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Fluxblog Interview With Bryan Charles!

Reading Bryan Charles‘ Grab On To Me Tightly As If I Knew The Way is like falling through a time warp back to 1992. Without seeming forced or remotely kitschy, he evokes minute details of life in the early 90s from the perspective of an aimless seventeen year old recent high school graduate in Kalamazoo, Michigan with poignancy, wit, and an unsentimental sort of poetry. It’s a remarkably confident debut novel, and one of my favorite fictional works from the year thus far. In this interview, we talk a bit about the book, his writing process, the appeal of the ’90s, and our favorite rock band, Pavement.

Matthew Perpetua: Is this your first novel? It’s know that it is your first published book, but is the first book you’ve completed?

Bryan Charles: Yeah, this is my first novel, the first book I ever tried to write. I never attempted to write anything longer than about six thousand words, that’s about longish short-story length, before that. And as far as novels go, Grab isn’t a particularly long one.

MP: How long were the characters and story ideas kicking around in your head before you got to actually write the book?

BC: Quite a while, actually. In the case of Helene, the main female character, as far back as the summer of 1992, which is when a meeting very much like the one in the early pages of the book took place. I was seventeen, I had just graduated high school and I went to band practice, where I happened to meet a girl with scars on her arms who was reading Naked Lunch and told me it was her Bible. Something about that meeting I never forgot, always kind of drifted back to, and in about 1998, I wrote a story about the encounter called “Scars.” It was very bare bones, just a few pages; neither of the characters even had names at that point. It was just a guy and a girl talking. Much later, in the summer of 2001, after having given that short piece more thought, I went back to it and expanded it and it blew up to about twenty pages. That’s when the characters of Vim and Helene really took shape. I was in grad school at the time and a teacher of mine said she really liked the characters and the voice of the story and encouraged me to try and take them further, and so I did.

MP: I was wondering how much of Helene was based on fact, because so much of that character is so well observed and specific, and she reminded me of two or three people I’ve actually known. How much of Vim is autobiographical for you?

BC: Well, Vim’s story is essentially my own and the book’s main plot points (inasmuch as there actually is a plot) are certainly true. My parents divorced when I was quite young and I grew up and got very into music and played in bands and was hung up a lot of the time on unattainable girls, etc. Beyond that, I invented many of the specific situations and various other peripheral characters. It’s funny you say that about Helene because she’s actually a composite of two or three people that I’ve known over the years. No one like that really existed for me at that time in my life, at least in the way that it’s described in the book.

MP: Was there any reason aside from actually growing up in the early 90s and the book being semi-autobiographical that the story takes place in that time? Your presentation of that era is pretty key to the character of the story, and you’re evoking a lot of concrete details that are easy to forget when you think of the period now, but really put you back in time when you read it. Are you nostalgic about the era?

BC: You know, I am farily nostalgic for that era. And maybe that’s typical, maybe it just goes with getting a little older and looking back and feeling a kind of romanticized fondness for a certain time, like someone who was my age in the mid-70s looking back on the 60s or something. But it really does feel to me like that was a special time, in a lot of ways perhaps more magical than much of what came after it, musically, culturally, politically, everything. There’s a reason Slanted and Enchanted still gets heavy play on my stereo, and it’s not because I’m so out of touch.

Pavement “Angel Carver Blues/Mellow Jazz Docent (Live)” (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

MP: You named the book after a Pavement lyric, right? From “Angel Carver Blues/Mellow Jazz Docent.” Was there any particular reason for that?

BC: Well, Pavement is my all-time favorite band in the history of music. And I’ve just always loved that line. For a while–for two whole years, actually–the book had a different title. It was called Stay Cool Forever. And as time wore on and I got deeper into the book and closer to the end and I saw how things were going to go down, Stay Cool Forever seemed somehow too jokey, too sarcastic. So I axed it and almost immediately that Pavement line came into my head and seemed to evoke precisely the mood I was going for in the book.

Dinosaur Jr. “Pond Song” (Click here to buy it from Merge Records.)

MP: Pavement doesn’t actually seem to get mentioned in the book nearly as much as Dinosaur Jr., who you have Vim openly immitating. Is that another big band for you, or did it just make more sense for that to be Vim’s thing?

BC: Dinosaur Jr. was a huge band for me then. I mean, I was obsessed. And the only reason Pavement didn’t get more play in the book is because I was trying to stay strictly true to the chronology, and I didn’t actually get into them until my freshman year of college, which would have been 92/93. I did eventually become fully obsessed with Pavement and I suppose the reason that love didn’t fade like with Dinosaur Jr.–or even Nirvana, for that matter–is because there’s more to work with in those songs, I think, there are more emotional dynamics. Dinosaur Jr. or Nirvana are terrific visceral experiences but Pavement–the whole Stephen Malkmus catalog, really–taps into something else.

