingness in what shapes up to be the Week of Wallow, er, Josh-Groban-with-Guitars, er, Coldplay.
Mon, June 6 2005 » Music » 4 Comments
I’ve been listening a lot lately to Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993) and–I can’t believe I’m saying this–but I think it’s their best album. Better than Parklife even. The guitar-work is just insane.
Fri, April 15 2005 » Music » 1 Comment
And on a totally random subject–”Wait” by White Lion has to be one of the most underrated pop songs of all time. With all the late-metal context circa 1989 swept away, the song is pure Big Star.
Thu, November 4 2004 » Music » No Comments
And speaking of Tusk, The Twilight Singers have a great version of the Buckingham-penned “What Makes You Think You’re the One” out.
Tue, September 14 2004 » Music » No Comments
Listening to Tusk–not only a good album but a brilliant album. Lindsey’s parts are easy to like, of course, but it’s Christie’s songs that lull you into a false sense of calm. And then you realize her songs are really unnerving when paired against Lindsey’s cokeapaloozas. Oddly, it’s Stevie (if anyone) who doesn’t hold up [...]
Sun, September 5 2004 » Music » No Comments
“Self-publishing is only for when you can’t wait for your friends to put your stuff out, when you don’t trust your friends to do it right, or when you simply have no friends.” –David Larsen (from “Symptom of the Universe”) *How great is this? I’m listening to Prince’s “Pop Life” (from Around the World in [...]
