The Daily Sabbatical

Graham Greene was never a show off.  He was not the sort of writer that shot off flares with every sentence or attempted to change the way language worked.  He is best known, in fact, as a writer of suspenseful, twisting tales of intrigue with a sprinkling of wry humour and subtle irony.  He was, however, a master, a complete, undeniable master, and for proof look no further than The Power and the Glory.

Published in 1940, The Power was the pinnacle of the novels most influenced by his Catholicism, a creed he adopted in his early twenties.  The novel follows a priest moving through the shadows in Tabasco in the 30s when the redshirts were in power.  Catholicism and religion in general is being stamped out, and most other priests have either fled, broken their vows, or died at the firing line.  Our unnamed protagonist is not a glorified picture of piety, however.  He is a “whiskey priest,” dualing with the bottle and haunted by his bastard child, the fruit of his misdeeds.  He is a torn man, convinced of his unworthiness but dedicated to his mission which is itself a cloudy affair.  His duty is to continue his flight, but his inclination is to lay down and die.

Despite the religious themes driving the novel, Greene is never heavy handed.  The priest’s plight stems from his belief in a power that transcends the world, but his existence is humblingly human and his anguish is undeniably mortal.  The Power and the Glory could have been penned as easily by a non-believer.  It feels, in fact, like a Cormac McCarthy novel perhaps spliced with something by Mario Vargos Llosa.

Most importantly, the writing here is superb:

The squad of police made their way back to the station.  They walked raggedly with rifles slung anyhow: ends of cotton where buttons should have been: a puttee slipping down over the ankle: small men with black secret Indian eyes.  The little plaza on the hill-top was lighted with globes strung together in threes and joined by trailing overhead wires.  The Treasury, the Presidencia, a dentist’s, the prison–a low white colonaded building which dated back three hundred years–and then the steep street down past the back wall of a ruined church: whichever way you went you came ultimately wo water and to river.  Pink classical facades peeled off and showed the mud beneath, and the mud slowly reverted to mud.  Round the plaza the evening went on–women in one direction, men in the other; young me in red shirts milled boisterously round the gaseosa stalls.

So starts chapter two.  Great rhythm–the repetition of mud alone makes the paragraph.  If you haven’t read Greene, this would be one to put on your list.

By any rights Sarah Jaffe will soon be famous.  She’s too good to continue as an opening act for tours through Dallas.  That’s not all she does, of course, but it was in that capacity I saw her.  I don’t recall whom she was opening for, because she is the one I recall.  She’s somewhat folky, if a bit too dark to be granola, and she plays a mean guitar in front of a truly powerful voice.  Seriously: this is a voice that stills a room.  All this wouldn’t mean a damn thing if her songs were weak, but her writing doesn’t let her down.  She’s less country–and perhaps a tad more Lilithy–than Lucinda Williams, but that’s the company Jaffe deserves to keep.  Since she’s only 21, this Dentonite has some time to get noticed.  But it shouldn’t take long.  Take a listen and then go buy her EP “Even Born Again” from Good Records.

Even Born Again

There’s been a tribal current flowing through the music scene in the last several years.  Bands like Man Man thump the hell out of their drums while jumping and screaming onstage, Yeasayers adds chantlike sounds to their synthier sound, and  Wilderness howl in their contribution from Baltimore, Maryland.  Wilderness put out a self-titled album to some acclaim a few years ago and…I didn’t hear it.  They put out another album called Vessel States a year later and…I didn’t hear it.  In November, however, they release their third album and this time I’m all ears.

Wilderness might be the best representative of urban tribalism yet.  Rhythm from multiple drumsets spreads a dark backdrop through which James Johnson throws sounds from his belly.  Sometimes the sounds are words, sometime not, but it doesn’t matter.  The vocals add a sort of pressing fluidity, a wavelike urgency to the already compelling drums, and they are followed by sparse Joy Divisionish riffs from the guitar which lend an element of restraint, control and beauty to the songs.

Did I say songs?  Really, this is an album.  I can’t listen to it at all without listening to it from beginning to end–the individual tracks are strong, but they gain from their context.  The songs blend into one another, usually just changing enough to recharge the experience.  It’s a pretty dark, desperate experience, but it’s one I keep coming back to.  I think this might be one of this year’s creeping standouts.  If you can find it before it comes out on November 4, count yourself lucky.  If not, you’ll have to relish the sample below.

Silver Gene.mp3

Back when I was a Providence boy, I went to see quite a few Stringbuilder/Purple Ivy Shadows shows, and even bought a few albums.  So, you’d think I would be a little quicker recognizing the elements of these bands in Death Vessel.  Instead, I went the first listen and a half thinking the vocals were sung by a woman and was mystified to discover that woman’s name was Joel Thibodeau. The confusion now all cleared up, and I have my bearings.

