ShoalsFest 2021

I bought my ticket to ShoalsFest 2021 back when COVID seemed like it was going to be in the rear-view mirror. It was in that brief window of optimism before the Delta variant came through, when we thought things would get back to normal. A lot of folks I knew from around the country bought tickets, too. This was going to be kind of a grand gathering after none of us had seen each other in person for so long. As the months moved onward, though, more and more people I knew dropped out. And it was hard to blame them, as Alabama didn’t have the best COVID situation. But I and a few other friends were already from states with less than stellar COVID stats. It would be, as one friend put it, “like traveling from one end of the dog to another.” So we loaded our vaccinated selves into the car and headed down.

And we had a great time.

The two-day Shoals Fest is the brainchild of songwriter Jason Isbell. He hails from the area around Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and had started the festival in 2019 before COVID hit. He had to cancel the 2020 festival, before soldiering on with the 2021 version. It’s situated in a small grassy park on the banks of the Tennessee River, and is one of the more laid-back festivals I’ve ever been to. Part of that may have been due to the fact that some people probably decided not to attend. Saturday, while it had a good crowd, didn’t seem at capacity, and Sunday’s threat of Biblical rain probably kept more people away. So there was plenty of room to move around; very short lines (if any) for drinks, food, or portapotties; and a great vibe.

Both nights kicked off with a short set for the kids by Farmer Jason (aka Jason Ringenberg of Jason and the Scorchers fame). On Saturday night, he was followed by Cedric Burnside, who laid down killer hill country blues with just a single thunderous drummer behind him. Amanda Shires offered up her own rock-filled set, and soul legend Candi Staton absolutely killed it with a set that contained hits from her early days all the way to her disco era.

After that, it was time for Lucinda Williams. I’d forgotten that Williams had suffered a stroke back in November of 2020, so it was jarring to see her led out by one of her crew to a chair at the front of the stage. She addressed the issue head-on, explaining to people about her stroke and her recovery. She was in fine voice, sounding just like she always had. She missed a couple of lyrics, but it was no big deal. The crowd rallied around her, and the band (as loud and rocking as Lucinda Williams’s bands always are) played in what can only be described as a protective fashion, making sure what few lapses there felt as seamless as possible. Williams stood up for the last couple of songs, and it was quite a performance.
Saturday night finished up with Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit. I’ve seen Isbell over a half-dozen times, but this was easily the best he’s ever sounded. Isbell’s mixes (at least when I’ve seen him) have often had trouble separating his vocals from the music, which is a problem for a singer-songwriter with lyrics as good as Isbell’s. But this night’s mix was flawless and clear. It was a fairly mellow set, and we joked that we must be getting “NPR Jason” on this night because he’d for sure be rocking the next night when the slate was overflowing with full-on rock bands.

Sunday, after the intro Farmer Jason set, kicked off with the Pine Hill Haints. The Haints make good use of instruments like mandolin, accordion, fiddle, and washboard to create a rock sound full of Southern Gothic singing saw weirdness. Not all of their stuff works for me, but I’ve found them increasingly more intriguing. I think they’re circling in on something special. Sunday was under the threat of crazy storms, and it started to sprinkle during the Haints set. Thankfully, that passed and the weather cleared up to be a gorgeous day. Just over the river, you could see the storms passing on the other side of the ridge, barely missing us.

Next, it was my first time seeing Centro-Matic, who were reuniting here after disbanding in 2014. Isbell sat in with them, playing along on a gold-top Les Paul. The Centro-Matic set was loud, brash, and cathartic. The people I was with, who’d seen the band many times, raved about how amazing the set was. One thing I noticed was that every time the drummer went off, and he went off a lot, the security guards would turn around and nod approvingly, as if to say, “this guy is layin’ it down!”

Slobberbone hit the stage next. Another band I’d never had the chance to see before, I was really looking forward to this one. I think Brent Best is such an underrated songwriter, and that band can unleash some ragged Replacements-level rock with the best of them. The sound was perfect, probably better than the band has had in many of the clubs they’ve played over the years. Again, I was with people who’d seen the band countless times, who had stories about the band playing through thunder storms, playing for three or four hours, etc. I had nothing to compare this set to, but I loved every second of it, and wished it could have been longer than the truncated 45-minute sets that everyone other than Isbell was getting. Perfect ending to the set with a raucous run-through of “Placemat Blues.”