MP: I agree. I’m constantly amazed by how much new I find in Pavement songs that I’ve known since I was 14, and how I’m either still getting the same thing out of them as I did when I first heard them (like, say, “Raft” and “Easily Fooled” which I just discovered are still wonderful ‘I’ve got a crush’ songs in spite of some pretty weird lyrics), or songs I wasn’t way into then have this whole new life for me now that I’m older, like with “Father To A Sister of Thought” or “We Dance.”

How much influence have musicians like Malkmus had on your writing style? I can detect a certain flair for unexpected language and similes.

BC: That’s a good

question and I’m sure the influence is there. I mean, in terms of sheer language I do like to keep things either charged-up or slightly off-kilter or just interesting in some way, as interesting as I can make it. I had one early review of the book, a not particularly complimentary review, say that I obviously spent a lot of time fussing around with my prose. Which seems to me to be the only way to do it. Because I’m very much against the novel as merely a vessel for information, some kind of perfectly true, perfectly bland realistic experience. As far as the Malkmus influence, it’s strange and maybe has worked on me in ways I don’t even realize. One of my favorite periods in literature is the New York School in the 50s, poets like Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, whom I particularly like, to the extent that I’d call him one of my favorite poets. Now, I got into Ashbery in an undergrad workshop. We weren’t talking too much indie rock there. And years later I read some article about Stephen Malkmus and one of the things he mentions is an interest in John Ashbery. So everything feeds off everything else, I guess.

MP: You mentioned that you’ve been in bands, and you’ve written music. How is the experience of writing prose different for you? Were there ever points in writing the book where you felt like “oh man, this feeling would be so much easier to express with a guitar”?

BC: Oh yeah, all the time. Because there are places that music can reach that literature will simply never be able to. I love Jimi Hendrix, he’s one of my favorites, and I will never, ever find the feeling I get listening to “Little Wing” in some book. As far as comfort level goes, I’m more comfortable with prose these days, but only because I feel out of practice with songwriting. I still play guitar pretty much every day but not really to write anything and songwriting is like any kind of writing, you’ve got to do it a lot to get good. That said, there are times even now that I wish I could throw the draft of the novel I’ve been working on out the window and pick up my guitar and try and write something really good that, at the very most, stretching my abilities to their very limits, would take up no more than four minutes of your time.

“All the Young Hessians” is a song I wrote with a band I was in called So This is Outer Space and I included in the book sort of for my and my bandmates’ amusement, but also because I felt at the time that it was a pretty good effort, a pretty solid three-to-four-minute pop song. Now, obviously, I have some issues with it, the biggest one being my voice, which I’ve never been totally comfortable with.

The back story here is that I’d never planned on singing anything. I learned how to play guitar and thought I’d try and join a band and then finally, my senior year of high school, a guy came up to me and asked if I knew how to play the Dinosaur Jr version of “Just Like Heaven.” I told him I did and he asked if I’d come over and show the guys in his band how to play it, since they were thinking of covering it. So I did, I went and showed them. But then none of those guys wanted to sing it so they asked if I’d do that too. I said okay and thought it’d be just a one-shot deal but that’s how I joined the band that became the basis for the Judy Lumpers.

But Vim was supposed to be fumbling his way toward some more accomplished songwriting and that’s what I always thought “Hessians” represented for me, a leap of some kind. Maybe not a huge one, but a leap. Obviously there’s a heavy Weezer influence. It was eight years ago now so bear that in mind.

MP: Are you working on another novel now?

BC: Yeah, I’ve been working on a new novel for about the last seven months. And I’d been thinking about it and making notes for about six months before that. Writing Grab felt at times pretty anxious and aimless and so far this new project is a much more focused, slightly easier effort. The key word being “slightly.”

MP: Is it odd to have to revisit this book so much now that it’s actually coming out and you have to promote it? I’ve always wondered what it must be like for artists who have to go out and work a book or an album or a movie when they’re invested in another project.

BC: It’s very odd. I finished this book in August of 2004 and I’d been hammering away at it for three years, through what felt like twenty different incarnations of my emotional self, to put it in slightly new-agey terms. There was a period during the copyediting process when I never wanted to lay eyes on it again. But it gets fun again and you get jazzed about certain things like when the galleys come in and then you finally see the finished book and realize that other people being will be seeing it with new eyes, they’ll be approaching it with a new energy, and I’ve tried to tap into that.

MP: Ha, and then you’ll have to go through an even weirder process if it gets turned into a movie! Have you thought about how the book would translate as a movie? It’s definitely not the sort of book that seems like a modified screenplay. So much of the appeal is based on an interior monologue that’s pretty much unfilmable, but I can definitely see someone wanting to adapt it.

BC: Just after it sold, about a year ago now, there was a flurry of interest from film people. It was all very abstract. I never knew exactly who these people where or how they found out about my book, but it fizzled after a pretty intense two weeks or so. Which is just as well, to be honest with you, because all that stuff sent me into tailspins of anxiety–selling the book and hearing from my agent about movie people–and I was constantly sweating and borderline hyperventilating. But I’d be flat-out lying if I said I never thought about how the book would look as a movie or didn’t have daydreams about who would be on the soundtrack. I agree with you that parts of it might be trickier to film, but if someone wanted to try I’d be pretty ecstatic.

