[ Kiss. Death. Love. Come. arrives November 8th.]
Sickly be
Charlotte Gainsbourg – Me And Jane Doe
He spoke in tongues. Complete and utter babble is its only true description. The never approaching cul-de-sac of words and cliché chorus. And he’d speak them while waving cups full of tea through flailing arms – as if active at a podium – and it’d cause a shiver up her spine every time she would hear the faint thump of liquid hitting the cream toned carpet. Thump. Stain.
Are you prepared for death, friend? She asked this while lifting his legs to sweep away bits of bread and half-chewed pills and tiny balls of paper, formed when he’d tear strips from the newspaper and roll them up in his tongue, and then tried to spit or lob them into the open fire, but he didn’t have the energy to win. Even against his own self he’d lose. She’d ask this often, because it was an important question, but at no time in her recent memory had he understood or took notice.
“Does it matter?”
He had responded.
We got lucky and then time passed and we got unlucky. “Tell me one who had an ending any different.”
Startled by his fluidity and senses, she knew now was the time to approach his soul. She asked him was he ready and he said he was. Running blood; it’s a finite feature.
He lay stretched in the chair, kicked off and away his slippers, and adjusted the elastic on his pants which had tightened around a swollen stomach. She pressed it firmly against him and put a bullet through his temple.
She called the local police station, informed his youngest daughter that he had finally returned for brief moments and the opportunity could not be missed, cleaned up whatever she could before they came, and crossed his limp arms. She didn’t want to hassle anyone, not if she could help it. “Leave this room as neat as it was given to you,” she muttered. And she did so over and over until they came. [Purchase.]
I was like, “Oh.”
of Montreal – Our Riotous Defects (f/ Janelle Monáe)
If you put a human being underground with no access to sunlight, he’ll revert to a 25-hour sleep schedule.
Brad had learned that in a Psych class he audited once. Or he’d read it on wikipedia. Either way he was pretty sure it was true.
I mean, why else would he be up at 4am sipping a Jack and Pepsi? It made sense, really. Every day your body was denied an hour of sleep. Or wasn’t tired yet and wanted to stay up an hour more. Either way, no wonder everything was so off.
Surely this was to account for Bets turning into a crazy bitch a few months into their relationship. Maybe if they’d lived together underground after a nuclear apocalypse she would have been fine, singing in her husky voice as they toiled to recreate societal norms one 25-hour period at a time.
*sip*
Nah, she was probably just crazy.
[Buy False Priest because Rob says it’s pretty alright.]
(Picture drawn by Dave Eggers.)
PLAY
Frenchmen David Belle, son of “an acrobat and a hero fireman” according to The New Yorker, developed parkour in the 1990s after moving to a commune in Lisses. A practitioner of L’art du déplacement (the art of movement) known as traceur (traceuse for females) seeks to get from point A to point B in the most economical way possible. This requirement puts the discipline at odds with freerunning, a sport made famous by former Lisses resident and parkour original Sebastian Foucan. This spinoff of Belle’s brainchild allows, nay encourages, aesthetically pleasing actions, which sometime come at the expense of reaching a destination. Moving backwards is anathema to any traceur. And flips, while pretty, are not frequently inefficient.
The Internet transformed parkour from a fringe pursuit into a worldwide phenomenon. Belle appeared on BBC One in the promotional film, “Rush Hour.” In the short advert, he ran, jumped, and flipped – with purpose – through London before arriving home on his couch in time to watch television. The discipline spread from Britain to the rest of Europe and, inevitably, America. Belle, Foucan, and other traceurs played parts TV and in movies. (Daniel Craig chases the freerunning founder through a construction scene at the beginning of Casino Royale. Foucan, ironically, used a stunt double named Curtis during some of the shots.) Mark Toorock, founder of American Parkour and the country’s most visible proponent of the discipline, runs The Tribe (“Certified Masters of Astonishment”), a group that has appeared for Nike, ESPN, HBO, Mountain Dew, and other brands. If you vault it, the money will come.