The Drive-by Truckers were next, and I don’t know what it is about that band that confounds the best sound crews. For the first time that weekend, the sound was muddy and inconsistent. Or maybe it was just where I was sitting. Some of my friends in the pit said it sounded fine (I’d escaped the crush of the pit at this point to go sit in my lawn chair). Maybe I was just sitting in some weird sound dead zone. At any rate, the sound improved over the course the Southern Rock Opera-heavy set. As expected, Isbell came out to join them on a couple of songs: “Heathens” and “The Day John Henry Died.” The band also brought out Patterson Hood’s father David Hood, whose bass playing was an integral part of the Muscle Shoals sound, to play bass on Eddie Hinton’s “Everybody Needs Love.”

As on Saturday, Isbell closed out Sunday night as well. Somehow, his set seemed even more mellow than the night before. Whether it was because he didn’t want to try to top the impossible heights of a set like Centro-Matic’s, or because he knew the rock was coming later, the set was just subtly more low-key. We did get an amazing rendition of “Elephant,” which I haven’t often heard Isbell play. The main set closed with the always-rousing “Ain’t Never Gonna Change” and a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” (I can’t remember in what order). Then it was time for the encore. Few things on this Earth are better than loud guitars. Except maybe loud guitars with dumb lyrics. And even better than that are loud guitars with smart lyrics. The Truckers’ Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley came out for “Outfit” and “Decoration Day.” The old Drive-by Truckers songs seem to be becoming more of a rarity in Isbell’s sets, so it was thrilling to hear these two songs with a total of four guitars. A perfect, rousing close to a loud night, and to a great weekend.

Can’t wait for 2022.

Notes:

1. If you feel safe seeing a concert these days, jump on the chance. The musicians are soooo glad to be back on stage. There’s none of the burnout yet that you’d associate with long tours and the grind of the road. They are feeling fired up and inspired.
   
2. Middle-aged men probably like to think they’re above petty concerns like fashion, etc. but let me tell you, they bring out their t-shirt game at music festivals. The usual ban on wearing shirts advertising the band that’s playing that night seemed to be off the table, but the most egregious sin was probably wearing the same shirt as someone else. There was very little of that, as there were some obscure shirts out there. I can just see these guys opening the t-shirt vault at home, pulling out their tour t-shirt from 1990 and thinking, “Yeah, this is the good stuff right here.” My own wife says she’s never seen me try on t-shirts beforehand like I did for this trip. I told her it was to see which ones were most comfortable, but I think she sees through me.
   
3. Single Lock Records was doing the work this weekend. A small label out of Florence, Alabama, Single Lock is the home of ShoalsFest performers Cedric Burnside and The Pine Hill Haints. They also hosted a Friday night party at Singin’ River Brewery featuring Duquette Johnston, the Prescriptions, and Rock Eupora. A really fun showcase, and the Single Lock folks were friendly and enthusiastic every time I ran into them.
   
4. We wish we’d been able to spend more time in the area, as there’s plenty to see in those parts. Helen Keller’s birthplace is in nearby Tuscumbia, there’s an Indian Mound park and museum nearby, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Rosenbaum House, and the neo-classical styled Wilson Dam is seriously impressive. There’s also, of course Muscle Shoals Sounds Studios and Fame Recording Studios, where so much amazing music was made. We didn’t think about the Shoals Fest weekend really packing the tours full, so we weren’t able to tour either studio. Still, we sufficiently plundered the gift shops. Muscle Shoals Studio is tiny, so amazingly tiny.

A favorite song from 2020: “Mary, the Submissing Years”

John Prine died back in April, and in the way of time passing in 2020, that seems like both yesterday and like a lifetime ago. Prine’s death from COVID-19 will always be a huge musical loss, as every time you hear the weathered empathy in his voice, you realize what was lost.

When Prine kicked off something of a comeback in 1991 with his The Missing Years album, one of its obvious standout tracks was “Jesus: the Missing Years.” Think of it as a musical sibling to Christopher Moore’s 2002 novel Lamb: both works that put tongue firmly in cheek and ask, “So just what did the Son of God get up to all those years we don’t know about? Probably a little bit of trouble.”

It’s a song that initially seems like a goof, but like the best Prine songs, heart runs beneath the surface.

Elizabeth Cook comes from that part of the Nashville music world that took great inspiration from Prine. Her song “Mary, the Submissing Years” takes the heart and loss of Prine’s song as a starting point. Written before Prine’s death, there’s humor to be found in her affectionate response, but the song also paints a vivid portrait of a modernized Mary living in Chattanooga and just trying to get by. In spirit and execution, it feels like the perfect tribute.

Sweet Songs Never Last Too Long

You won’t catch me defending the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (apart from the fun first one) much, but one moment in World’s End always stuck with me.  Faced with the corpse of the last Kraken, Captains Jack Sparrow and Barbossa have the following exchange:

Barbossa: The world used to be a bigger place.

