Review: Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV (physical disc release)

by Kevin Eagan

I have to be honest, it came as a big shock to me when I first read that Nine Inch Nails would be leaving Interscope records, opting instead to release their albums independently. Don't get me wrong, Nine Inch Nails has always been a band willing to try new things and branch out into new experiments, but they never struck me as the type of band that would leave behind the marketing machine.

Trent Reznor's creative energy has defined the so-called industrial sounds of 1990s metal. At the same time, his marketing genius (yes, it still exists in music today) created a brand that goes beyond the music. From NIN's popular symbol to the concept of halo (a system that numbers each NIN album that's before its time, the halo series of computer games seeming oddly reminiscent), Reznor's marketing abilities and the label that supported it was a rare breed.

However, Reznor's frustration with his label had nothing to do with the past or his wild success throughout the '90s, it had to do with his rejection of a broken system, a cause many musicians have taken up with the same fury Reznor has displayed. 2007 was the year that many artists sought independence, leaving the major labels wallowing in their own incompetence. Music historians will look back at Reznor's decision as part of a major turning point in the record industry, seen as a time when musicians were taking control and the indie market thrived like never before as a result.

So I won't go over it again or continue the comparisons between Reznor's decision and Radiohead's or any other bands or musicians. The fact is that Nine Inch Nails - the brand, the artistry, and the artist himself - is now free to do whatever it wants in more ways than it ever has nearly twenty years after it broke through with 1989's wildly successful and artistically revolutionary Pretty Hate Machine. Reznor does so with his most ambitious project yet, Ghosts I-IV, an experiment in instrumentation and soundscape that isn't weighed down by political messages or philosophical debates, but is instead out there for the listener to do with it what he or she pleases.

Revolving around four movements, Ghosts I-IV takes all of the electronic noise of 1999's The Fragile and 2007's Year Zero and throws it all together in a random mix; Reznor swears there's no overall theme to Ghosts, but there is plenty of musical beauty that replicates the arid deserts and the fluid oceans in one long breath.

Within Reznor's lengthy and expansive soundscape are some moments of pure bliss, the moments where listeners of NPR's World Cafe can hold hands in unity with the tattooed punks that once defined Reznor's marketability. Ghosts begins with a sublime piano played so quietly that you can hear Reznor's feet shift on the open pedals, and even though the riff he plays sounds oddly familiar, it's haunting enough that it brings you in and keeps you hooked. Electronic choirs hum around the piano as Reznor reveals what haunts him at night, and we're left feeling the presence of something not of this world.

From there, Ghosts starts to sound a bit too familiar, and by the end of its first movement it feels more like the leftover instrumental samples from 2007's Year Zero. Reznor ends this movement with the distorted guitars of his past, excoriating the "ghosts" of his heyday to come back down into the piano and electronic noise of beauty that has solidified his standing as a mature and welcoming musician.

However, by the third and fourth movements of Ghosts, Reznor has you convinced that something has changed, that artistic experimentation is possible without the controlling force of a major label. At the same time, Ghosts doesn't forget the structures and sounds that made NIN what it is today, and Reznor's experiment won't alienate the majority of his fans. If anything, he's brought in new fans, since many listeners now see Nine Inch Nails as an important part of rock music's changing face instead of a flash in the pan.

By the second disc (movements III and IV), the remaining tropes and figures that have defined this record come to the forefront, and even with the masking of industrial noise, a positivity takes over the music. It's as if the listener has finally made it over the arid wasteland to discover an oasis of life, and Reznor is ready to give them something in return. As movement III transitions into IV, the band takes on a fully fledged distortion of sound with beautiful melody, and as IV begins, everything seems to come together and it's no longer about pitting disparate noises against each other, it's about finding some type of coherence in the soundscape, some type of beauty that transcends the sound itself.

Through a completely instrumental experiment, Ghosts I-IV has fully solidified Reznor's standing as a musical pioneer of our time. Even as he sometimes falls into his own bubble of marketing, Reznor has shown that it's all about the music and less about the fans' tastes. Those who have wanted something new from this band should take note: Ghosts I-IV signals that Nine Inch Nails is not interested in the hype, but rather the substance of independent music, and it's willing to yell "fuck you" to the establishment - not because it sounds cool, but because it's necessary. With that, I hope Ghosts I-IV continues the expansive creativity Nine Inch Nails has pioneered over the years, and I look forward to hearing whatever they provide in the future.

Review: Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk

by Matthew Ryan


Naughty words have an unmistakable demoralizing toll on an uptight culture. But shocking a (comparatively) puritanical society sometimes has another point, such as George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” monologue in 1972. He was trying to say that an irrational fear of naughty words gets in the way of healthy human discourse. To illustrate the point, he used a lot of naughty words. Not everyone got the joke. That monologue was broadcasted over airwaves and lead to a landmark obscenity law case. As a result, the FCC has more control in regulating the messages that come to us over the air.

Chuck Palahniuk’s message also has a way of being taken the wrong way. Consider the (now) wildly popular film adaptation of his book Fight Club. The core of the movie has a character coming to grips with personal responsibility and had suggestive gay imagery. Much of these meaning was lost on young males who only responded to the brawling and angst. The number of Fight Club posters in fraternity houses and the videogame featuring Fred Durst is proof of the misunderstanding.

Palahniuk’s most recent twisted journey, Snuff, could be misunderstood only if there was some substance behind the naughty words to misunderstand. This novel concerns the fate of porn diva Cassie Wright as she embarks on what is to be her final, historic adult odyssey: World Whore Three. It’s a knock-down, drag-out kind of hardcore production, with a gangbang cast of 600 from all walks of life, including a baseball team straight from the Special Olympics. She doesn’t intend to make it out alive, opting instead to use the royalty and insurance money as a final charitable contribution to her unplanned child, conceived in World Whore One, whose identity is unknown at the outset.

But Cassie, who would have made the most interesting character of all, is behind the scenes for the most part. Our vantage point is limited to dudes 72, 137 and 600; a Wright-obsessed high schooler, a desperate and once-famous TV actor and an experienced “woodsman,” respectively. There’s also the ringleader, Sheila, an angsty sort of feminist with an endless supply colloquialisms for male porn actors. While various incarnations of pud-pullers, yogurt-squirters, shank-shuckers and the like might count as edgy for the MTV demographic, it gets old for anyone with sophistication.

As for the dudes, each fit conveniently into classic porn stereotypes, and all seem to suffer from a bad case of snarkyness and a deficiency of real conflict. Dude 72 is youth whose sex drive is subverted by conservative mother who hypocritically indulges her own appetite via erotic cake-making. Dude 137 is trying to revive his career through the historic gangbang and grapples fears that his past performance in gay porn just was an act of retribution for his Oklahoma upbringing. Dude 600 hasn’t cared since his first love left him. These roles haven’t been cutting-edge for a long time.

The plot is stringy and unremarkable. Events move forward slowly, as most of the time is spent bogged down in the history of each pud-puller. Once the story gains critical momentum, the book has just about reached its overblown finale. The only points Palahniuk earns in plot are some decent twists, which are not as exciting as his previous works but keep the reader invested for a little while longer.

Another hallmark of Palahniuk’s work is an abundance of trivial knowledge, and this book does not break from tradition. There’s mention of the Roman Empress Messalina, who moonlighted as a prostitute and a won an epic sex competition against another famous prostitute of the time. There’s also talk of Marilyn Monroe’s double-life as the intellectual Zelda Zonk, and the harmful effects of Kegel exercise balls filled with mercury. These factoids typically unfold as bite sized stories in themselves, and are mostly allegories for the novel’s subtext. Palahniuk studied journalism in college and its shows in his compulsion to use these elements as much as possible, but the effectiveness of each element is based on how relevant it is to the story.

This time around, most tidbits miss the mark. Sheila has an uncommon medical vocabulary and uses it with reckless abandon. Number 137 is a veritable cornucopia of Hollywood trivia, and Number 600 is the same when it comes to the porn industry. These characters are walking, talking encyclopedia Erotica, but it does little more than give the scene some colorful jargon to match the drapes. At its worst, it comes off as pretentious and distracting.

The sum of Snuff’s parts is an attempt to assess the state of the sexual revolution from several points of view. From Sheila’s perspective, there’s the renewed feminist effort to portray women as studs, conquering male after male to establish as sort of balance of power. From 72’s vantage point, there’s a rebellion against hypocritical sexual repression. We get some gay perspective courtesy of 137, and a nihilistic impression of love from 600. But there’s nothing that goes beyond the most superficial critique of American sexuality, and it all gets diluted with large swaths of naughty words. After the last milk monkey standing, this book delivers as advertised: snuff.