Parkour’s rapid rise didn’t come without risks. Videos spread faster than the instructional manuals that didn’t exist, leading to injuries around the globe and even the death of two French boys. As it grew, however, the community focus of the practitioners ensured that new recruits received proper guidance. There have been accredited courses designed to teach the fundamentals. American Parkour’s website includes a series of articles detailing practice drills and exercises.
Despite the increased safety efforts, danger – of course – remains part of the appeal. In one of the most watched clips on YouTube, Belle falls while attempting what should be a simple, at least for him, vault over a concrete walkway. After discerning that the cameraman he nearly crushed is okay, Belle laughs off the ten-foot plummet and walks up the ramp, eager to try again. [Purchase.]
Review: Ra Ra Riot at Easy Street Records, Sept. 6, 2010
“Want to go to a free Ra Ra Riot concert Monday?” I texted.
“Who/what is a ra ra riot?” Ron, my brother’s friend, texted back.
“It’s a band. They play music. With instruments.” I’m a goddam riot alright. “Check YouTube to see if you’d like them.”
“Sounds indieish but not half bad. I’m down.”
“It’s at 7 in Queen Anne. Swing by my place at 6 for a drink before we head out.”
So Ron, some 6’4 future Marine, showed up at my place at 6:00 p.m. and we chugged Jack and Cokes and alit. In between the rows of CDs and vinyl at Easy Street Records about 125 people filled in. Ron and I stood behind the electronic section; I noticed some band called O O O.
Ra Ra Riot started promptly and played 20 minutes, even adding an extra song, or so the singer claimed, because we were “rowdy”.
The crowd was pretty subdued. But so was Ra Ra Riot. Without a drummer, the music lost its bite. Instead, fresh-faced youngsters fretted and bowed and plucked along on instruments merrily, sappily.
Maybe it was the high density of high schoolers at the show, including three girls standing next to us who giggled and ‘omigawd’ed their way through the show, but the band reminded me of high school. The violinist was the band nerd with thick glasses who you can never date because she’s actually pretty cute and way too talented for a deadbeat like you. The singer was the popular kid but with a sensitive side which got him laid all the time. The bassist was his slightly darker, quieter best friend. Et cetera.
“What’s with all the handsome grandsons in these rock band magazines? And what have they done with the fat ones? The bald and the goatee’d?”
Ron and I looked at each other after the set and shrugged. We both texted my brother, who adores Ra Ra Riot, to tell him how it went. Maybe he would have appreciated it more, would have savored the thickness of the strings, the whiskey textures, the sweet sentimentality.
Ron and I? We drove home and drank some more.
[Buy The Rhumb Line, which is pretty alright.]
WAITING FOR THE SIGNAL
Fanfarlo – Harold T. Wilkins or How To Wait For A Very Long Time
The Wilkins kid was weird. He would spend his evenings reading these dusty paperbacks he’d found in his grandmother’s attic and drawing pictures of Ra melting in a microwave made of wood. He wouldn’t speak with the neighbor’s kids and if they did cross paths he would yell shrinking heads, shrinking heads! at them until they ran away, sobbing.
[Buy Reservoir.]
That’s the man I am
Interpol, the album, by Interpol.
Success – Success is a long-play opener of fecund opera. Feverish trading guitars cocoon bass grinds of hypnotised dance; bass lines reminiscent of previous bouts (re: Turn On The Bright Lights) (For one here so close to his leave, Carlos D is ensuring fun is had.). “I’ve got two secrets, but I only told you [of] one. I’m not supposed to show you.” Interpol usher through Success, the albums shortest track, the zestful return, and, with it, lay early claim to the album’s strongest offering.
Memory Serves – The drudge (not limp) of Memory Serves serves (pardon me) only as waste to momentum, gathered by the work of the three and half minutes previous. Still, the drone is widescreen in its offering, noteworthy to be sure, and there’s enough divergence and adventure in Banks’ melodic offering to attain repeat interest. And it’s a love song, to be sure, “It would be so nice to take you. I only ever try to make you smile,” but not in the sense that Leif Erikson is a love song, “She says it helps with the lights out. Her rabid glow is like Braille to the night.”