Sparrow: The world’s still the same. There’s just less in it.

That’s kind of become my mantra as the world continues to sand the edges off of — or do away with — so many quirky, unique things.

“The world’s still the same. There’s just less in it.”

I don’t know how others feel, but my world just got less interesting and less full with the loss of two things: John Prine and the Shutdown Fullcast.

Prine died on April 7, 2020 of Covid-19.  When it comes to John Prine, I’m still struggling for words even two weeks after his death. I’ve read tribute after tribute, but nothing quite captured what he meant to me.  And I guess that’s part of what made him so great: everyone has their own John Prine.  For me, it was the way you could hear the smile on his face in songs like “In Spite of Ourselves” or “Grandpa Was a Carpenter”.  Or the way he dropped the sad, lonely hammer of lines like “C’mon baby, spend the night with me” in “Six O’Clock News”.  My all-time favorite song of his, though, might be “Mexican Home.” I mean, just look at this:

It got so hot, last night, I swear
You couldn’t hardly breathe
Heat lightning burnt the sky like alcohol
I sat on the porch without my shoes
And I watched the cars roll by
As the headlights raced
To the corner of the kitchen wall

That’s the stuff right there.  After he died, I naturally binged on his songs for a few days and they were a true comfort.  I first discovered Prine in the late ‘80s, getting to see him in a small club called Goatfeathers in Columbia, SC, and I’ve been a devoted fan ever since.  More than any other songwriter (with perhaps the exception of Jason Molina, which may tell you something about my mental wiring), Prine’s music felt like home.

 

 

Note: If you’re not familiar with Prine, go straight to his first live album, which does away with much of the Nashville polish of his early albums in favor of a more stripped-down approach. To me, many of the versions on this record are definitive.  “Angel from Montgomery” (with Bonnie Raitt), an aching and pensive “Blue Umbrella,” “Sam Stone,” “Hello in There,” it’s all there, most of it delivered with that gentle finger-picking style he came to be  known for.

 

The Shutdown Fullcast died on April 21, 2020 of corporate stupidity.  It might seem strange to eulogize a podcast that used the gateway drug of college football to lure you into what was basically just four wickedly smart and clever people who loved each other’s company, rambling on for about an hour each week about this or that irreverent and crazy thing.  Who would win in a land war between the SEC East and SEC West? Which coaches and college programs can be matched to which Bible stories? What would it sound like if LSU coach Ed Orgeron read poetry? What if Buzz Aldrin had just left Neal Armstrong on the moon?

With the recent furloughs at Vox media, the Shutdown appears to be no more.  Spencer Hall and Jason Kirk are gone, and while I’d pay good money just to hear Ryan Nanni and Holly Anderson do their own thing, the loss of Hall and Kirk represents a chemistry that can’t be replaced.

 

To a lesser degree, I’ve been in the kind of situation where the Shutdown crew now find themselves. You luck into a job with interesting and smart people, whose company you enjoy, where you actually enjoy going to work, and you ride that as long as you can. Eventually, it ends, and you spend the subsequent years trying to recapture that magic, although you rarely do.  I was lucky enough to use the connections from that one great job to get jobs with some of those same people in other places, but it was never the same.  Something was always different; perhaps it was unrealistic expectations on my part.  At any rate, I’d been thinking about this while I was listening to the Fullcast’s final episode when Jason started talking about the joy of finding “misfit minds” like his own, and how you should hold onto that as long as you can if you ever find yourself in that situation.  I can only shout a loud “amen” to this; my wife and I still lament the loss of that first “great crew,” and that was 20-25 years ago!

The Shutdown made me laugh.  On the page, those folks were plenty funny and interesting at SB Nation and then Banner Society.  Hall’s writing on college football, starting for me with this piece about an epic Jadeveon Clowney hit, dragged me back into enjoying college football as a sport full of not only athletic achievement but also one full of madmen, bag men, charlatans, and scandal.  One of my favorite Tuesday pastimes was to roll into my favorite Mexican restaurant after work and enjoy tacos while reading gleefully niche Hatin’ Ass Spurrier columns that Hall often co-wrote with the others.  And then there’s Hall’s epic piece, “Buffalo,” his kick-off to the 2016-17 season, that works its way into a discussion of CFB’s inherent violence.  I’m a big fan of Nanni’s, Anderson’s, and Kirk’s writing as well (I even sent an email to Nanni once thanking him for the moral clarity with which he wrote about Baylor football), but I have to give special props to Hall.  His writing, at its best, dances on the edge of being a little too much but manages to juuuuust pull back; he’s a unique and vibrant voice.