Review: The Dumbest Generation - How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future by Mark Bauerlein

by Kevin Eagan

It is an inevitability that with every generational change, the older generation will complain about the new generation and reminisce on the past - the "good ol' days," if you will. It's not a surprise when the new fashions and trends of youth culture get misunderstood by the adults who say they know better, and as those fashions and trends become the accepted norms, those youth turn into the wise adults, criticize their children's youthful ways, and continue the vicious cycle into the next generation.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, for many reasons. When cultural norms change, art, literature, and other creative outlets become more fluid, and people respond to the spirit of the age with an intelligent and relevant civic discourse. Only the old school traditionalists - those curmudgeons who see change as the end of the world as we know it - lambast and discourage this healthy pattern, a pattern that has made our great democracy run efficiently enough throughout the 20th Century.

That's why Mark Bauerlein tries to distinguish himself from these old fogey stereotypes early in his book The Dumbest Generation, and states that his book is not an attempt to insult or undermine the youth of today, but to show "with empirical evidence" that those in Generation Y (or The Millennials, Generation Next, DotNetters, what have you) are truly stupid.

Despite being surrounded with more information than ever before, the generation that grew up on the Internet has become intellectually lazy, and that's not just one man's opinion, it's supported by statistical fact, Bauerlein says. He won't look at their attitudes, behaviors, or values, he states in his introduction, just their capacities for intelligence. And then he spends the rest of his book looking at their attitudes, behaviors, and values (in between his hefty doses of statistics and data), judging them unsound and lamenting the end of intellectualism in America.

It's not the fairest assessment, especially since his metrics of evaluation don't fit with his original premise. After all, can you really measure the intelligence of an entire generation based on samples of surveys and testing data without looking at their changing attitudes? Bauerlein's opinion seems to be that the statistics reveal a surprising move toward stupidity, and that this stupidity manifests itself in Generation Y's anti-intellectual attitudes.

Within Bauerlein's collected research, several disturbing trends among young people do emerge. The fact-based, multiple-choice approach to education has hampered our ability to "think historically," meaning young Americans have difficulties placing current events in relation to their historical contexts. Only 22 percent of those involved in one survey could identify key phrases from the Gettysburg Address. Yet in the same survey, 99 percent could identify Beavis and Butt-Head.

Equally, our ability to do basic math and our reading proficiency continues to drop. In a 2005 survey cited in the book, respondents aged 15-to-24 only read anything for eight minutes on a weekday and nine minutes on the weekend, while clocking hours and hours watching TV or surfing the Internet. These are just a few shockers that Bauerlein reveals, but not all of his statistical evidence points toward depressing trends.

At the same time, technology is making our IQ's go up, and Bauerlein reveals how IQ tests have become more complex to meet our growing intelligence. In theory, having higher IQ's would go against Bauerlein's original assertion that we are all getting dumber, but Bauerlein quickly dismisses this idea, saying that today's youth aren't reading enough and aren't interested in the arts in the ways previous generations were.

Despite contradictory evidence in other peer reviewed articles - after all, an author's evidence is only what he or she is willing to offer the reader - that shows young Americans are more involved in civil discourse than ever before, Bauerlein sticks to his assertion that intelligence will continue to drop until it eventually threatens democracy as we know it. Of course, Bauerlein ignores the fact that the generation before was just as disinterested in high art (and the traditionalists blamed MTV), and the generation before them also seemed more interested in teen escapism than classical music or Victorian literature (and the traditionalists blamed rock and roll).

Is this really all that shocking? Not really. Bauerlein seems to think things are different because the Internet has only given teens one more way to escape adult life. And to a certain extent, he's right; the Internet is not used by teens to further their intellectual pursuits, at least, not in the way educators would like. But as with all new technologies, the Internet is currently going through a teething stage, and it's too early to say if our new digital lives will mean the next generation will forever ignore civil discourse and become apathetic toward art and history as adults.

Although the digital age has created one of the largest generational rifts in modern history, it is not the only time America has gone through major cultural changes as a result of youth rebellion. As postwar American youths tried to make sense of a difficult time in American history, Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On The Road became a bestselling novel and rock and roll replaced jazz as the rebellious music of the day. Changes in American culture spiraled out of control in the 1960s, and as this young generation was shipped off to Vietnam after enduring the Cold War fears of nuclear war, a resentment toward authority grew. Despite what the powers-that-be said at the time, this age of American uncertainty created a new surge of art and cultural veracity that not only brought about new labels (Postmodernism, Deconstructivism, et cetera) but a new wave of tolerance and accessibility that continues today.

Bauerlein, of course, doesn't have a problem with what happened during this period of American history; after all, Kerouac and the beats actually had something to say, unlike teens today, who aren't reading, and are therefore clearly not writing. Yet, Bauerlein fails to find out exactly what is going on among The Millennials in terms of art and literature, and just like the beats and the pop art afficionados of the '60s, art is flourishing among the fringes of our young generation. With independent artists and musicians trying new things on the internet to poets exploiting their spam folders for artistic inspiration, a thriving art community has used the Internet to push new boundaries. If Bauerlein had merely interviewed a couple of his English students (he is a professor at Emory University) or spoken with some art students, he would realize that there is some hope for the future, and that some Gen-Y'ers are bucking the trends.

Although some of the statistics cited by Bauerlein point to disturbing changes in how Millennials process information, he seems to overlook many of the positive changes - and the potential for a new approach to civil discourse - that will inevitably occur as the youth of today come of age. The Dumbest Generation is certainly a necessary part of this new discourse (after all, we do want to improve), but it drowns in its heavy reliance on statistics that range from mildly convincing to flat out contradictory.

Bauerlein's approach reveals a one-sided argument, one that forgets that art is created on the fringes of society and that young people rarely get involved in these pursuits since, after all, they're too busy trying to impress their friends. The Dumbest Generation is a great book for those who already agree with Bauerlein's main thesis, but won't change the opinions of those who disagree and see a lot of potential in young people today.

Originally posted on Blogcritics.org.

Review: Radiohead concert in St. Louis (5.14.08)

by Matthew Ryan




Before it even got off the ground, it was obvious that the show was to be taken seriously. On the left side of the stage were rows of banks of crates, arranged in store-esque aisles. One of these crates bore the spray-stenciled name: RADIOHEAD. An arsenal of 20-ish guitars lined one of the aisles, ready for battle. Wires stuck out of metal crates like a network of nerves from a DaVinci anatomical sketch. From a light platform suspended above the crowd, rope ladders came down. Three stagehands climbed to the top of the platform and sat in customized seats, manning lights, pointing cameras, setting the trajectory of laser beams and whatever alien technology Radiohead was about to throw at the crowd. Yes, they meant business.

When it came time, the musicians, sans Yorke, came on and took positions in short order. The crowd -- a mix of pimply high schoolers, highbrow college nerds, polo shirt-clad frat boys, girls in towering high heels and dangling dresses, folks with mortgages and kids -- examples of every kind of live, breathing people -- started hollering in a way that couldn’t be one-upped, until Yorke finally came on stage, then it reached a new kind of loud.

Yorke came on, a bit like a nobody and a bit like an alien. He wandered back and forth at first, hands in pockets, occasionally looking at the ground, perhaps waiting for a train at a station. Or maybe he was waiting for the mother ship. He looked a bit tickled as he examined his St. Louis audience, as any average human being looks at another human being doing something odd, or maybe it was the look that an extraterrestrial observer gives when examining the human race.

This was all very strange, yes, but strange for both parties. The crowds didn’t seem to make sense of it either. Here was the band they’ve rocked-out to, toked up to, screwed and had babies to, a band built into a Beowulf-like mythological construct (Did you hear these guys didn’t even charge for the last album? No way! I heard he’s got an actual radio stuck in his head that receives all sorts of interstellar frequencies? Whoa, freaky!). Considering the hype, perhaps it was a band that wasn’t supposed to exist at all. Yet Yorke cometh, and was putzing around on a stage before all. On top of that, you could see his maligned eye from a camera feed as it shone on a display in the back of the stage. And this bassist fellow had an oddly-shaped nose and an eye that looked punched-in. And then there was Jonny Greenwood, with his bony face. What was going on? The crowd went with the flow. Beeps and boops trickled in the background and the evening began with “All I Need.”

Yorke talked after the second song, “Jigsaw Falling Into Place,” something about smelling donuts??? And how anybody could eat donuts at a time like this??? And now donut sales would dive??? He was talking about the smell of Elephant Ears stands, but it was barely intelligible through his British accent.

In quick succession, Radiohead played song after song from the catalog (but conspicuously nothing from Pablo Honey and only one from The Bends), not wasting any time in-between. Light effects came into full bloom, with LED tubes that hung from the rafters like neon streamers. One song they’d twinkle like ice crystals, flash like lightning and flow like rain, and the next they’d glow purple and otherworldly. Green washed down the length of the tubes like goo flowing from the sky, all very high-end and hypnotic. This was the backdrop that Yorke spazzed out to, head jerking, mouth moaning, arms and hands snaking along like he was embracing a first-time acid trip. The crowd fell in line and clapped to his beat.


Tricks were en masse. For “You and Whose Army,” Yorke made use of a piano rigged with a camera, which made for an extreme close-up blasted on the massive screen at the back of the stage. In Crayola green, the audience witnessed Yorke get closer and closer to the camera, until a massive Yorke eye took up the entire screen. Backing off the camera, his face then became distorted in the screen with a fish-eye effect, before being multiplied over and over.