The girlish sounding Thibodeau is the singer/songwriting force behind the misleadingly named Death Vessel.   They hail from Rhode Island and present a very pleasant, light brand of Americana that prizes melodies over hootenannys.  The songs often involve shy, semi-poetic vocals sung over picked guitars with a relatively sedate rhythm section.  It’s pretty, but for me it doesn’t stick.  I do find choruses repeating in my head after the tracks close, and I admire Thibodeau’s sense of melody, but I’m neither really challenged nor seduced by anything on this album.  It just doesn’t hold my attention.  It’s a shame, cause there’s a lot here to like.  Just check out the utterly charming opening track below and you’ll see what I mean.

Block My Eye.mp3

Somehow I missed this band on their first release, Beautiful Seizure, but on the strength of this sophomore effort I’m completely on the Volcano! bandwagon.  Paperwork is not an easy album to digest, especially if you simply let it play in the background.  Don’t do that: it demands your full attention.  So much is going on in most of these songs that they must have been written with flow charts.  Unusual beats and time signatures merge into one another, and the melodies–sometimes several different melodies per song–clash into each other and angle off into new directions.  Noisy, yes, but not noise.  These guys are tight and everything is woven together very carefully.  Can you say Radiohead meets Don Caballero?  I didn’t think so.  But if you could, you might say “Volcano!”

Performance Evaluation Shuffle.mp3

There’s something about the feel of the New York Review Book Classics that assures you of a good read. The paper is of a thick textured stock, the covers are beautifully designed–I particularly like the fact that the inside of the covers is colored to match the palette on the outside–and the introductions are written by people who actually matter. There are so many little known treasures in this series–it’s like the Criterion Collection of paperbacks–that one wants to just own them all.
Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick was my most recent foray into the series, and it didn’t disappoint. In fact, it is one of those books that I know I will reread, in part because it’s one of those books I wish that I had written. Originally published in 1979, Sleepless Nights calls itself a novel, but it reads like a memoir or a series of reflective vignettes. The narrator is Elizabeth, and the scenes are from primarily from New York City and Lexington Kentucky–the latter Hardwick’s homeland, the former Hardwick’s home. (It’s tempting to take these as clues that our narrator is our writer, but other clues suggest that we should be wary of that identification.) There is no single plot to speak of, but the tapestry is woven too tightly to be a mere collection of stories. The main attraction here is the overwhelmingly engineered prose. The thoughtfulness of Hardwick’s style compares only to well wrought poetry. These are sentences meant to be savored like bites of a crème brulee or sips of port. They are rich on their own, and they flow one after another in a punctuated rhythm that leads the reader on more than the foregone contrivances of thrill or suspense could hope to accomplish.
I loved this book and will search out more from Hardwick. My words mean little, however, next to her prose, so I’m going to try supplementing the review with a pagescan. These are just two facing pages that give a sense of the style. I suggest you read more of the book by purchasing it.

pages 20-21

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

The debut album by The Dodos is both exciting and frustrating . It’s exciting because there are high points on this album that transcend those on any recent release and because there is such a curious confluence of influences here that a novel result is achieved. Unfortunately the frustration comes because the album as a whole is a little uneven. There are still more than enough splendid tunes here to warrant a purchase, but one will be drawn to the skip button now and again.
While the first track is a bit worrisome, sounding as if Ben Gibbard discovered the banjo, things quickly advance to more interesting terrain as the band finds its stride. The trick with these songs, or most of them, is an underlayer of rapid percussion (highlighted by staccato rimshots) and an Andy Partridge style vocal track in minor key. Guitars come in two distinct but equally interesting flavors: blues riffy and rhythm. The former works best when it gets the song going, but the songs really explode when the rhythm guitars take over in a hand-blurring frenzy. There is definitely a bit of a formula here, but it’s a damn good one and during the few tracks the band departs from it you might find yourself wishing its return.
My most frequent reference point remains later years XTC (skylarking, etc.), but that’s mostly because of the melodies. The rest of the sound belongs with the recent crop of bands who are using percussion to good effect, such as Yeasayers and Vampire Weekend.

Fools.mp3

There are only a handful of artists who have long careers and who remain badasses throughout.  Forget about the David Bowie’s and Mick Jagger’s whose badassery stems from inventing and embodying an archetupe.  I mean those whose artistic longevity reflects a deep and ever furthering artistic sensibility that remains new and authentic album after album.  Think Tom Waits.  Think Bob Dylan.  Think, yes, Nick Cave.

I’ve never been a serious bolo tie wearing Cave fan, but it might happen yet…despite the fact that the dude first started making music the year I was born.  His new album, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! exudes the spit in your face vitality that rock music should be about, all the while being an impressively literary album in the vein of Dylan and the beats.  There are still the tried and true ballads and noirish escapades, with organ and keys under Cave’s fingers, but there are also VU style rockers and genuine pop songs.  “Albert Goes West” is one of the latter, and I’ve included it here.   My favorite track, though, is probably “More News from Nowhere” which feels like Cave’s new themesong.  It spans eight excellent minutes, but like other great long riffs (I’m thinking Elvis Costello’s “Tokyo Storm Warning” for some reason) I’d be happy if it were twice as long.

I suspect Dig!!! might not hit old fans as solidly as it did me, but at the moment, it’s probably my favorite album of the year.

Albert Goes West MP3