But perhaps more importantly for me, personally, the Shutdown came and existed at just the right time for me.  Let’s face it: the world is a trash fire right now, and my inclination (for better or worse) has been to withdraw into the comfort and joy of my immediate family (perhaps one reason for the long-running cobwebbiness of this site), where I’m engaged in the parent’s job of raising my own crew of misfit minds.  The Shutdown Fullcast was one of the few things outside of that which could reliably bring a smile, and more often, a genuine belly laugh.   It’s hard to make me laugh out loud – I’m just a jaded and depressed old cuss — but good lord, this crew could make me do it.  I must have listened to that Buzz Aldrin moon segment a half dozen times, and I never stopped laughing.

But nothing gold can stay, so all I can do is keep track of these folks and read/listen to whatever they produce going forward.  I’m already signed up and ready for Jason Kirk’s Vacation Bible College newsletter and podcast, which promises to be a lot of fun.  Who knows? Perhaps there will be more Banner Society/Shutdown Fullcast greatness in the future.  In the case of the Fullcast, it sounds like maybe not.  But surely Hall and Kirk will get picked up somewhere; they’re just too damned good.

And I guess if there’s a way to tie Prine and the Fullcast together, it might involve a constantly flowing stream of creativity. Prine, who started out in his 20s with an impossibly wise writer’s voice, found that throat cancer granted him the physically weathered old man’s voice to match the material, but his career and writing stayed a steady course for most of his life, and he just kept on keepin’ on.  With the Banner Society gang, the demands of daily publishing resulted in output that probably was less consistent than they would have sometimes liked, but it always had that youthful, excited charge of “let’s try this crazy, stupid thing.”  And as Jason Kirk put it in the final episode, stupid can be fun, and it can be good.   And I’ll add that in these times, stupid is damned necessary.  Besides, you can’t know if something works if you don’t try it.  In my own creative output, I’ve struggled with both maintaining that steady discipline and with basking in the lively energy of following a crazy idea to its conclusion.

So in the end, I’m grateful I got to experience both Prine and the Banner Society/Fullcast gang at full strength.  But I’m also just sad and pissed off. Pissed off because it didn’t have to end this way in either case, and sad that there won’t be much, if anything, in the way of new Prine or Fullcast.  Sure, there will probably be at least one posthumous Prine album, and the Shutdown gang will obviously get together for this or that, or to help out with each other’s projects.  But in both cases, a unique spot in time is gone, and something unique and personal is gone.

The world’s still the same. There’s just less in it.

Brittany Howard – “Stay High”

Nothing major to say here as I get back into posting. Just really enjoy this new Brittany Howard song (and the video’s got Terry Crews!).  Personally, I enjoyed the Prince-like approach the Alabama Shakes took on their last record, Sound & Color, but I was apparently in the minority there.  But this is a really nice piece of laid-back Southern soul.  Besides, I’m a sucker for anything where the world starts moving in time to the music (don’t even get me started on the movie Baby Driver).

 

Snap Judgment Presents: Spooked

At this year’s Dragon Con (my first!), I attended a panel on supernatural fiction and stories that included Cherie Priest.  Priest is the author of many a fine novel, but I’m partial to Family Plot (an architectural salvage company tackles a haunted house) and Wings to the Kingdom (modern-day tale in which the Civil War ghosts at the Chickamauga battlefield are disturbed by something larger and more menacing).   I’ve only just started Maplecroft (reportedly a Lovecraftian take on Lizzie Borden), but it looks to be a lot of fun as well.

During this panel, Priest made an interesting comment about ghost stories: when someone is telling you their own ghost story, it usually just kind of peters out because it doesn’t have a “punchline” or satisfactory resolution.  It’s usually something along the lines of “so, um, yeah, that’s something that happened to me.”

That’s something that stayed in my mind as I listened to the stories that have been released so far on Snap Judgment Presents: Spooked.  Snap Judgment is a storytelling podcast hosted by Glynn Washington.  During its early days, it (like any storytelling podcast) struggled to get out from beneath the monolithic shadow of This American Life.  Since then, it’s become its own equally satisfying listen.