For “There, There,” he ran around on stage with drumsticks as the crew plopped a small drum set in front of the mike. After sitting down, Yorke said “I wonder what this thing does.”

In his second and final address to the crowd, Yorke told of a song from Amnesiac that was “lost sight of.”

“It seems very pertinent now,” he said, the “P” popping through the sound system, and played “Optimistic.”

A little over an hour of songs rapid-fire and the band rushed off. But the house lights stayed off and stagehands still ran around, preparing for who knows what. It didn’t fool any of the crowd, not for a second, so some went ahead and shouted encouragements while others sat and waited for the inevitable encore, which came in about two minutes. As the band came back, they waved and clapped. Colin Greenwood smiled big, and Yorke looked at the ground and scratched his head. They knew we knew it was all for show. There may have even been a bit of an ashamed blush on Yorke’s cheeks. He thanked the crowd and took up an acoustic, at which point the amphitheater became quiet and attentive, and “Exit Music” flowed through the PA. Little flames began cropping up in the crowd up front, people flicked on lighters. From under the stage covering, the stars couldn’t be seen, but when people in the lawn seats held up lighters, it created an eerie similarity.

When the five-song encore came to an end, Radiohead left as quickly as they did after the first set, but stagehands were still messing around with equipment, so the shenanigans were busted again. It was apparent to the audience that a second encore was inevitable, so with further encouragement, the band came out for another round. Three songs resulted (the double-encore was repeated at other concerts on the same tour), and in one last splurge of energy, going out supernova-style, the band hit the crowd with a green and purple light-strobing, video screen pixilating, uber freakout to “Paranoid Android.”

After that, it was done. Honest.




Setlist:

FIRST SET
------------
All I Need - (In Rainbows)
Jigsaw Falling Into Place - (In Rainbows)
Airbag - (Ok Computer)
15 Step - (In Rainbows)
Nude - (In Rainbows)
Kid A - (Kid A)
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi - (In Rainbows)
The Gloaming - (Hail to the Thief)
You and Whose Army? - (Amnesiac)
Idioteque - (Kid A)
Faust Arp - (In Rainbows)
Videotape - (In Rainbows)
Everything in Its Right Place - (Kid A)
Reckoner - (In Rainbows)
Optimistic - (Kid A)
Bangers + Mash - (In Rainbows)
Bodysnatchers - (In Rainbows)

FIRST ENCORE
-------
Exit Music (for a film) - (OK Computer)
Myxomatosis - (Hail to the Thief)
My Iron Lung - (The Bends)
There There - (Hail to the Thief)
Fake Plastic Trees - (The Bends)

SECOND ENCORE
-------
Pyramid Song - (Amnesiac)
House of Cards - (In Rainbows)
Paranoid Android - (OK Computer)

Review: Shy Child - Noise Won't Stop

by Kevin Eagan

The indie underground has always thrived upon borrowing from the past to create something new, discovering new styles that can't be easily defined and have not yet been exploited by the mainstream. In music, as well as in art, indie artists try to reject modern approaches by tearing apart the sounds and actions that make up the current pop culture.

It's an approach that is not new by any means. In fact, it's an approach that sparked the high modernism of early 20th-century art when Ezra Pound so famously urged artists to "make it new," sparking a revolution of new approaches that may seem tame now, but caused riots at the time (see Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring for an example of the power of the new).

Modern indie musicians continue to revolutionize sound, and even as they become a part of the mainstream, many of them continue to try new things. Beck's 2005 EP GameBoy Variations is a great example. By re-mixing some of his most recent hits using a Nintendo Game Boy, Beck connected his music to the sounds of an emerging generation while taking a completely new approach to his songs.

It's with this concept of modern indie music that I approached Shy Child's latest LP Noise Won't Stop, an album that takes the electronic noises of the modern world (cell phone beeps, game consoles, MacBooks, whatever) and mixes it all into some beautifully composed songs. At the same time, Shy Child borrows heavily from 1980s pop and modern dance music to create something oddly familiar, yet far out in space.

Noise Won't Stop begins with "Drop The Phone," a song chocked full of beeps, buzzes, and dial tones. Using synth noises on top of a driving drum beat, singer Pete Cafarella adds in situational lyrics to accentuate the cell phone theme: "Then I just lost the signal / the signal's gone." It's a powerful start, but there are better moments on this album.

The album continues with "Pressure to Come," a song more in tune with modern dance and electronica than anything from the past. Drummer Nate Smith adds some complex drumming on top of sirens and Cafarella's keytar riffs. On "The Volume," the electronica takes on a more vintage tone, and Smith uses a drum machine to keep with the '80s mood. While "The Volume" has a straightforward sound, the syncopation is complicated, and Cafarella's vocals summarize the band's lifestyle: "The volume's turned up too loud, but we don't cover our ears / Because they're already numb, from damage already done." Indeed, Noise Won't Stop is an album designed to be enjoyed at high volume.

Noise Won't Stop takes a turn with "Generation Y," a song that nods to the generation that will make or break the band. Cafarella makes generational distinctions that suggest the changes ahead, and since "change" has been the buzzword of the year, it seems to be something Shy Child embrace as well; while the band declares "We got it, we got it," Cafarella sings "Generation Y can't get things off their mind / Generation X can't get things off their chest." And in "Murder Capital," Cafarella waxes political, singing "Everybody is looking over themselves...Selling things to get the means to get what they want," a telling sign that Shy Child's music has more depth than the music alone can suggest.

Yet the music on Noise Won't Stop is still highly successful, and it's packed full of beautifully synthesized orchestration. On title track "Noise Won't Stop," the band creates a beautiful new anthem for us Pitchfork readin' Millennials, and on "Summer," the band bangs out some beautiful poetry that contrasts a carefree lifestyle with a Lennon-esque "war is over": "Just in time for summer / And the war is over and the fighting overseas / Teenage sex and yoga, marijuana, I can hardly breathe / Underground communities are overflowing with possibilities."

Without a doubt, Shy Child are a band that's attuned to the here and now, and express the hope for the future that so many feel is just around the corner. At the same time, Shy Child operate on the cusp of the indie underground, creating some new and experimental sounds while borrowing heavily from the past. At a time when the indie underground is truly thriving, Shy Child certainly aren't cramping anyone's style, and Noise Won't Stop is a great example of what can be done when artists choose to "make it new."

Originally Posted on Blogcritics.org

Review: I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

by Kevin Eagan

Growing up in middle class suburbia has become the height of American comfort, but it's also true that it breeds a certain level of eccentricity - at least, for those who came of age in all of its pre-packaged glory. Blame it on the lack of originality; the strip malls, the four-lane divided highways, and the big box retailers all start to look the same after a while, and those seeking a thrill end up in the city trying to make it in a completely different world.

While David Sedaris' bestselling essays have shown that coming of age in suburbia can be an absurd experience, he's not the only writer who portrays the urban-suburban divide in a hilarious way. As America has moved out of the urban centers and created a new level of urban sprawl, it could be said that the suburban life is about as American as you can get.

Count Sloane Crosley as one more essayist who has endured a childhood in the suburbs, and has a hilarious (albeit slightly eccentric) way of looking at her upbringing. For Crosley, childhood was about working at the mall, surviving the rigors of an all-girls summer camp, and getting a high score on the computer game Oregon Trail.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake is Crosley's first collection of essays, and nothing is held back. Throughout the 15 essays, Crosley takes us on a trip through some of her most hilarious and heartfelt experiences, both as a successful urban woman in New York City and as a self-conscious girl growing up in Westchester, NY ("I came to understand that being born and raised in suburbia makes it difficult to lay claim to a specific type of childhood," Crosley writes).

Crosley's clever way of looking at life and her unique use of language makes I Was Told There'd Be Cake a fun read, and each essay will have you laughing at the odd and bizarre situations Crosley gets herself into. In the first essay, "The Pony Problem," Crosley's attempts at finding uniqueness (by making jokes about ponies) gets interpreted by everyone around her that she really likes ponies, and before you know it, she has a drawerful of plastic ponies that she just can't bring herself to throw away, even though she thinks they are "insanely creepy."

"The Pony Problem" is just one example of how Crosley's dark humor creates an engaging and unique look at life. In "Bring-Your-Machete-To-Work Day," Crosley's inner child and "awkward" transition into teenager left her abusing her favorite computer game Oregon Trail by naming all of her characters after people she knew, and then watching them suffer: "Eventually a message would pop up in the middle of the screen, framed in a neat box: MRS. ROSS HAS DIED OF DYSENTERY. This filled me with glee."

In "You On A Stick," Crosley also re-visits her childhood through her "best" friend's wedding, and her sardonic inner monologue reveals the friendship as a complete fraud, but one that works well for the wedding cameras. Of course, Crosley lets us know the truth, that being maid of honor is a chore that's not worth the brouhaha: "'Horror is a six-letter word. So is 'fuck me.'"

