The Daily Sabbatical

The blog largehearted boy has posted an extensive list of links to “best of the year” lists, for both books and music.  An excellent resource.

Some bloggers whinge and grouse (and gripe and whine) about year-end lists, calling them juvenile, obsessed with rank and order, and arbitrary.  To these critics, a  response in the classical argument form of tu quoque:  you write music reviews, jackass.  I, for one, find the year end lists an excellent source of new music, they help me to find the reviewers whose taste most clearly matches mine, and compiling my own gives me a chance to see the forest of the year’s musical offerings by closely examining the trees.  I’m almost always surprised at how good a year it turned out to be.  This year was no exception.

(Note:  Eric at drawerb pointed out that Radiohead, my previous number 3, was officially last year.  So, slide everyone up and add another excellent album to the list…)

10.  Notwist– The Devil, You & Me

Neon Golden was so good that any following album by Notwist will be crippled by the comparison.  Still, those head circling melodies are here and if there is a little less going on as far as song structure goes, sometimes simplicity is a good thing.

9.  Marnie Stern–This is it and I am it and you are it and so is that and he is it and she is it and it is it and that is that.

Somewhat embarassingly Ms. Stern is the only woman on my list this year, but she so clearly outrocks anyone else on the list that she’s an excellent representative for the ladies.  The innovative guitar work and the unrestrained vocals make this one of the year’s most energetic records.  (The album’s title may be annoyingly long, but it more than answers the question by posed by The Strokes.)

8.  Chad Van Gaalen–Soft Airplane

How can Chad Van Gaalen be Neil Young reincarnated when Neil is still alive?  Nevermind.  This Canadian’s third album sees him out of his small sophomore slump and expanding his songwriting horizons.  Best one man band I know of.

7.  Vampire Weekend–s/t

This makes private-school Robert, with a penchant for Peter Gabriel and Pennyloafers, very happy.  It makes public-school Robert very suspicious, in no small part because it is catchy as as an STD in Thailand.  Very difficult to dislodge from Car CD players.

6.  Fleet Foxes–s/t

I get tires of My Morning Jacket’s Jams despite my love of My Morning Jacket’s Jim James.   (Jesus!)  Fleet Foxes comes to the rescue with a debut that introduces us to one of the best vocalist’s going: Robin Pecknold.  The Breugel cover of their album tells you something about their sound–let’s call it Feudal Folk and move on.

5.  Mountain Goats–Heretic Pride

John Darnielle puts out his second best album–nothing will beat Tallahassee probably–but his second best is good enough to be one of the best of the year.  Darnielle’s songs give us a peek through windows we would otherwise never approach, in part because the folks inside might be playing with pistols.  Easily one of our best songwriters.

4. Devotchka–A Mad and Faithful Telling

Beirut and Calexico can put up their horns and balalaikas.  Devotchka wins the international sound award.  Take Roy Orbison, David Byrne, a Mariachi band and a polka band, put it all in a blender with a shot of vodka and you have Devotchka.  Transliterator might be the best song of the year.

3. Foals–Antidotes

There’s definitely something Rapture-ous about these guys, but where The Rapture left the races and went off the tracks, Foals gets the checkered flag.  Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, with guitar and bass counterpoint.  Pitchfork desperately needs to revisit their review on this one.

2.  Bon Iver–For Emma, Forever Ago

The most beautiful album of the year introduces us to Justin Vernon, the year’s most exciting new songwriter.  Sam Beam can relax–the gift doesn’t all rest on his shoulders now.

1.  Deerhunter–Microcastles/Weird Era Cont.

An album in the top spot should be difficult to describe, and this one certainly fits that ticket.  Deerhunter has thrown some elements of shoegaze in here, though without foregoing the crisp pop songs.   There are drifting, semi-psychedelic melodies as well as bass-driven tunes of a Sonic Youthy color.  This album just has everything.  Even without Weird Era Cont., the accompanying disc of outtakes and add-ins which would probably merit a place on this list on its own, Microcastles is the most complete album of the year.

At this point I’ve read almost everything Vladimir Nabokov ever published.  There is simply no other writer like him.  When I finish reading his prose, I immediately feel like holing up in a garrett somewhere and crafting sentences that dance and narrative strategems that make a first reading useless.  If I actually get so far as to put pen to paper, I feel so dwarfed by the master that I quickly consign my pen to the dustbin.

Mary is Nabokov’s first novel, written when he was in Berlin in 1925, shortly after he met the inimitable Vera.  Nabokov didn’t translate Mary into English until 1970, and he apparently resisted tinkering too much with his young effort.  At least for those of us who want some reassurance that the man was human after all, this is fortunate.  While many of Nabokov’s trademarks can be seen budding in this short novel–his somewhat condescending humor, his intricate adjective play, his narrative gamesmanship–none of them are really in full blossom.  I’m reasonably sure I could spot it as a Nabokov a mile away, but had he not grown immensely after Mary, he would not hold the curlicued spot in our hearts he now holds.

The novel follows the young Ganin, a Russian exiled in Berlin–hmmm–who lives in a pension occupied by other idiosyncratic Russian emigres.   One of these is expecting the arrival of his wife, the titular Mary.  When he shows her picture to Ganin, our hero is shocked into reminiscences about his youthful romance with young Mary, his first physical love.  Soon a plan is in the hatching, to intercept Mary upon her arrival in Berlin and to resume Ganin’s lost romance.