Summer Well – Oh, the sensory opposite of torture. “All the while, the protests have shined the same, but you will never notice it’s all right.” Unlike the Interpol of a recent past, and like the trend of Interpol the LP, the emotion is only accessible if the notes and melody provide it. There are no lasting drives, no higher pier to catch, no faked surge to raise your gut. There’s comfort in the plateau. It’s lacking false sentiment.
Lights – “Maybe I like to stray… but keep it clean.”
Barricade – The initial rhythmic section tickles excitement and then, too soon, you’ll feel as though nothing fits. It takes time so coerce each melody and instrument track into working as one entity. “I did not take to analysis, so I had to make up my mind.” Barricade is eclectically sullen, but sprite and fresh in approach. It is neither the strongest track, nor the unappreciated first single it once was.
Always Malaise (The Man I Am) – “I will act in a certain way, I will control what I can, that’s the man I am.” A far-reaching track, splintered into two: the quirky, superfluously darkened side-A, and the softening, blood-rush-warmth of side-B – backed by gun-fire drumming, reminiscent of the “aim” “fire!” training scene, charging towards its abrupt end, making way for…
Safe Without – … a Waits-like, well deep, detracted and muffled beat that quickly looms into a composed musical shedding of melancholy and repeat vocal expression, “I am safe without it.” Whatever “it” is, we’re no wiser five minutes on. It’s Interpol, lead by Banks, at their most cantankerous. Remarkably expressive, even by vague means, through every pour of sound.
Try It On – A quickened piano riff that develops through to a computerised cluster of sound, whistles of distance, and dance floor drumming provide a rapturous jump forward onto a modern field for Interpol, even if, ironically, it implements the old EP speak ramblings of Banks, “Somewhere to stay. There’s nowhere to stay.”
All Of The Ways – This track is coarse, yet the chorus offers moments of dramatic rises in sound, as if bombs were exploding beneath the belly of the track. “Who is this guy? Does he know I’ll wait for all-time?”
The Undoing – Panoramic, if not spiritual, with softened Church organ, ingenuous lyrical offering – in Castilian Spanish – atop a layer of trumpet glaze. They are indeed altered. “Please, please, the place we’re in now.” Indeed, the place Interpol are in now. The freshness of ideas and profligacy of elements that this album accommodates, and without sleeve-tricks, too, is generally missed, and was missed on my first adventures in, only to be found in the midst of several spins and drills of listening later. It’s worth pushing through. Aren’t Interpol always worth the push? [Purchase.]
All of my dreams fall like rain
He put out his cigarette and sighed.
He dumped the ice from his drink out on the street and went back inside.
Through the sheen of the window, he could see three girls in bikini bottoms and t-shirts smoking and giggling. They were barefoot and drunk.
In Google he typed, “How does one make life decisions?”
Some guy was yelling, telling the girls to get the fuck out of there, that they weren’t welcome at his apartment, the drunk bitches.
216,000,000 results.
He cleaned the bathroom, swept the living room, dusted the shelves, scrubbed the kitchen.
He flicked on the garbage disposal and jammed the brush down into it just to see what would happen.
[Buy Rain Dogs, please.]
•• / •-•• — •••- •
bzzzzrp. program loading – 1%. beep. beep beep. 17%. whrrrrrrrrrrrrrring. 56%. initialising thought matrix. copying emotional database. 72%. installing How_To_Love.php. saving back-up to hard disk. 99%… 100%.
“Welcome to Earth, android. We hazard a guess that this is your first time. Don’t be alarmed. The pink-fleshed bipeds strolling along the ground are mostly harmless and stupid, though be aware that their stupidity can sometimes lead to grave acts of violence. But they are mostly searching for love and affection. This is why you are here. You will love better than any before. You will care for your Other Half with the utmost compassion and respect, even if that means running out to the corner store in the early hours of the morning in only your bedwear to buy a loaf of bread for breakfast. You have all the tools necessary. All programs have been installed successfully. Good luck.”
[Buy Relayted.]
When you’re down down down get up up up in the clouds. [Buy.]
(photo by Chenie)