Throughout the collection, language is used to great effect, and Crosley's clever word play portrays otherwise mundane events in an original way. In "Lay Like Broccoli," Crosley defends her vegetarian diet by "[keeping] a set of (vegetable) stock answers at my disposal for all queries about my diet," and in "Smell This," Crosley discovers an unpleasant object on her bathroom floor after a party, and tries to deduce who left the surprise: "Jesus, she's got shit on her floor."

I Was Told There'd Be Cake is an excellent start for a writer who has spent most of her career surrounded by books (she also works as a publicist for Vintage/Anchor books), and it certainly suggests that Crosley has more to come. The collection is both a wonderful read and an excellent critique of the suburban upbringing. Crosley's Web site also provides an interesting extension to the book, and adds a level of multimedia output that sets her writing ahead of many of her predecessors. Overall, I Was Told There'd Be Cake won't take long to read and will have you laughing the whole time.

Originally posted on Blogcritics.org

Review: You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem

by Kevin Eagan

Jonathan Lethem's fiction has never been the type to conform to genre restrictions. If anything, Lethem has become the master of exploiting the trappings and clichés of genre to great effect, and given his track record so far, he's not afraid to use these clichés as an artful indictment of our consumer society. Subsequently, Lethem also shows that literature and art thrive on mimicry, and that the best artists borrow from the past.

In his critically acclaimed novel Motherless Brooklyn, for example, the great tradition of the detective novel is thoroughly deconstructed through Lionel Essrog, a bumbling former orphan with Tourette's Syndrome. Equally, in The Fortress of Solitude, Lethem uses the mysticism of the comic book superhero to give his young protagonist Dylan Edbus some of his own super powers, and in the process revealing why comics have had such a profound effect on young Americans, especially those who struggle socially.

So it's not all that surprising that Lethem's most recent novel You Don't Love Me Yet exposes another literary phenomenon: the love story. At the same time, You Don't Love Me Yet is full of all of the pop culture references and obscurely artful situations that have made Lethem unique, and Lethem's love for music is put front and center in a way we haven't seen from him in a long time.

Recently released on paperback, You Don't Love Me Yet follows the impressionable Lucinda Hoekke, a bass player who plays in a band struggling to find their sound. After quitting her job at a coffee house and breaking up with her boyfriend Matthew (the band's guitarist), Lucinda takes a job at a faux call center set up by her artist friend Falmouth as part of an art experiment. While the band is struggling to find a unique sound amidst the glamor of Los Angeles, Lucinda beomes enamored by "the complainer," a man who dials the call center frequently and gives Lucinda a fresh batch of original material for her songwriting. The band goes through a musical renaissance, Lucinda meets and begins a romantic affair with Carl (the complainer), and the band finally gets exposed to the masses at their first gig.

Although there's much more to the story than that, You Don't Love Me Yet is less about the plot and more about the underlying message, and that underlying message isn't easily accessible. At the surface, Lethem has exposed how genre can shape our expectations, and just like he has done from the beginning of his writing career, he successfully uses those genre motifs to create a brilliant work of satire.

But this book is also about the meaning of ownership, an indictment of the corporate copyrighting of everything (and everyone) that's marketable. As the band's new songs (inspired by Lucinda and Carl's phone conversations) take shape and warrant interest among fans and promoters, Carl weasels his way into the band as the fifth member, a "fifth Beatle" in an already crowded band. From there, the band loses its artistic way, and Lucinda's love for Carl wavers. Carl's belief is that he essentially "made" the band because his catch phrases helped form their songs, but the truth is that the band's musical ownership was a collaborative effort. Of course, Lethem is targeting the very idea of corporate ownership, especially in a time where music and art are stymied by what is easily marketed and palatable to the masses.

While Carl may represent the old school thinking of corporate ownership, Lucinda and Matthew seem to represent the burgeoning underground, where art becomes a do-it-yourself experience that thrives on community interaction and trust. Just as people see through the insanity of copyright lawsuits and the infighting between artists and their record labels over artistic control, Matthew and Lucinda learn that a lucrative record deal and band promotion are for nothing. At the same time, artists like Falmouth and the band's songwriting guitarist Bedwin try and make sense of all of the absurdity. Through these three opposing viewpoints of the band, You Don't Love Me Yet effectively summarizes how Lethem views the world of art, literature, and pop culture.

You Don't Love Me Yet is an interesting story that works well as a social critique, but it's not flawless. At times, the plot itself becomes trite and difficult to follow; the dialogue throughout seems rushed and hollow, and the sex scenes between Lucinda and Carl are god awful. Although it seems that these bad clichés are part of the point, it's not done as effectively as some of Lethem's past fiction, blunting the effect and message he is after. At the same time, You Don't Love Me Yet speaks a truth about modern society, one that is often missed in the maze of clever marketing and confusing copyright laws.

Originally posted on Blogcritics.org

Review: Last Last Chance by Fiona Maazel

by Kevin Eagan

The idea of "making it" in the world, to come from nothing to something through hard work and persistence, is such a deeply held American principle that we don't give it a second thought. When a child declares he will grow up to be an astronaut or top-forty musician, we encourage it — hell, it might come true. When he does grow up and he's struggling to make manager at McDonald's, we still don't discourage his dreams when he spends his days crooning out of key at his favorite karaoke bar, or watching episodes of NOVA in hopes to learn something about his astronaut life goals.

Of course, our cultural aptitude towards making it big doesn't fit with reality. In fact, it's one of the reasons why we celebrate the small things in life, like the single mother who manages to feed her children and pay her bills on time, or the drug addict who manages to kick her addiction. These are honorable goals, but still reflect the many divisions we still have between rich and poor in America.

Fiona Maazel's debut novel Last Last Chance attempts to demystify these preconceived ideas of success through her main character Lucy Clark, a drug addict trying to kick her addiction and find love along the way. In the process, she points a lot of the hypocrisy and fear America faces in a post-9/11 world, and she throws in the apocalyptic threat of a superplague for good measure.

Last Last Chance follows the chaos and mystery of drug addiction and impending plague through the first-person narration of Lucy, who has so many things going on in her life at once, it becomes difficult to follow. Despite being in her early thirties, Lucy's had a hard time making her way through life; as the novel begins, she's been kicked out of her home and is searching for some sense of purpose while working and living at a kosher chicken-processing plant. As she returns to her home in New York to attend her best friend's wedding, things in her life spiral out of control: she misses her friend's wedding after getting the dates mixed up (but no matter, her friend married the only man Lucy ever loved), her mom is willingly trapped in a serious crack addiction, and her father, a former scientist for the U.S. government, has just committed suicide because vials of the plague were stolen from his lab, unleashing a superplague. It's a lot to take in, but Maazel's sense of humor, irony, and her engaging prose style make for a great read.

As Lucy falls back into old patterns in her childhood Manhattan home, apathy sets in. Although she tries to break her addictions, she watches her mother die slowly from crack addiction (a very wealthy one, at that). Lucy tries to seek help for her own drug problems from local 12-step programs, and eventually rehab. While all of this takes place, the strain of superplague is making its way across the country, striking fear and uncertainty in an America that is already full of fear and uncertainty.

The superplague seems like a minor part of the plot in comparison to Lucy's many personal problems, but Maazel uses it to make some profound observations of modern America. The idea of bio-terrorism doesn't seem all that ridiculous — at least, no more ridiculous than the threat of nuclear war felt when Kurt Vonnegut began writing his post-apocalyptic prose in the 1950s and '60s.

It's this threat — one that has remained in the back of people's minds since 2001 even if it still hasn't happened — that makes Maazel's story work, because Last Last Chance becomes more about real fear of death than the self-absorbed complaints of a drug addict. It's not just the threat or the panic felt throughout the novel, it's the apathy and selfishness that comes as a result of bio-terrorism. As the cable news programs hype up the threat of superplague, Lucy observes that "panic is understudied for something so destructive and ubiquitous...What of the people whose panic results in apathy? The mind scrambling for purchase. Indecision or madness. Flee to the suburbs or flee this life." Through Lucy's narration, Maazel suggests that fear of the unknown can breed panic, and this is an apt observation in a time where we fear terrorism.

At the same time, Maazel has weaved an excellent story about the dangers of addiction. It's not a cautionary tale, but it does show how drugs have ruined Lucy's life. Unlike her mother Isifrid, Lucy is willing to try to overcome her addictions, and does learn to manage them in the end. Yet, the damage of addiction is still felt; she has difficulties with real relationships, and even though she spends time in rehab and frequents her 12-step meetings, she still deals with anxiety and her own personal fears. Lucy also seeks out a spiritual life, and at the end of the novel she speaks to God but hears nothing in return. Even though she manages to overcome drugs, not everyone does, and her sense of "making it" is never fully restored.

Throughout Last Last Chance, Maazel isn't after happy endings. Instead, Last Last Chance is a book about recognizing fear and uncertainty, and showing that even in the lowest places of society, the American dream of rags to riches isn't always possible. Maazel's voice is bitingly satiric and hopelessly pathetic, the exact opposite of a novelist out to make the world a happy place. As a result, Last Last Chance is the right portrayal for a 21st Century America, an America trying to make sense of chaos and fear despite our growing apathy.