MP: It’s odd how film adaptation is this major (and sometimes strangely legitimizing) thing for people in books, whereas it’s really hard to imagine anyone who works in music or fine art thinking about their work being a source material for a completely different artform that’s higher up in a hierarchy of public interest and profitability.

BC: I seem to remember Paul Thomas Anderson talking about how he wrote Magnolia to be a kind of visual Aimee Mann mixtape, something about how he listened to her music and wrote that movie. And her stock shot through the roof when that movie came out and she did achieve a kind of “legitmacy” as a songwriter that she hadn’t had before that. And that’s certainly true in the book world, as you point out. It’s like instant cred and if you’re lucky, a lot of dough. I was working in this office when I sold my book and, you know, some people there were pretty excited. “Oh, congratulations, that’s great.” But when I told them about movie people calling they were instantly like, “Wow, this is it, you’re going to be famous. Please remember the little people.” Their interest jumped to a whole other level. But here I am, still unfamous, and I remember their names.

NYC readers should note that Bryan Charles will be reading selections from the book at the The Reader’s Room on Monday, June 12, 7 PM @ Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction, Second Floor 34 Avenue A, between 2nd & 3rd Streets.

Please Don’t Shake Me

This week’s Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site. This week, all three songs have never been featured here before, so if you’re a Fluxblog regular you really ought to go check this one out.

Brightblack Morning Light “All We Have Broken Shines” – This is song is like some kind of full body swoon. It’s as though the tune just snips the cord of your mind so it floats away from your body like a balloon. The vocals seem to have a light gravitational pull, and the gentle keyboards feel like the only thing tethering you to waking life. It’s like late period Yo La Tengo without so many neuroses, or Cat Power on a melted cassette. You might not want to play this while driving, especially if you’ve just taken some medication. (Click here for Brightblack Morning Light’s page on the Matador Records site.)

Elsewhere: I have no way of linking directly to it, but I recently wrote an entry on Urge’s Pop Informer about Christina Milian’s “So Amazing.” (The song, not the album.) My review is just okay, but the song is fantastic, and I highly recommend it. Go get it, seriously.

Like A Record Broke: What If What If What If

PlanningToRock “I Wanna Bite Ya” – New love can be a very strange and bewildering thing, and as a result, you can find yourself in a predicament much like the one in this song. Namely, confusing lust with physical hunger, and sex with cannibalism. The song keeps up a smirking flirtation while clearly overwhelmed by a tidal wave of carnal urges and mixed emotions, but every “what happens if?” seems to signify a heady rush of possibilities rather than a crippling paranoia. Serving suggestion: On a playlist or cd with Fox’s “Sssingle Bed,” Spektrum’s “Horny Pony,” Macy Gray’s “Harry,” Goldfrapp’s “Ride A White Horse,” and a nice red wine. (Click here to buy it from Chicks On Speed Records.)

The Evening Episode “Backstroke” – My, this is a sweaty little song, isn’t it? Not just in terms of the lyrics, which scan like a young woman attempting to write a sex poem in Lee Ranaldo’s voice, but in how the music actually feels slicked up and humid. The vocal delivery is right on the mark, building up narrative anticipation along with the accompaniment until it breaks loose like a thunderstorm on a summer afternoon. Also: This is probably the sexiest song I’ve ever heard that includes the phrase “swimming like an otter.” (Click here to pre-order it from Slowdance.)

I’ll Never Learn To Say Goodbye

My Robot Friend “One More Try” – I tried and just could not bring myself to get into Antony and the Johnsons, but as it turns out, it probably wasn’t Antony Hegarty’s weird Aaron Neville-with-a-sinus-infection voice that was getting in the way of my enjoyment of their records. Unsurprisingly, Hegarty is a perfect fit for torch-song disco, hamming it up like Marc Almond or Andy Bell on a song that sort of resembles Annie Lennox’s brilliant “Little Bird” with all the difficult-to-sing parts removed. This is excellent stuff. More please! (Click here to buy it from Bleep.)

Clipse “Re-Up Anthem (Nick Catchdubs Remix)” – The Eric Clapton sample is a bit on-the-nose (ha, not a pun – that’d be up-the-nose, right?), but Nick Catchdubs works it nicely, serving the rap well with a groove that makes the vocals pop a bit more than on the original mix. (Click here to buy it from DJ Benzi.)

Elsewhere: Marathon Packs on the inexplicable bi-curiosity of the Miracles on the obscure and unintentionally hilarious gem “Ain’t Nobody Straight In L.A.”

And: The first movie review of the summer is up on The Movie Binge, where myself and five other contributors will be reviewing (sometimes as a group, sometimes on our own) every single movie coming out in America between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The first film is, of course, X-Men: The Last Stand, and it’s a tag team effort featuring almost all of us, plus a trivia contest with a cool prize if you’re into video games. I stand by my review of the film, but I admit that it is not quite as sharp as what Todd has to say over on The Face Knife.

