If you’re going to name a band after a celebrity, you couldn’t do any better than Abe Vigoda. After all, it was Barzini all along. AV has generated a goodish amount of buzz with the releast of “Skeleton,” their second release, and touring with fellow Los Angelenoids No Age has raised their profile even further. It was hearing about their live show–hearing that it blew No Age off the Stage–that led me to check out the album. My judgment, in the end, is that I wish I’d seen them live. Not that the album is bad. It’s certainly not: it packs a consistently hard punch from track one to track fourteen. Led by furious drums and layered, ringing guitars, every song is a swirling soup of sound. It is, though, a little too consistent for my tastes. It’s not hard to catch on to the tricks here, and though I really like both the ideas and the execution, it’s a little bit one-trickish. I’m also not wild about the muted production which keeps the drums and guitars from popping out of the speakers and leaves the vocals consistently low in the mix. Nevertheless, it’s hard not to be impressed, and some people willgo wild for this. If you like the idea of hearing Man Man meet Animal Collective, you might be one of them.
Bear Face.mp3
“I think it was in the Rose Garden where I issued this brilliant statement: If I had a magic wand —but the president doesn’t have a magic wand. You just can’t say, ‘low gas.’ “—Washington D.C., July 15, 2008
Jon Stewart at his best on Bush vs. Bernanke, and Freddy Mac vs. Bernie Mac:
The kids will not dance to “The Ken Burns Effect” by Stars Like Fleas, and I doubt it will make its way among your treadmill tunes, but if you are the type who actually sits down and listens to albums–not songs, but albums–this might be one of the more rewarding releases of the year. More than the sum of its parts, TKBE moves through harsh acoustic dissonances to peaceful and woodsy folk and then through a sort of improvised jazz to complete the tour. Comparisons generally escape me with these guys. With ten members, a horde of additional players, and a stack of instruments that could supply a symphony (from fiddle and banjo, to flugelhorn, cello and Wurlitzer) it’s no wonder they are hard to pin down. I suppose they count as experimental, but they are not the awkward songless type. Its more as if the patchwork quilt of sounds allows the true beauty of the songs to rise forth. Check em out on their myspace page and give the below a listen. But remember: this is an album, not a playlist, so the proof will be in the slow sitdown, not the quick click.
Berbers in Tennis Shoes.mp3
Diaz’s “The Brief and Wondroud Life of Oscar Wao” was easily one of the best three or four books written last year and it won the Pulitzer Prize to show for it. Despite the fact that the action takes place mostly under the oppressive and horrifying Trujillo regime in the Dominican Repubic, and despite the fact that the titular Oscar is, poor thing, an socially uncomfortable butterball of a protagonist, the book is pure fun to read. That’s not surprising when you get a glimpse of Diaz. Below is an interview with him from Slate magazine. The interviewers are as awkward as dropped eggs, but you end the video wanting Junot for a best friend.
Now personally, I’m with Rick Perry: Texans should probably do anything they can to avoid producing more Texans. But surprisingly, kids don’t listen when you tell them to avoid the only thing worth doing in Texas.
AUSTIN — Texas spent a nation-high $17 million last year for abstinence education programs that continue to stir debate about whether classes promoting virginity before marriage work in public schools.
Federal statistics in June showed that 52.9 percent of Texas students in ninth through 12th grades had sexual intercourse, compared with 47.8 nationally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also reported that Texas youths are less likely to use condoms.
Full story here.
David Gedge has been writing about leaving and being left, cheating and being cheated upon, and the various other vicissitudes of love and lust for as long as I’ve known what any of these things are. The Wedding Present has been his main vehicle since 1986, and at various points between then and now his band has been the best guitar pop band in the world. In recent years, his focus has seemed to be upon his newer band, Cinerama, which is a lighter, even more poppy affair, with every song sounding like it was composed during a champagne vacation on the French Riviera. The Wedding Present is back this year, however, with El Rey. While it doesn’t have the grit and punch of many earlier WP records, it has the layers of guitars we love with a little extra crunch from Steve Albini’s production. Nevertheless, on the first couple of listens, I was not terribly impressed. I liked the sound of the guitars, and I liked the basslines which are more interesting than they usually are for The Wedding Present, but somehow the songs never really caught fire. The lyrics and vocals seemed somehow less integrated with the music, floating above it but neither driving it or being driven by it, and the two-timing tales seemed a little contrived after all these years. On listen number three, however, I was singing along and getting excited by the tunes and some of the twists the band is throwing in to their song structure. Granted, I’m a diehard fan of these guys, but in the end I’ll bet I give this album a lot of play. They’re quite simply one of the funnest bands out there even after 20 years. El Rey isn’t even close to their best, but it still beats most of what is out there hands down.
Santa Ana Winds.mp3
In the past thirty-seven or so years, Art Garfunkel has apparently had some time on his hands. I’d say he didn’t waste it. He read over a thousand books in that period, clocking in at a little more than a book every two weeks. Now that’s probably not going to break any records among book reviewers or academics, but I’ll bet it ranks among the best when it comes to celebs. And these books aren’t simple fare. You’ll find Proust, Rousseau and Tolstoy at the top of the list, none of whom were at a loss for words. What list, you say? Garfunkel has indexed all the books on his webpage. So, if you want to make the next thirty-seven years of your life as much like Garfunkel’s as possible, I suggest you break up with your astonishingly talented partner and go get a copy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions. That will leave you only one thousand twenty five more books until you can read Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons. You can make a solo album in the meantime if you like, but that’s really really optional.