Originally posted on Blogritics.org.

Review: Magnetic Morning - Magnetic Morning EP

by Kevin Eagan

Out of all the critically successful new albums coming out this year, a theme seems to be emerging: many of the best albums have come from side projects and supergroups. From The Gutter Twins' Saturnalia and The Raconteurs' Consolers of the Lonely to Destroyer's Trouble in Dreams, the supergroups and solo projects have reigned supreme, and there appears to be many more of these albums to come.

Magnetic Morning have come along to add to the ranks with their self-titled EP, released in conjunction with Record Store Day to show their support--and roots within--the indie underground. The group consists of guitarist Adam Franklin of Swervedriver and drummer Sam Fogarino of Interpol, and although the short Magnetic Morning EP only gives listeners a taste of things to come, the EP boasts some beautifully lush, ambient compositions.

Magnetic Morning starts off with "Cold War Kids," an atmospheric and layered song that loops around situational lyrics ("You and me / Cold War kids"). "Cold War Kids" starts an album that will verge on the edge of experimentation, but won't quite get there; if anything, Magnetic Morning are too subdued for a band that slabs on the reverb and noise. Nevertheless, "Cold War Kids" is a great beginning, and hearkens back to a time when slow and methodical meant dreamy and beautiful. I suppose we can thank the Swervedriver influence for that, because there's certainly a shoegaze ambience to this album that is not afraid to borrow from the past.

The EP continues with "Yesterday's Flowers," a bombastic song with reverberating piano chords, pounding drums, and Franklin's lazy-yet-conscious vocals. "Yesterday's Flowers" is spacy, but still seems grounded; although the piano parts float around in the background and barely hold the song together, the drums and acoustic guitar riffs come to the forefront and take over.

"The Way Love Used To Be" is a tight and accessible Kinks cover that the band revisits in an exciting way. The guitars and percussion take over the dreary backdrop of reverb, and Franklin sings "I know a place where we'll be alone / And we'll talk of life / The way love used to be," suggesting a postivity that puts the ambient noise in a completely different context. "The Way Love Used To Be" is certainly the EP's strongest song, giving the band a potential single and a worthy addition to a future full-length release.

On the rest of the short EP, the songs aren't nearly as tight and accessible as "Yesterday's Flowers" or "The Way Love Used To Be." On "Don't Go to Dream State," Franklin's vocals get drowned out by the strings and sliding guitars, and Fogarino's drums are powerful but overwhelming. "Don't Go to Dream State" shows a band so enamored in noise and experimental studio excess that they ignore the basic elements of a potentially good song, and the listener is left trying to make sense of it all. The rest of the album tapers off in this way and doesn't offer anything new, only two pointless remixes of "Cold War Kids" that fall short.

Although the album has been available via iTunes for a couple months (it was originally named The Setting Suns EP before the band changed their name), the Magnetic Morning EP is now available on CD at your local record store. It's still available via iTunes as well, but as far as I can tell, it's not available via Amazon or any other online stores yet (they must not like this Record Store Day celebration too much, I guess). Despite its shortcomings, the Magnetic Morning EP is still a nice little sample of this side project's musical capabilities, and hopefully we'll see a full length LP from the band soon.

Originally posted on Blogcritics.org

Review: Brian Jonestown Massacre - My Bloody Underground

by Kevin Eagan

There's something to be said about experimentation and noise. Even the most simplistic rock band can transform themselves into something much more complex by adding a few guitar effects and background clamor; just look at The Beatles or The Rolling Stones -- both bands pulled it off well, and their songs have become legendary.

Anton Newcombe's The Brian Jonestown Massacre, an odd collection of musicians that have mixed the experimental with the accessibility of modern rock, have been doing this experimentation thing for a while now. With a diverse collection of albums that move from 1990s pop excess to the grounding of folk rock, Newcombe's band has been fairly successful with experimenting over the years.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre's thirteenth album, My Bloody Underground is just as experimental as anything else in their past, but this time around the band doesn't feel nearly as tight as they once did. As their "best of collection" Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective reveals, this band has tried practically everything, but have done so within the confines of succinct pop songs. Now, the band's sound seems like it's been released into some other realm and allowed to dissipate into the stratosphere.

With that said, My Bloody Underground does have some great songs, and the band's surrealist humor and tone still shines. The album begins with "Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney on Heather Mills' Wooden Leg (Dropping Bombs on the White House)," a hilariously titled song, although jarring and low-fi. In terms of album openers, this one summarizes the rest of the album well: it's accessible enough to listen to over and over again, but has an off-color quality and is rife with experimentation. The guitars jangle along, as Newcombe sings, "so grab your silver bullets and your wooden stakes / And lock your fuckin' doors for Jesus sakes" with a beautiful melody as the drums and electric guitars drown out everything else. This is essentially how the rest of the album goes, although some moments are much better than others.

As the album continues, the band starts to sound like they're just randomly jamming, enjoying every second and seeing what happens. "The Infinite Wisdom Tooth / My Last Night In Bed With You" starts of with low-fi guitars, as the band stops so someone can tune the guitar. The rest of the song has a demo tape feel to it, and it's sometimes hard to follow, but a beautiful jam nonetheless. Equally on "Who Fucking Pissed In My Well?," the band jumps right into a far out mystic jam that includes acoustic guitar and sitar.

The album careens around like this until the fourth track, "We Are the Niggers of the World," a straightforward piano jam that feels more like a junior high piano recital than a song worthy of Newcombe's far out antics. Nevertheless, "We Are the Niggers of the World" provides an intermission in an album that's about to get even more trippy, and the title also seems to allude to more deconstruction of The Beatles and their post-Beatles antics (possibly a nod toward John Lennon's song "Woman is the Nigger of the World"?) .

The rest of My Bloody Underground -- indeed, the bulk of the album -- spaces out, comes back for one more drag, then finally goes comatose. "Who Cares Why" is a spacey epic full of distortion and noise with an acoustic guitar riff thrown somewhere in there, and "Just Like Licking Jesus" takes some of the bending guitar riffs of bands like Modest Mouse and bends them even further through discombobulated amps. Right between these two tracks are "Yeah - Yeah" and "Golden - Frost," which provide a sense of some direction as the band sticks to some straightforward songwriting. It's still fucked up, though.

As the band continues, there's more punk rock parody in "Automatic Faggot for the People," mocking R.E.M. and killing political correctness along the way. The song centers around a driving beat, screaming vocals (filtered through a lot of reverb) and ecstatic guitars. It's something we've heard before, but original enough to keep The Brian Jonestown Massacre fresh in our minds.

The album ends with "Black Hole Symphony," a loud white noise epic. I suppose this song marks the end of music itself, summarizing the dark moments of this album as one large destruction of rock music as we know it best. That, with the band's knack for irony in their lyrics and song titles, makes the album worthwhile.

Even though My Bloody Underground careens far into the unknown, and almost risks alienating listeners before it finally takes off, The Brian Jonestown Massacre have, once again, reinvented themselves. It's definitely not an album for those unfamiliar with the band, and at times, the album lacks flow and connection. But in the end, those who understand the band will finally come to terms with what's going on, and My Bloody Underground starts to make sense in some odd, demented way.

Originally published on Blogcritics.org.

Review: Psychic Confusion - The Sonic Youth Story by Steve Chick

Sonic Youth have always been a band shrouded in mystery. Spanning a career that's about to finish off its third decade, the band have carried with them both the avant garde and experimentation of the indie underground, as well as the commercial excess of the 1990s "Alt-rock" scene. With over 15 studio albums and countless EP's, solo, and side projects, the band is still strong today -- and not only strong, they're still influencing young indie rock acts and bucking the trends of commercialism. Even though band members are now in their fifties, they exude an energy not seen in many aging rock bands, and they continue to seek out new trends and sonic explorations.

My first experience of Sonic Youth came, as it did for many Americans, when The Simpsons did a parody of the band and the scene that made them a mainstream success in the episode "Homerpalooza." The Simpsons nod was the ultimate 1990s compliment of success, and for many of their young fans (like myself), it was an opportunity to seek out the band's back catalog, especially their most successful albums up to that point, Dirty, Goo, and Daydream Nation. As the band continued to inspire and mature beyond the confines of the grunge era, albums like 1986's EVOL and 1985's Bad Moon Rising were also cited as influences on many burgeoning indie rock acts.

Psychic Confusion - The Sonic Youth Story by Steve Chick tracks Sonic Youth's career from the dirty New York venues of the early 1980s to the band's recent resurgence in the 21st Century, and everything in between. Chick's exhaustive research and ability to connect the band's musical evolution to cultural changes makes this book an excellent read, one that would interest both fans of Sonic Youth and casual music lovers.

Psychic Confusion starts off with back history of where, why, and how Sonic Youth came about. Chick gives a background of some of the bands and movements within the punk rock community that go back to The Stooges and The Velvet Underground, tracing everything up to the New York punk movement No Wave, which bred Sonic Youth. From there, the book goes in chronological order, covering every major album release along with the band's personal and professional side projects.