The Spooked offshoot offers ghost stories.  In the parent show’s tradition, these are supposedly true stories and for the most part, they avoid the unsatisfying endings that Priest talked about.  These are almost without fail well-told, professionally presented ghost stories, often with background sound effects that add to the creepiness.  Ghost children, haunted dolls, curses, strange desert goings-on, road trips that go over the border to places not on the map.  You could argue that these are all tropes that we’ve read or heard many times, but the best stories here have unique twists or elements that make them great fun to listen to.  I will say that one story struck me as almost too tight and well-constructed; it almost felt like an audio dramatization of a Twilight Zone episode, it was so perfect.  Maybe it’s true; maybe it’s not.  The narrator’s delivery drips with convincing sincerity, though, and wherever the truth lies, it’s a good ‘un.

Give the series a listen if you’re looking for some spooky stories this (or really, any) month.

Link to the Snap Judgment Presents: Spooked site with episodes:

http://snapjudgment.org/All-Spooked-Episodes

 

 

Trick ‘r Treat

Hi all!  This marks the first post in what I hope to be a regular series of posts for October. Probably won’t be daily, ’cause I haven’t been able to pull that off since I started this cobwebby site.  Be that as it may, it’s time to blog/write again, and it’s October, so it’s time to talk spooky stuff. Over the course of October, I want to highlight songs, movies, stories, etc. that I really enjoy and that put me in a Halloween mood.

First among these is 2007’s Trick ‘r Treat, a movie that hit so many of my horror movie sweet spots.  It consists of interlocking tales that all take place on a single Halloween night.  A serial killer goes on the hunt; revelers converge for a party in the woods; a group of kids hit the town’s front porches like normal but have malicious plans for one of their group; a couple flouts Halloween traditions; a hermit gets visited by his past — all told with humor and energy, and shown via some seriously strong imagination and cinematography.  I mean, I want this yard:

If I ever get my Halloween night short story published, it will have a scene that owes its existence to this beautiful yard.

My favorite thing about the movie, apart from the fact it’s a lot of fun, is that it embraces Halloween as a night when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest.  There may be human killers walking around, but supernatural beings are on the prowl as well.  Those old traditions became traditions for a reason, because they kept people safe from what’s out there.

Trick ‘r Treat finds clever ways to bring its storylines together, and it has a twist on one classic tale that I, as a folklore-loving English major, should have seen coming.  But I didn’t, and I loved it all the more for surprising me!

One thing that turns some people off about Trick ‘r Treat is that it allows violence to happen to some of its kids — most of it thankfully off-screen and in one case, on screen as the kid dies and then later when we see his body (it’s one of the film’s gorier scenes).  That’s apparently something writer/director Michael Dougherty fought for, though, when the studio wanted him to cast the film with telegenic older kids/young adults to appeal to the lucrative teen market.  I think he made the right choice, juxtaposing what is supposedly a kids’ holiday with much older and darker traditions.   And to be fair, plenty of adults get what’s coming to them, too.

That’s just some top-shelf Halloween night craziness!

Note: In looking up some stuff for this post, I found out that Michael Dougherty also directed 2015’s Krampus, which I would have ignored, but it seems to be getting some good word of mouth. Now, knowing Dougherty directed it, I really need to check it out.

NoteNote: Don’t confuse this movie with 1986’s Trick or Treat, which blends rock music, deals with the devil, and horror, but which doesn’t deliver the goods nearly as well as Trick ‘r Treat.

 

Another year, huh?

A first post of 2016, actually in a very early part of 2016!  Last year was a poor one for posting, as so many real-life situations took over my mental energies.  On the one hand, I started finding a lot of energy for my own creative writing, finishing several stories and poems, and even selling one of each.  On the other, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer in January of 2015 and, after a round of chemo and radiation, passed away in July.  I’m sure the 2nd one fed the 1st one, as I’m sure my brain needed an escape from what was obviously a very difficult time.

So this post will be a bit scattershot, and probably not in keeping with the theme this blog has followed so far, which is a focus on folklore in music.  I’m rethinking that focus, because I think its narrow nature prevented me from posting as often as I liked. I think if I post about more general things as well, including some music that might not fit the site’s initial mission statement, I might get more done.  So with that said, let’s just do some lists!

My 10 Favorite Records from 2015

1) Josh Ritter – Sermon on the Rocks

So much energy and joy in this one; Ritter’s always hyper-verbal, but this time, it feels like it’s because he can barely contain himself.

 

2) Mountain Goats – Beat the Champ

When I gave this one a first listen as an album, it didn’t blow me away.  Maybe I was too focused on the wrestling angle.  But every time I heard one of these songs on the radio by itself, I thought to myself, “That’s one of the best songs he’s written in a long time, and I like how he uses wrestling as a metaphor.”   Went back to the album and loved it.

 

3) Natalie Prass – Natalie Prass

Kate Bush, Dusty Springfield, and Harry Nilsson all rolled up into one.  Gorgeous stuff, and there’s a live EP of some of these songs on Spotify with rougher edges that’s equally good.