Fluxblog Interview With Andrew Beaujon!

I recently read Andrew Beaujon‘s Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside The Phenomenon of Christian Rock on the glowing recommendation of a friend who grew up as part of that scene. It’s a fantastic book, especially for a reader such as myself who had only a passing knowledge of the music as I started in on the first chapter. I liken the experience to when I bought the Spin Alternative Music Record Guide when I was a young teenager – suddenly there was another canon to explore from yet another parallel musical universe. In addition to making artists like Pedro The Lion who I’d barely given much thought seem utterly fascinating, Beaujon approaches Christian culture with a sensitivity and curiosity that is quite rare for a secular music writer without sacrificing his critical judgement. I recently caught up with Mr. Beaujon to discuss his book, and share some songs by artists featured in its pages.

Matthew Perpetua: As an outsider to the world of Christian music, how did you come to write a book about it?

Andrew Beaujon: Well, it started with a conversation. My friend Jim Coe had just graduated from seminary in Richmond, and we were talking over dinner about his Christian-rock past. I talked to more friends about it, and I found out it was a really common experience for a lot of them – getting really into Jesus as a teenager, attending a festival or two, and then usually getting out of it during college. Jim mentioned that the Cornerstone Festival was a big one, so I pitched a story to the Washington Post about it, and they liked the idea. And that’s really how it started. While I was prepping for the article, I couldn’t find anything written about Christian rock that wasn’t by Christians who loved Christian rock or Christians who loathed it. And being the enterprising sort….

MP: Was there much written about Christian music by non-Christians?

AB: Nothing I could find. The odd sneering article taking that “Planet America” tone, you know what I mean?

MP: Reading the book, I kept running into mentions of acts that I had no idea were Christian. I did not realize how many of the promos I’ve been sent over the past two years of so had been Christian bands. I’ve definitely written about a fair few bands without knowing that was part of their past. It’s become amazingly mainstream in the last five years, was that part of the interest?

AB: Definitely. I had a similar experience when I was doing a piece on P.O.D. for Spin. I guess I knew they were Christians, but I’d never really given it much thought. But when you look at the numbers of Evangelicals in America, it’s really striking how many people have this cultural background.

MP: Was Pedro The Lion at that first Cornerstone Festival you attended?

AB: Yeah. Bazan was drunk as a skunk.

MP: Were you familiar with Pedro before that show?

AB: Not really. I think the beard kept me away! You know, you’re sorting through promos, you see facial hair…

MP: I don’t have any idea what David Bazan looks like, actually. I just remember Pedro The Lion being on some decidedly secular mixtapes that I got from a friend back around 1999.

AB: He’s interesting, because he does what a lot of Christian artists wish they could. He supports himself on the secular scene; he only does a couple Christian events a year, and I think he does them to mess with people. Not in a mean way — I think he genuinely wants to shake the foundations of Christian kids’ faith, to get them away from the literal take on the Bible.

MP: Do you think he would be able to work so freely outside of the Christian scene if he didn’t have so many philosophical differences with the Evangelical movement? Or maybe not able so much as eager and willing.

AB: I dunno. I mean, it doesn’t seem to hurt mainstream alternative acts, but on an indie level? I think those kids like their religion ironic.

MP: How much involvement have the Danielson Famile or Sufjan Stevens had in the Christian scene relative to Bazan?

AB: Danielson has played Cornerstone. Dunno about Stevens. I saw both at a conference about faith and music. I think Stevens is pretty uncomfortable with that whole scene, but he went to a Christian college, and I’ll bet he knows a lot about it. Bazan is like an alien.

MP: How so?

AB: In that he has almost no grounding in pop culture, and you don’t have to have grown up Evangelical to like his music. One time we were walking through a parking lot, and someone’s car alarm was going off, and I mentioned to him that it sounded like the start of Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom.” He’d never heard the song.

MP: Is there any particular song by Bazan that you find especially interesting or moving?

AB: I really like “Foregone Conclusions.”

Pedro The Lion “Forgone Conclusions” (Click here to buy it from Insound)

MP: If I recall, that’s the song with swearing that the Cornerstone people had been freaking out about?

AB: Yeah, that’s the one.

MP: What’s going on in that song lyrically?

AB: Well, it starts out “I don’t want to believe that all of the above is true.” It’s about confronting absolute certainty. Christians are obsessed with absolute truth.

MP: How did you come to discover Larry Norman?

AB: It was just part of the research. He’s such a big part of Christian music history.

MP: As of right now, I’ve only heard “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” which is a pretty amazing song. Is that representative of his catalog?

Larry Norman “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” (Click here to buy it from Cross Rhythms.)

< span style="font-family:arial;">AB: Kiiiinda. Some of the stuff is great. A lot of it is really average rock music, but there’s always his crazy voice and the hectoring lyrics. It’s sort of like hearing Pat Buchanan front an acid-rock band.