While Sonic Youth relied heavily on bizarre alternate tunings and mind numbing effects (including an amplified power drill, of all things) on their early albums (Sonic Youth and Confusion is Sex, specifically), the band would go on to fashion these bizarre sounds into veiled political messages (Bad Moon Rising), accessible melodies (EVOL), and commercially accessible "grunge" rock (Goo and Dirty). As Sonic Youth forged their sound into the 21st Century, they'd take a slight detour (A Thousand Leaves and NYC Ghosts & Flowers) only to come back with their tightest and most familiar sounds since their early to mid career (Murray Street, Sonic Nurse, and Rather Ripped).

Chick's research shows that he is not only concerned with giving an exhaustive biography of the band's successes and failures, but also with putting everything in its social context. Chick reveals the social forces surrounding the band in America and around the world, and how Sonic Youth remained socially conscious without being obnoxious or preachy. In the midst of the Reagan era, the band, like many in the punk and hardcore community, felt disillusioned by the politics of the time. 1985's Bad Moon Rising (the title a reference to Creedence Clearwater Revival's socially conscious song of the same name) would be the album that revealed the most about the community's disillusioned feelings. Later, as the band experienced New York's lock down in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the band's 2002 album Murray Street would express some of their most intimate thoughts about the attacks. Equally, the band would tap into pop culture through their lyrics, and although the band has remained distinctly "alternative," they have always used pop culture and mainstream attitudes to shape their songs.

Psychic Confusion also reveals a band not afraid of the latest trends in the indie underground. Throughout their career, Sonic Youth always brought young indie bands along with them on tour, giving the band a reputation for being the "Godparents" of indie rock. Some of the bands they helped nurture have had their place in rock history, such as Nirvana, who always cited the band as a main reason for their success (Nirvana was signed to Geffen records on the advice of Sonic Youth, for example). Although the band are practically the grandparents of many young new bands, they continue to inspire; musicians like Devendra Banhart and Cat Power owe their success to Sonic Youth's influence and support. While many fans of the band may already know of their influential status, Chick is able to show that their influence continues and may not waver for a long time.

Although Psychic Confusion is exhaustive in its approach, there are times where Chick's historical account digs deep in the cultural history while forgetting to reveal much about Sonic Youth. For example, Chick spends part of the book discussing the grunge movement of the early 1990s, and even discusses the profound influence of heroin on some of these young acts. But in the process, he fails to mention that Sonic Youth was moving away from this scene, a rock scene that had morphed into everything they once railed against. Chick only briefly mentions the band's purposeful move to the art underground, but doesn't go into the profound changes going on in their perspective, even as they continued to release albums on major label Geffen. At the same time, Chick does a great job of explaining Sonic Youth's latest anti-Bush projects, but doesn't give enough background information about the many bands who feel disillusioned by current events, or how these bands are influencing the indie community and spurring activism.

Either way, Psychic Confusion is an excellent biography of Sonic Youth that is both exhaustive and entertaining. Chick not only covers Sonic Youth's many changes over the years, he also reveals a band that's thriving and alive. Although 2006's Rather Ripped was the band's last release on Geffen, Chick taps into the band's profound indie connections to show that they'll still thrive, even if they choose to return to their indie label roots. Even though Psychic Confusion summarizes everything the band has done so far, it leaves open the possibility of many more years of Sonic Youth history, and I'm sure Chick would be just the music writer to continue the story in the future.

Originally published on Blogcritics.org.

Review: Nick Vayenas - Synesthesia

Nick Vayenas is a jazz musician who, at first listen, sounds straightforward and conventional. A closer listen, however, reveals some intricate and complex compositions, and Vayenas is anything but another jazz musician; he's a musician that's willing to cross bridges into new musical territory, and doesn't hold anything back.

Vayenas' debut album Synesthesia offers a mix of synthesizers, horns and percussion that ties together around a central theme, one that Vayenas describes in his liner notes as a "type of stimulation [that] evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing a sound produces the visualization of a color." With that far out explanation, Synesthesia is an album that is multi-dimensional, forcing the listener to participate with all of his senses. That's an adventurous claim, something that Vayenas pulls off well.

The album begins with "Voyager," and the opening synth noises suggest a sci-fi epic voyage--possibly a voyage "where no man has gone before?"--until Vayenas breaks in with steady, triplicated beats, piano and bass. It's an opening that hints at the larger things to come, and as the album moves forward, Vayenas sprinkles the music with synth motifs and moments of pure jazz.

Synesthesia continues with "Assembly Line," giving the album its first feeling of exploration. The song starts off with another synthesized riff, bringing in a trumpet and organ to keep it grounded. It's not quite like prog rock, or overly experimental jazz, yet it has a vibe of experimentation that leads the listener into the title track "Synesthesia." In "Synesthesia," Vayenas slows down a bit, adding his smoky background vocals as he hums along with the horn section. He fills the band out with keyboards and a guitar, and although these parts are subtle, they seem necessary.

Other times, Synesthesia feels like a conventional modern jazz album. On "Odeon," a swinging jazz drum beat plays on while the horn section takes turns improvising solos. Equally on "The Essence," Vayenas lets the band loose to forge new paths while the keyboard parts accentuate and direct the horns into these new territories.

Vayenas also changes the mood of the album several times. "Along The Way" has an eerie vibe, almost like the backing track of a scary movie. The pianos climb as the strings build the tension, and then segues into "Circuit Dialog," another eerie track that uses synth noises once again. "Circuit Dialog" breaks up the album, and Synesthesia mellows out for "Staircase," another straightforward jazz song that focuses on the piano and bass.

As the album comes to an end, Vayenas turns in a different direction once again. On "Gone From Me," he fuses keyboards with horns and strings, and guest vocalist Gretchen Parlato adds a sultry sound to an album that, up to this point, has remained strictly instrumental. Parlato sings "why have you gone from me now? / you never said you'd go," suggesting loneliness, but also suggesting the overall theme of Synesthesia: that adventure can be both exciting and abandoning.

Synesthesia is a great debut album, and it should establish Vayenas as a serious jazz musician. Even though it strikes out into the territories and forces the listener to use all of the senses, it also stays well grounded in the roots of jazz. With its changing pace and unique style, Synesthesia is an album that won't lose you.




Originally published at Blogcritcs.org.

Review: Willing by Scott Spencer

Of all the great thinkers of the 20th Century, Sigmund Freud's theories on the inner workings of the mind have affected our perceptions of reality the most. Freud's psychoanalytic theories have become such a prominent aspect of culture--both pop culture as well as critical theory and analysis--that it has shaped how we view our world, and we've all become a little more self-conscious as a result.

In Willing, author Scott Spencer is clearly playing with some psychoanalytic ideas. He follows in the footsteps of authors such as Vladimir Nabokov and Saul Bellow by revealing plot through the skewed lens of his protagonist Avery Jankowsky. Of course, what we are allowed to see is never the full truth, and we must take Avery's experiences at face value.

Willing follows Avery, a 37-year-old Manhattan freelance journalist whose young girlfriend Deirdre cheats on him with her grad school classmate Osip. When Avery finds out about the affair, he falls into a deep funk. Unable to find decent freelance work, his uncle refers him to his longtime friend Lincoln Castle, who hosts (at $135,000 a trip) a world sex tour for wealthy executives. Avery sees a book opportunity, gets a book deal, and embarks on the sex tour to "research" for his book.

Of course, Spencer doesn't let his protagonist off with an easy assignment like that, and Avery faces his own personal demons along the way. Despite declaring himself as "the guy in the stands at the World Series, ...[with] his hand on his heart and his eyes bright with belief," Avery has a past that haunts him. The first sign that something is not all right with Avery is the way he internalizes his mother's four past marriages, his "four fathers" that he wears with pride in public but rejects in private. Not only does Avery deal with his own father issues, he has to face his mother's overbearing nature both directly and indirectly.

As a result of Avery's inner struggles, Spencer suggests that what's more important in Willing is not the bawdiness of a sex tour, or even the outright hypocrisy of those rich CEO types on the tour, but the conflicts faced by a man who has never actually confronted them. For example, Avery's mother seeks him throughout the novel (Avery keeps "seeing" his mother in various locations around the world) and Avery must face her directly in the middle of his sex tour escapades. Avery's response is not to assert himself as an adult male, but rather to seek her comfort. He also never faces his reaction to Dierdre's infidelity; even as he desperately wants to be with her, he assumes that his own insecurities will never allow him to connect with her directly. Avery's whole bizarre, textbook Oedipal complex approach to life is both pathetic and comic at the same time.

One of Willing's strengths, and a strength of Spencer's prose style in general, is that we never know where reality and the fantasy of Avery's narration actually meet. There is a dreamlike quality to the entire novel, and Avery's self-deprecating tone and recollection of events is full of the random and surreal. Spencer reflects this dreamlike quality on a technical level as well through his lack of quotation marks and stripped-down dialog.