Of course things aren’t so simple, but nothing substitutes Nabokov’s unravelling of his own knots.  Mary is ultimately not the recommended first stop on the Nabokov tour, but it is a joy for the completist.  Which I am fast becoming.  Next station, King, Queen, Knave!

In a remarkable use of fMRI technology, researchers in Japan have been able to use brain imaging to map blood flow changes in the brain as subjects viewed images.  After “learning” how blood flow changed when subjects viewed one set of images (simple characters, for example) a computer was able to reconstruct what the subjects were looking at when they were shown new images. 
Bad ass.
See more at Pinktentacle.com.

Top tens from New Yorker critics that cover dance, theatre, classical-music recordings and movies.  As always, Anthony Lane provides the most entertaining analysis.

One of the only good things about grading is that it’s the type of work I can do while listening to music.  (The same errors get pretty easy to spot.)  Keeping that in mind, I made several purchases yesterday.  Most of them consist of new stuff which I haven’t fully digested yet, but one deserves mentioning immediately: Neil Young’s 1971 Massey Hall concert, released last year.  I’m a pretty big Neil fan, but anyone with ears has to like this record.  The recording quality is just outstanding–I actually had to stop grading for most of the record because it pulled me in so completely.  Neil is playing solo here, and his guitar work is jawdropping.  He plays what were then “mostly new” songs, but which we now know as songs from Harvest.  I can’t post anything, because I’d probably get my pants sued off, but most people know what they’ll be getting.  If you aren’t a Neil fan yet, give this one a try.  It gives shivers.

I’m always tempted to break up my anally alphabetical ordering of books to create a special shelf of books that, to me, constitute lessons in writing.  These are not necessarily the best books–although they often are–but they are the books I feel I could read and reread in hopes of penetrating the secrets of their consruction.  They are the books that would signpost the way to the literary style I’d most like to emulate.    Body Snatcher by Juan Carlos Onetti would find a place on that shelf.

Onetti remains a bit of an unknown in the States, but one hopes that the surge of interest in Roberto Bolano will spur interest in some of his Latin American predecessors and contemporaries.  Onetti was born in Montevideo, but eventually fled to Spain after being persecuted by the Uruguayan dictatorship in 1974 for presenting a prize to a short-story considered pornographic by the powers that be.  His heroes number among mine–Knut Hamsun, William Faulkner, Celine–and his writing shows their influence.

Published originally in Spanish in 1964, Body Snatcher was translated into English by Alfred MacAdam in 1991.  It tells the story of the arrival of a brothel in a small town named Santa Maria–which is the setting of many of Onetti’s works.  The Body Snatcher of the title is Larson, a sort of pimp, who runs the brothel, but this story is not his alone.  It is also the story of Jorge, a boy in his teens who is having a strange but seductive relationship with the unhinged widow of his dead brother.  It is also the story of Father Bergner, who runs a complicated campaign against the moral deterioration of Santa Maria, and it is the story of Marcos, a gritty man of violence and indignation who keeps both sides guessing.  I say Body Snatcher is a story, but that’s only true in the sense that As I Lay Dying is a story about a burial.  Onetti’s style is the main attraction.  There are subtle tricks of narrative perspective and tormenting convolutions of language that are, to be honest, only poetic in retrospect.  It all fuses together, however, into something magical.

I love this book, and I hereby add Onetti to my list of heroes.  If the translators don’t get on it, I might have to learn more than get-to-the-bus Spanish.

I love it. Reminds me of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Ok. Back to grading.

I have a lot of admiration for Nick Thorburn, the guy behind Islands, The Unicorns, and several other projects.  He knows how to write a song, has a beautiful voice, and obviously has energy to spare.  Nevertheless, I never really grow attached to his albums.  Moody Motorcycle–a collaborative product of Thorburn and Jim Guthrie under the moniker Human Highway–is no exception.  I fall in love with songs for a moment and then kind of move on.  Nevertheless, I do fall in love for a moment–with the harmonies, most of all.  This is a strong album, really–much better than it was rated on Pitchfork, I think.  As the cover indicates, there’s a sort of sixties folk feel to many of the songs–excepting, most obviously, the title song which makes me think of Smashing Pumpkins for some reason.
I know this is a thoroughly conflicted review–that’s the nature of my relationship with Nick Thorburn apparently.  Still, listen to the track below–no one can deny that it is just lovely.

The Sound.mp3

If you have nightmares where you are pursued along the wharf with calliope music fluting your doom in the background, this album probably isn’t for you.  If you like the idea of Danny Elfman collaborating with The Clientele, however, listen up.  Misophone is a production of two guys from Bristol who are apparently cranking out songs left and right.  This is supposedly their thirteenth (or fourteenth?) album, though its only the second I find evidence of.  Whatever.  These guys have a flair for the tune, and could probably hang out with the Elephant Six crowd if they ever came out of their attic.  It rides the line between happy and very dark–sorta like a bad clown.  I have to say, the melodies are very simple and can get cloying after a while (especially with the oom-pah, oom-pah-pah on the bass clef) but they are incredibly entertaining in smaller doses.  For some, it will be essential listening.  For me, they’ll make their way into lots of mix tapes and will probably be played at the funerals of household pets.

Spisska nove ves.mp3