MP: He’s become something of an outsider over time, is that right?

AB: Yeah, as I understand it he’s pretty difficult to work with. He really dislikes the Christian music industry, and I get the impression the feeling is mutual. A couple people told me off the record that he’s somewhat shunned.

MP: What tends to be the breakdown in the denominations of Christian acts? Are they primarily Evangelical?

AB: Yeah, I think it’s pretty rare to have, say, Episcopalians doing Christian rock. That said, Sixpence None the Richer are Episcopalians. But in mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, I don’t think you’ve got the same orientation toward end times. American Christians, especially, are oriented toward getting their spiritual houses in order before the world comes to an end, and people who feel that way tend to associate mostly with one another.

MP: So is this the prime market for “worship music”?

AB: No, those are different markets. Worship music is pretty much strictly marketed as a way to “do church.” Most Christian rock is a lifestyle accessory.

MP: For people who’ve never heard worship music, how would you describe it?

AB: The best description I have is that it’s rock music for church.

MP: As in, actual services.

AB: Yeah. A lot of it sounds like adult contemporary. On Wednesday nights, a lot of American churches have “worship services.”

MP: I appreciate the way that you describe in the book trying to enjoy worship music, and largely failing. But you did find some songs that you eventually liked, right?

AB: Yeah, and I really like David Crowder Band a lot.

MP: That’s the one you compared to Dave Matthews?

AB: I like Dave Matthews, though. I have terrible taste! Crowder’s also pretty influenced by Radiohead, Bjork, that sort of thing.

MP: Which is also the case for Mute Math, right?

AB: Yeah, definitely.

Mute Math “Control” (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

MP: Mute Math are one of the bands that I had the promo, and just had no idea about their Christian roots.

AB: Did you hear they’re suing Warners?

MP: Really? What is the suit about?

AB: They’re shocked, shocked that they’re being marketed as a Christian rock act. I mean, come on, they’re on Word!

MP: Why do you think they are so paranoid? I mean, at this point in time, it doesn’t seem to hurt your chances of doing well in indie or mainstream rock, whether you’re Sufjan Stevens or Switchfoot.

AB: I agree. I think Mute Math don’t want people to think they’re lame. You know, it is pretty serious. Very few acts can survive the Christian rock label.

MP: It seems like the people who do, it’s mostly because they are obscuring it as much as they can. Like your friend, I was totally amazed to learn that Underoath was a Christian band.

AB: The interesting thing about that band is they don’t downplay their Christianity. When I asked them about it they were like, “Heck yeah, we’re a Christian band!”

MP: Do you think that if U2 were coming up now, they would have a better chance of being embraced as a Christian act? I mean, let’s say that All That You Can’t Leave Behind was their first album.

AB: I don’t think so, because I don’t think U2 make the same mistakes Christian bands do. They are who they are.

MP: The smoking and drinking and swearing taboo is that strong?

AB: Well, definitely that, but I think it’s more that they sing about doubt. Doubt is not kosher.

MP: Well, isn’t that the same for Pedro The Lion?

AB: I think he gets grandfathered in! He’s sort of the house cynic. You know, the guy at work who’s like, “This place sucks” and never gets fired?

MP: There also seems to be a general unease about European Christianity among Evangelicals, which I was aware of, but have never really given much thought.

AB: Well that’s exactly the difference between U2 and Pedro, in terms of the Evangelicals’ acceptance. Bazan grew up in Evangelical Christianity in America. He knows the language.

MP: Do you think the Christian record industry will ever see itself as a mainstream part of the music world? Or would that have to entail the obviously secular acts vacating the general market?

AB: I think there’s probably going to be a lot more middle ground. I think Underoath are probably the model.

MP: How so?

AB: They’re unabashedly Christian, but they don’t only court Christians.

MP: Why them, and not, say, Switchfoot?

AB: Well, I think the trouble with Switchfoot is exactly why they’ll never be U2. They try to relate to two different groups of people at the same time through lyrics that could be taken one way or another. They’ll try to have choruses that mean one thing to Christians and another to alt-rock consumers.

MP: How obviously Christian are the lyrics of Underoath’s songs?

AB: I don’t know, I can’t understand them with all that screaming! They’re pretty emo. I think their music is more informed by faith than focused through it.

MP: I suppose that in terms of the general market, having barely discernable lyrics that are quite open about faith is roughly the same thing as having lyrics about faith that are vague to the point of
seeming like they are about something else entirely.

AB: You may well be correct!

MP: The Evangelical population is constantly growing, right? To a certain point, the mainstreaming of Christian pop culture is inevitable.

AB: At a certain point, you have to wonder which is the outside culture. I mean, I think it’s a lot more normal to grow up Evangelical than to grow up in New York!