 

4) Kristin Diable – Create Your Own Mythology

Don’t know much about her yet, as this one was recommended late in the year by a friend.  Great voice, great vintage sound.

5) Andrew Bryant – This Is the Life

Comparisons to Jason Molina’s music, which is my musical version of home and comfort food all rolled into one, jumped Bryant’s record to the top of my “to listen to” pile (even though I should have already been checking it out, since I’m a Water Liars fan). So glad I did. This is great, thoughtful late-night stuff.

 

6) Kasey Musgraves – Pageant Material

Even in a country genre that’s defined by wordplay, Musgrave’s lyrics stand out.  “Biscuits” is probably my least favorite song on the album, but it’s apparently the only one with a video.

 

7) Los Lobos – Gates of Gold

These guys are so consistently good that it’s easy to take them for granted.  At this point in their career, they seem incapable of making a bad album.

 

8) Calexico – Edge of the Sun

Their earlier forays into more conventional pop songwriting are paying big dividends now, and Edge of the Sun finds them successfully merging it with the border influences that have always defined their sound.

 

9) Jason Isbell – Something More than Free

Perhaps not as strong as his solo career-making Southeastern, but that’s a pretty high bar.  Very strong.

 

10) Bohannons – Black Cross, Black Shield

For when the late-night demons can only be beaten back by loud, distorted guitars.

 

Movies I Saw in 2015 (In No Order)

• Grand Budapest Hotel – Almost, but not quite, overtakes Moonrise Kingdom as my favorite Wes Anderson film
• Maleficent – Meh.
• You’re Next – Home invasion horror with the twist of the “final girl” having been raised by survivalist parents.  Some good twists and turns in this one, although I thought the ending was a bit of a let-down.
• Mad Max: Fury Road – I saw things on the screen I’d never seen before.  Wonderful, eye-searing things.  I was amazed from start to finish.
• Inside Out – I really enjoyed it, and yes, it had the requisite part where the kids in the audience are looking in confusion at their crying parents.  A neat movie, and I find it really interesting (and encouraging?) that my daughter on the spectrum reacted so strongly and positively to it.
• Two Guns – I can’t even remember what this one was about, which tells me I probably shouldn’t even bother IMDB’ing it.
• Minions – I have kids. I was contractually required to see this one, although I’ll admit to a fondness for the Despicable Me movies. This one had some moments.
• John Wick – Loved this one so much. How am I supposed to get to bed at a decent hour when this is on every time I’m flipping through the movie channels?
• 47 Ronin – For every good Keanu movie, there’s (at least) one bad one, I suppose.
• St Vincent – Found this one to be really charming. It went in several places I didn’t expect, and while the draw is obviously Bill Murray doing his cranky misanthrope thing, this movie had a lot of charm and heart.
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens – What’s that? This movie wasn’t perfect? Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of my time machine hurtling me back to when I was eight years old in 1977 and falling in love with science fiction.
• Jupiter Ascending – Good ideas here and there, but hoo boy, what a lifeless mess.
• Kingsman: Secret Service – Fun, tongue-in-cheek take on Bond-type spy movies.  That scene in the church, though. Ye gods. That’s one that will make you sit for a long while and think about why it very nearly turned you against the whole movie, while you’ll gleefully watch John Wick 40 times.

Books I Read in 2015 (I really lost reading momentum this year)

• Kelly Link – Get in Trouble
• Neil Gaiman – Trigger Warnings
• Kij Johnson – At the Mouth of the River of Bees (when I grow up, I want to write like Kij Johnson)
• Daniel Woodring – Winter’s Bone
• Daniel Woodring – The Outlaw Album (stories)

 

Graphic Novels/Comic Collections I Read in 2015

• Rachel Rising, vols 1-5
• Hellboy – The Midnight Circus
• Saga, vols 1-5
• The Sandman: Overture

January 2015: Intake

A mostly complete list of the new things I heard/read/played, etc. in the month of January, 2015

Books and Stories

Redeployment, by Phil Klay — Redeployment won the National Book Award for its often harrowing stories about life on the front lines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  As a short story collection, an obvious go-to comparison is to Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.  That only gets you so far. Despite Klay’s acknowledgements that his stories are fiction, often taken from conversations he had with other soldiers, he doesn’t go for the same sweeping arc of “even though these things didn’t happen, they’re still true” that characterizes O’Brien’s book.  It’s an interesting book, even if it didn’t always work for me. Several stories purposely don’t resolve themselves in anything resembling a satisfying manner, while others rely so heavily on acronyms and jargon that you wonder if they’re meant to be read by anyone outside of the military.  My favorite story was probably the one about a contractor attempting to shepherd goodwill projects in the local communities, having to contend with meddling politicians and their donors back home. The Catch-22 nature of it works very well.