Even though Spencer is successful in creating a bizarre, psycho-sexual narrator and protagonist, he is not as successful with some of the basic elements of continuity and plot. At times, Avery's experiences don't make sense. For example, Avery is able to secure a $400,000 book deal within 24 hours after sending off his pitch, justifying his sex tour trip. I wish I lived in that type of world, where a struggling freelance journalist can sign an amazing book contract deal that fast. Spencer also loses the reader at the end, when Lincoln Castle kicks Avery off the sex tour because of a string of unfortunate events and because he was "pulling the plugs out of computers" at his Reykjavik hotel. Seems like such a minor reason to be kicked off a sex tour. At the same time, Spencer's comic portrayal of Avery's antics makes up for it, even if it's a bit unbelievable.

Willing may have its flaws, but it is, for the most part, an enjoyable read. Spencer's portrayal of Avery is hilarious, and Avery's personal demons interweave with the plot well. Willing leaves the reader with an understanding that, in this world of psychoanalysis and obsession, there is still hope to laugh at our mistakes.

Rating: 6/10

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/03/27/050653.php

Review: The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia

Before you even open the disc or listen to a single second of the album, The Gutter Twins' debut release Saturnalia speaks to you through its striking album cover. The cover is a photo showing classic urban prairie, an abandoned lot between two shotgun houses, where the greenery only grows as weeds between the cracks of a neglected sidewalk and life seems to have gone underground. Two chairs sit in the center of the photo, and behind that, a dark, cloudy sky looms over the scenery and reflects off a dead tree.

Yet, there's something alive about the album cover. It draws you in and forces you to face the realities of humanity, and that life is not always beautiful and serene.

It's been a while since I've seen an album cover so succinctly describe the mood and tone of the music on the album itself. Even the two chairs — which are probably empty because the two members of The Gutter Twins are off recording this excellent album — speak of something profound. Is it abandonment? Poverty? A political message, possibly conjuring the images of destruction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Who knows...

Fortunately, the album cover is only one small aspect of why this album moves me. The Gutter Twins have created music that, at every listen, reveals some minor nuance I missed the time before. It's an emotionally and musically complex album, and one of the best to come out this year (so far).

The Gutter Twins are composed of two former '90's music powerhouses — Mark Lanegan of the Screaming Trees and Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs — and, I have to admit, I was initially skeptical that this combination would work. While I enjoyed The Afghan Whigs back in the day, I was never a fan of the Screaming Trees, and these two lead singers seemed worlds apart to me.

However, Saturnalia shows that these two musicians are a perfect match. While the album moves through many different styles and genres, it remains a unified collection of songs that speak to many different emotions and situations. Plus, it's a musically strong collection that flows from track to track, and hints at what's to come on future releases.

Saturnalia kicks off with "The Stations," a great starting point for this album, as it seems to summarize the mood of the entire album. Dulli and Lanegan share writing credits and vocals for this song; on most of the other songs, Dulli and Lanegan have split up the song writing and recording. "The Stations" captures an airy atmosphere through its reverberating guitars and backing strings, suggesting a maturity in sound as these two grunge masters have grown up. Lanegan sings of a blended religiosity and hope for the future ("I hear the rapture's coming / They say he'll be here soon / Right now there's demons crawling all around my room"), but he also sings of confusion ("Don't know what they mean").

"The Stations" transitions well into "God's Children," and the album's first half starts to take shape. It's full of melancholic ambiguity, and the Lanegan/Dulli mashup expresses this ambiguity best. "All Misery/Flowers," for example, expresses the need to "hold on" while it also suggests an end: "Let's ride suicide / Say what you want, but you make it, don't lie." The religious ambiguity is also used for stylistic effect, and the blues/R&B influences of these two artists shows through, both in their vocal styles and in their lyrical themes.

Saturnalia takes a turn with "Circle the Fringes," another Dulli/Lanegan composition rife with strings and growing atmosphere. The album becomes more inward looking, suggesting inner turmoil rather than social concerns. On "Who Will Lead Us?" Lanegan moves through a spiritual ballad that leans on the musician's blues influences. The call-and-response between the guitar and the vocal styles is pure blues, but it's still tinged with the loud guitars brooding in the background. Lanegan calls out, as if to God, saying: "I think the chariot is coming / And if it should please you Lord / I give this trumpet up to Gabriel." Other tracks, like "I Was In Love With You" (a Dulli composition), focus more on personal relationships rather than spiritual concerns.

The album ends by tying up the loose ends left at the beginning of the album. Stylistically, songs like "Each to Each" and "Front Street" bring back the loudness brewing beneath the airy atmosphere that defines this album. Equally, there is more partnership between the two musicians, and on "Front Street," the album ends with the same thoughts that the album cover initially brings up: "Front Street ain't a place for a boy who / Likes to talk ways that boys do / Unstrung, young, dumb, comfortably numb." It conjures up an image of a boy in the street behind the camera who has yet to grow up and face the world, yet it also speaks to some of the most basic human concerns of adulthood.

There's no doubt that The Gutter Twins have something going for them, and Saturnalia is an excellent start. Don't expect these two '90's stars to stick to old clichés. Instead, expect an album that both reflects originality and a reflected sense of maturity. I have a feeling we may be talking about Saturnalia for years to come.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/03/11/193631.php

Review: Things Fall Apart, 50th Anniversary Edition by Chinua Achebe

Fifty years ago, Africa was a continent struggling to find identity and freedom, despite centuries of control and change that destroyed the cultures of a diverse group of people. As Africa struggled to free itself from colonial rule in the second half of the 20th century, there were many who wondered if Africa could survive in the industrial age and move beyond colonialism.

In 2008, it's hard to say whether Africa's independence from colonial rule has resulted in freedom. It has certainly allowed many nations, such as Nigeria and South Africa, to compete globally, but it has also left many others in the throes of poverty, genocide, and war. As African nations found their independence throughout the '60's and '70's, many hoped Africa would become a new world superpower, but it never happened. It has been a tumultuous time, and Africa continues to struggle with the scars left by colonial rule.

Recognizing Africa's struggles between the traditions of the past and the turmoil left by colonialism, Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart shows how these struggles are not always simple to understand. Originally published in 1958, Things Fall Apart has become a modern classic, and a 50th anniversary edition was released this month to celebrate the novel's lasting impact.

Things Fall Apart follows Okonkwo, a village leader who becomes one of the most powerful men in Umuofia, his ancestral village. As Okonkwo strives to rise from obscurity to importance, he brings along with him the traditions that his village requires of him. Even though Okonkwo faces hardship throughout the novel, Achebe shows us that the cultural expectations and beliefs of this region are complex and difficult to understand, but more powerful than the Western world portrays it, especially in 1958.

Okonkwo's rise to a powerful position in Umuofia also reveals the struggles of a man torn apart by a multiplicity of emotions, and Okonkwo faces these throughout the novel. At one point, Okonkwo breaks the customs of Umuofia, and Okonkwo and his family are exiled from the village for seven years. Okonkwo is forced to start over, and he does so, building his power and manhood back.

Achebe's novel takes an interesting turn when Okonkwo returns to Umuofia, and he finds a village changed by outside forces. British missionaries have set up a Christian church in the village, and are trying to convert the villagers to Christianity. While many of the villagers convert to the new religion, Colonial forces take over the political and cultural beliefs and customs of the region, and Okonkwo, a man rooted in the traditions of the past, feels lost. Instead of portraying the British empire as the enemy and the villagers as the heroes, Achebe puts these political changes within their historical context; it becomes clear that the events take place at the height of Victorian Britain, and the fervor surrounding the Colonial government becomes a fact that Okonkwo must face. By showing the nuances and multiple customs and traditions that Okonkwo knew as a young man, Achebe shows how difficult it is for Okonkwo to face these outside forces.

In the end, Okonkwo won't face them with honor. Achebe then shows how complicated Colonial Africa has become, that it is a region full of turmoil that will last for years to come. In 1958, a time of change for post-colonial Africa, Things Fall Apart became a way for Africans to respond to their colonists, and in the decades after its publication, the novel would represent why change in the region was so necessary.

Now that fifty years have passed, Things Fall Apart is still an important novel because of its complex portrayal of colonialism. Although the novel seems simple at face value, it shows how difficult it is to overcome centuries of colonial rule that uprooted so many people and customs, and left them at the mercy of corporate and political greed. Achebe doesn't paint a black and white world when he describes Okonkwo's struggles; instead, he shows that things are difficult to fix once they have been broken.

Africa may one day become the prosperous world power that seemed possible fifty years ago, as nation after nation found their independence from colonial rule. Achebe's novel shows that it's too difficult to view Africa from one perspective, and the story will remain a powerful force in African literature.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/03/01/123602.php

Review: Ralph Ellison - A Biography by Arnold Rampersad

Ralph Ellison began his life in Oklahoma in 1913, an area far removed from the cultural changes happening in America and an area that, despite its promise of a new life, still held blacks in the throes of Jim Crow racism. As a child, Ralph desired more from the America he grew to love and respect, and he would reach new heights through an unwavering love for the arts, especially jazz; he saw musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington as heroes because they made it into the heart of American society, despite their skin color (later, in his novel Invisible Man, Ellison's unnamed narrator would also find solace in Armstrong's music).