MP: In terms of statistics in America, definitely. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City, so there were always religious people, obviously, but it’s just nothing like the Evangelical culture. It seems that even religious Catholics, Jews, and Protestants in the northeast tend to have some kind of divide in their lives between their cultural consumption, identity, and their chuch activities. The church is a lot more peripheral to social activity. It’s somewhat hard for me to relate to growing up in a place where the church was the main hub of social activity for people other than old ladies.

AB: Well, that’s the divide. When I was pitching this book, a lot of publishers (in New York, natch) were like, “Why would anyone want to read about this?” And then the election of 2004 happened.

MP: Is the assumption that people only want to read about their own lives?

AB: I think it’s more insidious than that. I mean, I get probably two or three anti-Bush books a week which are really anti-middle America books in a lot of ways. The subtext always seems to be “what a bunch of rubes these people outside the cities are, how could anyone with any brains vote for Bush/be a Christian/etc., etc,. etc.”

MP: Right. In fairness, it seems that people in “Middle America” are often equally dismissive of the Blue State people.

AB: Agreed. My feeling is, though, that if you can’t understand where people are coming from, you can’t find any middle ground.

Rating: Awesome

The new Hit Refresh column is up, featuring songs by Ethan Lipton, Tiger Tunes, and thanks to Said The Gramophone, the Rappers Delight Club.

Prototypes “Je Ne Te Connais Pas” – My French is horrible, so I only comprehend bits and pieces of this, but it doesn’t matter. Today’s the sort of day when I need something that sounds really upbeat and vaguely badass and sorta triumphant, but I can’t be bothered with lyrics, because a lot of the time, words stimulate thoughts that get in the way of feeling. I really don’t feel much like thinking today. (Click here for the Prototypes’ MySpace page.)

For The Sake Of Ideals

Johnny Boy “War On Want” – I shouldn’t be so concerned with what other people think of records that I love, but I can’t help it – it just breaks my heart to see this Johnny Boy album get bad reviews, especially when they seem to miss the appeal of the record completely. I quite like Rob Mitchum personally, and he’s written some incredibly sharp and thoughtful reviews for Pitchfork over the past few years, but his review is particularly egregious. He was judging the album against The Go Team and USE, which is just all wrong. There’s definitely a few songs that could fit under the “indie dance” banner, but that’s not what the record is overall.

The album is essentially a pastiche of British pop from the past ten years, cutting and pasting bits from britpop, UK indie, and chart pop for specific ends. On one level, Johnny Boy are obviously just very big pop fans with a knack for songwriting and arrangement, and on another, they are intentionally detourning the signifiers of recent British pop with their sloganeering. I think that some of it is about setting a time and a place, but the styles they mimic are not accidental. They want the heady rush of impossibly anthemic choruses, and song structures that reach for the heavens while their feet stuck in Glastonbury mud. They steal the menace from late period Pulp, the spiteful grandeur of Manic Street Preachers, and appropriate the manic blitz of Girls Aloud. “War On Want” echoes The Verve at their soul-searing best with a track that sounds epic but feels entirely personal. Every rejection builds until the singer wants to completely negate herself, and as she comes up to that precipice, the bottom drops out beneath her. It’s desperate and angry, and strangely, very sexy. I don’t know if you’ve had moments in your life like this song, but I certainly have. It’s the sound of idealism getting swallowed by frustration, and resentment over one’s own perceived powerlessness brewing into full-on self-loathing. No, it’s not that fun, but it’s not really meant to be. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Like I’ve Got To Set You Free

Wolfmother “Woman (Avalanches Millstream Remix)” – I don’t have an enormous problem with people ripping off Robert Plant, or Jimmy Page, or John Bonham. It’s actually pretty understandable, if you’ve got the chops. However, I really can’t get behind a band full of members aping all three of them at the same time, especially if they don’t bother to mimic post-IV John Paul Jones while they are at it. So this is why I had to take a pass on Wolfmother the first seven or eight times I was sent their record. But oh, those damn Avalanches had to come along and break their song open and turn it into something pretty fantastic. Short of radical filtering in post-production, there’s not much you can do to take the Plant out of this guy’s voice, so the Avalanches don’t bother. They embrace it, and basically drop everything else from the arrangement except for a some Rick Rubenesque guitar chunks dropped in for isolated bursts of excitement. Avalanches, please – make more remixes, or another album, as soon as possible! This periodic teasing is driving me crazy. (Click here for the Avalanches’ site.)

The Hustle’s The Same No Matter What The Game

Anchors For Architects “Feelin’ Like Salieri” – Something seems to be happening in Los Angeles right now. I don’t think I’ve read anything about it anywhere, and but there seems to be quite a pile-up of quality indie rock acts coming out of L.A. in the past couple years. Interestingly, most of them have a musical kinship with the sort of 90s indie that I favor, dodging the sort of trends that I mentioned in the Carbon Dating Service entry from last week, and focusing instead on either a polished, stronger strain of melodic alt-rock (The Oohlas, Irving, Giant Drag, Eagle & Talon), or the sprawling sun-baked punk equivalent of jamming. Anchors For Architects exemplify the latter style, shifting from a loose, listless swing to moments of intensity like The Fall on “Hip Priest,” or Pavement on “Jam Kids.” (Click here to buy it from Papermade Records.)