“A Colder War” by Charles Stross — If you haven’t read Stross’s Laundry novels, they’re well worth checking out.  Set in the workaday world of a secret British agency whose job is to keep the things in the dark from getting through. It may sound a little bit like Mike Mignola’s B.P.R.D. or any of several other such fictional agencies, but Stross’s books don’t forget to drown their characters in the tedium of bureaucracy and oh so many meetings and internal reviews.   As a short story, “A Colder War” zips past many of those hallmarks to step away from the Laundry and tell the tale of an American operative trying to stop the end of the world back in the ’80s.  Stross takes the Cold War-era landscape, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and American politics, and creates a real page-turner.  Just a lot of fun, especially if you like your apocalypses with a dose of Elder Gods.

Movies

The Grand Budapest Hotel — I’m a big fan of Wes Anderson, although I certainly understand the criticism of his movies as emotionally remote dollhouses, pretty to look at but without much to feel. I didn’t always agree with that opinion, but I could see where it was coming from.  I felt like that started to turn around with Moonrise Kingdom, which continued his trademark visual formalism with some real, rough-edged emotions.  I think The Grand Budapest Hotel continued that work, although for me, it was less notable for the emotion and more for the pure silliness of some of the situations and visuals.  Moonrise Kingdom is still my favorite Anderson film, but I really enjoyed The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Games

Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep
Tiny Tina, a homicidal 13-year old explosives expert who talked like a gangsta rapper with ADD, was probably my favorite character in all of Borderlands 2.  I jumped on the chance to grab some DLC in the most recent Steam sale, and Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep was really impressive.  The premise is that several Borderlands 2 characters play a Dungeons & Dragons-type game called Bunkers & Badasses, with Tina as dungeon master.  The Borderlands universe suddenly gets a RenFest feel, and you get some hilarious voiceover where the players argue with Tina about her game-running choices.  Most surprising of all, there’s some real emotion at the end of this one: something the Borderlands 2 universe generally doesn’t go near with an electrified stick.  Well done, Gearbox.  I wasn’t expecting that and it really worked.  Oh, and I got a shotgun that shoots swords, and when the sword hits its target, it explodes into three smaller explosive swords. They’ll have to pry that piece of weaponry from my character’s cold, dead hands.

A good review of the campaign:

Music

Two artists whom I’d never heard of, but who immediately caught my ear.

Natalie Prass, Natalie Prass:
My off-the-cuff description is “What if Kate Bush sang indie soul songs?” but there’s a better and more accurate way to describe it that will occur to me with more listens, of which there will be many.

 

 

 

Caitlin Canty, Reckless Skyline:
Country/rock blend with great vocals and excellent production. Really liking this one.  Everything just seems to work in that indefinable “you know it when you hear it” kind of way.

This is Halloween, 2014: Mirel Wagner

There’s something about Mirel Wagner’s music that scares the hell out of me.  I don’t say that lightly, because I don’t scare easily.  Sure, there was a brief period where my house creeped me out before the unexplained noises suddenly went away, but as far as books, TV, and music go, I’m not bothered by much.  Unless someone gets beyond the obvious, external trappings of horror and really puts a finger on a different way of thinking. Then things get scary.

Wagner’s music goes to dark places and doesn’t flinch. It even exhibits a playful streak when its narrators describe the very bad things they’ve done or have had done to them.  Imagine Nick Cave but without the bombast or theatrics, Mark Lanegan without the ferryman’s rasp, or acoustic death blues taken to their logical extreme.  Plenty of people might write a murder ballad, but few would go on to imagine what might happen if the narrator never got rid of the body.

Wagner’s songs often feature just her on acoustic guitar with very few, if any, embellishments.  Taken in one full listen, Wagner’s albums can have just a touch of sameness, and some songs don’t reach the same heights/depths as others.  Taken in bits and pieces, though, which may be all some listeners can do given the subject matter, this is often harrowing stuff.

Right now, I’m most struck by the two songs below: “No Death” (from her self-titled debut) and “1, 2, 3, 4” (from her newest, When the Cellar Children See the Light of Day).  It’s Halloween mix-making time, and one of those will definitely be a centerpiece this year.  But also getting a lot of play are “Oak Tree” (told in the voice of someone buried at the base of the tree) and “Red” (about a demonic dance partner).  I’m sure as time goes on, repeated listens to both albums will reveal other songs that insinuate themselves just as well, like dark moonlit vines snaking their way into your skull.