Ralph would eventually get there. His life ended in 1994 as a man who overcame odds against him as a kid to become a literary icon whose novel Invisible Man is still revered today. He was a man who always set the bar high, and despite accomplishing much in his life, he never finished the second novel he always promised would be a novel about the African-American experience that would rival Faulkner and Melville. In many ways, Invisible Man became that novel, and Ellison's short stories, essays and literary criticism would become standards for reading America and American literature.

It was the second novel that would always weigh on Ellison's mind. With his heightened expectations, the novel would fall under the weight of prestige and fame. Ellison also became the victim of time, and the longer he waited to bring his novel out, the more America--and, therefore, Ellison's expectations of America--changed. He would blame everything from writer's block "as big as the Ritz," the changing cultural expectations of black writers, and a house fire in 1967 that Ellison claimed destroyed the majority of his novel.

In Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad, the myths surrounding Ellison is finally rebuffed. Rampersad's biography digs deep into every event surrounding Ellison's career, and strikes a balance between his personal demons and his public persona without placing the writer on a pedestal. Ellison is shown not only as an intelligent voice for his generation, but also as a man prone to anger and a man who stubbornly stuck to what he knew to be true.

Rampersad begins his story by looking into Ellison's tumultuous childhood in the segregated Oklahoma City, where his mother raised him and his younger brother Herbert with the help of neighbors and friends (his father died early in Ellison's life when a shard of ice stabbed him in the stomach after lifting a block of ice). He recalls the difficulties of Jim Crow in Oklahoma; at one point, Ellison's mother was turned away from the city zoo with both her sons, embarrassed by the white security guard. Rampersad does not just focus on Ellison's career, but shows how Ellison's early years helped shape his literature.

When Ellison grows up and heads to college, Rampersad shows a life that closely reflected Ellison's fiction, especially his most famous novel Invisible Man. Ellison's time at Tuskegee, and his reasons for leaving the institution, shape how the narrator of Invisible Man will form his own identity. Rampersad sweats the small details, showing the progression Ellison took as he moved to Harlem in the 1930's and became a writer. Writers such as Langston Hughes and Richard Wright directly influenced Ellison's desire to write a great novel, even though Ellison would later distance himself from these writers due to his changing political beliefs. Rampersad also tracks Ellison's political evolution, from Communist sympathizer in the 1930's to moderate Democrat in the 1960's and beyond. In Invisible Man, Ellison's narrator would make a similar political change, albeit on a smaller level. Indeed, Ellison's fiction was often closely linked to his own changes.

Rampersad's exhaustive research also reveals a man who was prone to arrogance and, as a result, was often viewed as out of touch with modern American literature, especially in the ever changing 1960's. While Ellison worked night and day on the novel that would rival Faulkner (that he ultimately never finished), a new perspective on race relations, especially among blacks, emerged. Ellison was stuck between two conflicting worlds: a white America that accepted Ellison and allowed him to move up in society, and a black America that accused Ellison of being an "Uncle Tom." Ellison never backed down; despite younger writers seeing him as out of touch with the struggles of the modern world, Ellison always believed that race relations were more complex than black versus white, and that African-American culture was distinctly American. As he aged and black radicalism subsided, many young scholars turned back to Ellison's words, and his view of America endures today.

Perhaps the most interesting section of Rampersad's biography is his mention of the 1967 fire that destroyed Ellison's Plainfield, Mass. estate. What is interesting about this event is how minor it truly was. As Ellison continued to labor away with his novel-in-progress, he would claim to those who asked him that most of it was destroyed in the fire, and therefore spent years trying to re-write the novel from memory. The truth, according to Rampersad, was that Ellison lost only a small portion of the novel, since most of the novel was left at his home in Harlem. The novel was never finished or published during his lifetime because Ellison fell under the weight of it, as it grew to be well over 1,000 pages long without any real direction. Later, a portion of the novel would become Juneteenth, published posthumously (the rest of the novel is supposed to be published later this year).

Rampersad ends his biography with Ellison's 1994 death. Suffering from pancreatic cancer, Ellison went peacefully at his Harlem apartment. While listening to a Louis Armstrong song, Ellison signaled to his wife Fanny that the song was perfect, suggesting that Ellison, even on his deathbed, still regarded jazz as one of the most important experiences of his American adventure.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography is an excellent look at a man and a career that, despite its ups and downs, deserves respect. Although he faced his critics (sometimes head on) with a bullish attitude, it was done because of his true belief that America would endure. Although he never finished the second novel he always promised, Invisible Man and his collections of literary and cultural criticism have become classics. Rampersad's exhaustive research leaves nothing behind, revealing a conflicted man who still knew what he ultimately wanted, an integrated America that recognized a multiplicity of views, and in many ways, he got just that.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/02/21/144546.php

Review: Drew Gress - The Irrational Numbers

Unlike many other musical styles, jazz stands out as a genre that can easily tap into the deep crevices of the mind, digging up deeply held emotions and feelings. Stylistically, it is ready to express many ideas at once, to reveal the subtle feelings and nuanced thoughts that aren't always seen at the surface.

Most modern jazz musicians recognize this, and with this knowledge comes the challenge to move listeners in deep, meaningful ways. Any true jazz fan knows that jazz is not just here to entertain or create pretty sounds (in fact, a lot of jazz isn't too pretty), but that it is here to express and reflect the inner movements and expressions of the mind.

Which brings jazz musician Drew Gress into the conversation, a man who truly knows how to use each instrument and every improvisational technique to the greatest emotional effect. In his latest, The Irrational Numbers, Gress knows that his bass-driven jazz digs deep into, as Jack Kerouac said in his novel On The Road, the "pit and prune juice " of the human experience. The Irrational Numbers does just this, taking its listeners on a complex journey of highs and lows experienced at the peaks of mountains and the crevices of caves.

At first listen, The Irrational Numbers is hard to take in, bringing in equal amounts of dissonance and beautiful melodies. Every musician goes off on their own improvisational techniques, digging deep into their own personal feelings in order to bring together the group as a whole. At times, Gress' sound becomes jangled and discordant, but just as he goes off on a tangential riff, he brings the group back to a more unified, conventional sound.

The album starts off with "Bellwether," a short introductory song that highlights the more subdued elements of the rest of the album. With Ralph Alessi's muted trumpet and Gress' bass motifs carrying the rhythm and melody, "Bellwether" is a way for the band to say "we're here" and for the listener to wake up.

Once Gress has us listening attentively with "Bellwether," he gets right into it with "Chevelle," a fast moving and, at times, dissonant song that brings in the whole band. "Chevelle" begins with pounding beats and discordant piano chords. When the horns come in, there is a frantic pace, as each musician improvises on top of the riffs holding the rhythm together, including Gress' bass (here, Gress takes a step back, letting the other musicians take solos). Eventually, "Chevelle" breaks through the madness, and comes to a more conventional jazz technique. At the end, the piano (along with Gress' electronic instruments) brings the rest of the band back down to a beautiful, ethereal moment on the album.

The rest of The Irrational Numbers continues in this way. On "Your Favorite Kind," alto saxophonist Tim Berne riffs along with Alessi's trumpet, juxtaposing each other with fast, technical solos. Gress also reasserts his bass prowess, moving his fingers along the fingerboard as fast as he can. On "Fauxjobim," the band starts off with the same subdued sound of "Bellwether," carries that to the end while drummer Tim Rainey improvs all over the place.

The Irrational Numbers has a way of drawing the listener in, as if the album is one continuous stream of sound. In fact, this is the type of album you can get lost in, not realizing there's a new song every few minutes. By the end of the album, Gress has you wanting more. Throughout the album, Gress also hearkens back to the motifs at the beginning of the album, like the subdued chorus of "Bellwether" and the chaotic moments of "Chevelle." In this way, the whole album feels like it's telling a story through sound. As "Blackbird Backtalk" fades out to the next track "By Far," for example, Gress has taken you into a fiery chaos and then left you in an icy sea, and you must find your way out. And then, on "That Heavenly Hell," you are back to chaos and confusion, as the saxophone and piano fight each other for your attention. It builds to a climax and then leaves you with "True South," a slower track that rounds out the album and goes back to the control and beauty of "Bellwether."

Gress also shows off his bass skills when you least expect it. On "Mas Relief," a short song that lulls you into the bombastic "That Heavenly Hell," Gress riffs along on his bass with a few keyboard effects in the background. It's a beautiful song that shows Gress doesn't always need to fall behind his band; his powerful talent on bass alone can hold a song together.

The Irrational Numbers shows that Gress is willing to delve deep into the recesses of the mind to move listeners. At times, the music moves into chaos, and then within a split second everything seems back to normal. Gress displays a strong command of jazz while showing that the bass can still reign supreme when everything is done right. Overall, The Irrational Numbers is a great album that is worth every second.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/02/20/164619.php