Special Weekend Bonus For EW Readers!

Hello to everyone visiting this site after reading Entertainment Weekly’s list of the 25 best music sites. I’m very flattered to be on the list, much less place so highly. This isn’t the Robyn song that they mentioned in the blurb, but I think it’s actually a little better.

Robyn “Konichiwa Bitches” – One does not reasonably expect much from token hip hop tracks on the albums of Scandinavian pop stars, but with this song, Robyn defies the odds and makes me wonder if she ought to be doing this sort of thing on a full-time basis. The beats and keyboards are minimal and perfectly composed, flowing smoothly and changing up consistently throughout the song without distracting attention from her vocals, which sound like an adorable anime version of Missy Elliott. There’s a very delicate balance being maintained here, keeping it from tipping too far into tweeness, and I suspect that it is kept mainly because it’s so clear that Robyn isn’t totally kidding around. The lyrics are certainly meant to be humorous, but the love for hip hop is very earnest, and it’s clear that she has a musical understanding of the genre that many cutesy hip hop dilettantes lack. (Originally posted 5/25/05) (Click here to buy it on import from Amazon.)

When Tomorrow Becomes Today

Tacks the Boy Disaster “Forget-Me-Not” – Going on the records that I’ve been getting lately, it seems like there are a hell of a lot of indie rock dudes singing in what strikes me as a very Elephant Six sort of style. I’m just getting loads of records that sound like Of Montreal and Olivia Tremor Control outtakes. This guy from Tacks is most certainly doing that thing with his voice – it’s crisp and clean and pretty on harmonies, but also a bit pinched and nasal, like someone doing a “nerd voice.” The sudden ubiquity of this vocal style is a bit odd but it really suits this particular song, with its pleasant rainy-day piano and drum groove and vaguely old-timey melody. As the song moves along, it seems to rush forward in time, suddenly vanishing into the future as it comes to an abrupt, back-masked ending. (Click here for Tacks the Boy Disaster’s MySpace page.)

Pearl Jam “Lukin / Not For You –> Modern Girl / Grievance” (Live @ Curitiba, Brazil 11/30/2005) – For no particular reason other than that I had just listened to some of the songs from their new album, I revisited Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy on the train ride home on Wednesday. The record still sounds pretty great, and I maintain that it’s their best record by a considerable margin. I haven’t paid much attention to Eddie Vedder’s lyrics since I was sixteen, but in listening to the words now, I’ve noticed that the themes of Vitalogy are pretty much the same as the expected tropes of a rap record. I don’t mean to be glib, but the album finds Vedder concerned with repeatedly asserting his authenticity, raging against haters and fake friends, mourning the loss of deceased comrades, pondering his own mortality, and generally feeling paranoid and persecuted. He indulges in weird skits, chastises biters on “Corduroy,” and includes a sentimental song about his mother’s hard luck life. If only he had written one boasting about his vocal and/or sexual prowess! (Actually, no, I could really do without songs about Eddie Vedder having sex.) (Though maybe that’s what’s going on at the end of “Jeremy”?)

“Not For You” remains as a personal favorite, and features a line that is probably the best advice that I ever got from a song as a teenager: “If you hate something, don’t you do it too.” After all this time, that lyric still sticks with me, as if I’d written it on a post-it note tacked up to a wall in my mind. (Click here to buy it from Pearl Jam.)

If I Had The Chance, I’d Ask The World To Dance

This week’s Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site, and it includes three freakishly great songs from Spank Rock, A Sunny Day In Glasgow, and the Hank Collective. Also, at long last, MTV/Microsoft’s Urge digital download service has finally launched. I’ve been writing the Pop Informer blog for them, but unfortunately, I don’t know how to link directly to it, so you’ll have to go through the Urge interface to read the column. (Some of my reviews are scattered around – there should be a few in the rock area somewhere.) I’m pretty happy with a lot of what I’ve written for them, especially this one entry about Simple Plan’s “Untitled” and Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself.” I’m generally writing about mainstream acts, but for me, that’s part of the appeal. It doesn’t make sense to write about huge hits on this site or the AP column, and so this has been nice outlet for me. There are quite a few talented writers doing blogs for Urge, so even if you have no desire to purchase wma files (I totally understand!), it’s at least going to be a good read.

Nouvelle Vague “Dancing With Myself” – Nouvelle Vague’s gimmick hasn’t worn too thin as of yet, but their song selection is generally strong enough that even their least inspired bossa nova arrangements serve their basic function as fodder for the soundtrack of an I Love The 80s dinner party. The best cuts from their second album go in more of a cabaret direction, which works wonders for the likes of The Cramps’ “Human Fly.” However, the only selection that trumps the original is their take on Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself.” Removing Idol is enough to win some points with me (nothing against the songs, I just dislike his voice and persona), but the added jaunt and skip in Nouvelle Vague’s arrangement serves the song well, resulting in a track that is light and sexy rather than hopped-up and off-puttingly self-conscious. (Click here to buy it from Justin Time.)