Mirel Wagner, “No Death”

 

Mirel Wagner, “1, 2, 3, 4”

Thoughts on The Shambling Guide to New York City

Early on in The Shambling Guide to New York City, I realized I had a fundamental difference of opinion with Mur Lafferty. She loves cities, and while I wouldn’t say I hate them, I don’t have a lot of use for them. I admire the way their population density allows for certain things: mom and pop corner stores, for example, or small niche shops that can exist only because of the high traffic.  In my youth, way back when my youth was an actual fire and not a sputtering ember, I always enjoyed the nervous energy running through their streets (although I always made someone else drive).  Now? Well, I’m not so old that I’m telling kids to get off my lawn just yet, but cities with their loud noises and their fast pace and their pushin’ and shovin’ … well, they make me a little nervous.

Not so with Lafferty, and not so with her heroine Zoe, who arrives in New York City after a job and a relationship in North Carolina go sour.  Zoe loves New York, always has, but that doesn’t make New York any less tough when it comes to her job search.  One day, though, she comes across a posting for Underworld Publishing.  She applies, or at least she tries to, but seemingly everyone she runs into tells her that she’s not a good fit for the job.  Thing is, they won’t tell her why, which only makes Zoe more stubborn and determined.  Eventually, her perseverence lands her an interview and she discovers that Underworld Publishing is dedicated to publishing travel guides for zombies, vampires, and other things that go bump in the night.  Yes, they’re all real, and they’re just as fond of restaurants, museums, and tourist traps as anyone else.

So right away, Lafferty’s Shambling Guide (also the name of the travel guide Zoe brings to life) acts as a sort of alternate history of New York.  The monsters have always been there, having worked out an agreement with the human population (or at least certain informed portions of it) that allows both sides to co-exist without too much conflict.  This means that certain landmarks hold double meanings for humans and for coterie (the name preferred by Lafferty’s supernatural folk).  Humans might go to a museum for its priceless art, and coterie might go there for the same reason, but it’s also possible that the building also acts as a prison, or a safe area, or a place of worship for the coterie.

One thing I like about Lafferty’s concept is that it lets her interject snippets from Zoe’s completed Shambling Guide between the chapters of the primary story.  We find out about restaurants, book shops, landmarks, and other things of interest to coterie. We get to see a little more of the texture that makes up the world Lafferty’s created.

I first came to know Lafferty through her eminently practical (and empathetic) I Should Be Writing podcast, which finds Lafferty not only giving voice to her own doubts and epiphanies as a writer, but also trying to guide others through the waters of professional writing as she’s experienced it.  She usually wastes little time getting to the point and dispensing with misconceptions about the writing life.

The Shambling Guide adopts a similar strategy, and that’s both good and bad.  There’s no denying the story’s a page-turner; your firm stance that the next chapter will be your last before turning out the lights evaporates pretty quickly when you get to the end of said chapter.  Still, I wish the story had just a little more heft to it.  Zoe is surrounded by fantastic beings and creatures, and it is her story, but it comes at the expense of knowing many of the other characters very well.  We’re meant to see this world through her eyes as she revels in the color and flavor of the coterie world, but also brushes up against its dangers.  She works with zombies, vampires, a water sprite, even a death goddess, and many of these characters get considerable “screen time.”  However, by book’s end, I know very little about what makes them tick. They’re of obvious value to Zoe as guides to the coterie world, and even as friends, but they remain ciphers to the reader.  That may be something that’s addressed in the next volume of the series, which takes place in New Orleans, as we get to learn more about these characters that we’ve met. But it may not be Lafferty’s intent to bring too many of these characters along (I’m sure New Orleans has plenty of its own)in the second book. So we’ll see.

In a similar way, Lafferty dispenses with the usual complications that other writers would throw at you once the main villain has been identified.  I got towards the end of the book thinking, “How is she going to make this story jump through the usual hoops before it’s all said and done?”  Lafferty’s answer is to just have a big fight and get it over with.  Zoe and company still get their asses kicked around, but there’s none of this hero’s journey folderol to weigh things down.  In this case, despite my folklore leanings (and love for the Hero’s Journey), I approve.

I enjoyed The Shambling Guide to New York City.  I wish it had more characterization when it comes to the supporting cast.  Plus, just between you and me, I think Phil is a terrible boss.  Zoe deserves about four raises.  Still, Lafferty’s constructed a fun world and it’ll be interested to see how she builds it out in the future.