The Walkmen “Another One Goes By” – Wait, what? Walkmen, wha’ happened? I wasn’t totally into that last album, but at least you still sounded like yourselves and included a few undeniably great tracks. What’s with the over the top Bob Dylan impression on more than half of the new songs? Is it a pre-emptive strike against fellow Jonathan Fire Eater alumnus Stewart Lupton’s Dylan-ish new band, The Childballads? And if so, why did you choose to emulate everything horrible about Dylan (shapeless melodies, the marble mouthed yowling) whereas Lupton absorbed everything great about him (the mystique, the poetry, the ragged grace) into his own persona? The music still has that lovely sepia-toned patina of artificial antiquity, but the singing throws everything off and makes some of the songs quite difficult to sit through. “Another One Goes By” gets it right, and is genuinely pretty and romantic, but I wish that I could hear it without thinking that Hamilton Leithauser was trying to crack me up with his Dylan impersonation on the chorus.(Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Spill Me Out On To The Floor

The Oohlas “Small Parts” – If you can imagine The Breeders, Veruca Salt, Lush, Dressy Bessy, and Throwing Muses as gigantic, brightly colored mechanical lions, the Oohlas would be like the Voltron that they would form when…um, assembled by little boys with generous parents in the mid-80s. I’m sorry, but this is just a horrible simile. Anyway, the band’s first record, and this song in particular, sounds like the revenge of a 90s alt-rock subgenre that is well-loved by many, given serious critical thought by very few, and cruely, has no name. If The Killers’ shtick was to revitalize glammy early 80s synthpop by beefing it up and writing choruses that demanded full-stadium singalongs, The Oohlas do the same for the likes of Belly, Letters to Cleo, and That Dog. Most of those bands never had a problem writing hooks or rocking out, but if only some of them had dropped a chorus as huge and heart-breaking as the one in “Small Parts” when they most needed a good follow-up hit back in the day. (Click here for the official Oohlas site.)

This Circuitry Is New To Me

Goldfrapp @ Irving Plaza 5/15/2006
Utopia / Lovely Head / Tip Toe / Train / Koko / Slide In / U Never Know / Deer Stop / Fly Me Away / Satin Chic / Beautiful / Ride A White Horse / Ooh La La // Black Cherry / Number 1 /// Strict Machine

Aside from two additional songs from Felt Mountain and a slightly shuffled running order, this was essentially the same show that I saw a few months ago. Of course, that exactly what I wanted – Goldfrapp obviously put quite a bit of thought into their spectacle, and to see them do anything less would be a shame. I had a very real fear that the dancers wouldn’t show up since they put off “Train” until the fourth song into the setlist! As with the visual representation, the band have honed their performance to the point of scary precision. They nail everything from the softest bits to the most intense vamps, and keep things consisently theatrical without veering into tedium or cheesiness. After seeing a show like this, it just makes most everyone else seem like such amateurs.

Goldfrapp “Satin Chic (Bombay Mix by The Shortwave Set)” – When I first read about this, I had hoped for something over the top and Bollywood, but The Shortwave Set go off in the other direction, slowing it down a bit and emphasizing the song’s cabaret roots. It’s quite good as a companion to the original version, though I do prefer the pep and skip of the album mix. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Carbon Dating Service “Lazerbear” – Layers of warm, gentle instrumentation piled on like blankets; a pretty tune with a pace in no hurry to get anywhere – this song sounds more or less exactly like what I would expect from a ten piece band of twentysomethings from Saskatoon. I’ve generally soured on indie’s trend toward sprawling over-arranged collectivism and quiet coziness, but this is the exception that proves the rule. For a composition with so many instruments, the song actually feels quite sparse and understated, nicely avoiding the clumsy bombast of Bright Eyes or the “HEY EVERYONE LOOK A STRING SECTION A STRING SECTION I’VE GOT HORNS AND A STRING SECTION!!! C’MON C’MON C’MON LOOOOOOOOOK!” vibe of Sufjan Stevens. (Click here for the Carbon Dating Service’s MySpace page.)

I Can’t Feed My Culture No Fallacy

Cam’ron “I.B.S.” – Stuck in the middle of an album otherwise concerned with his typical lyrical tropes (not exactly a complaint, mind you), Cam’ron Giles throws down the guantlet of “realness” hard on this track, which documents his struggles with Irrital Bowel Syndrome. Thankfully, the song generally avoids TMI territory and sticks to discussing the embarassment, stress, and paranoia brought on by his illness, and his efforts to lose weight and get healthy. Aside from the surprisingly private and vulnerable lyrical subject matter, the track is fantastic, an early RZA-ish composition built around a clinky piano figure played on either the highest notes on the far right of the keys, or pitched up significantly. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Mecca Normal “I’m Not Into Being the Woman You’re With While You’re Looking for the Woman You Want” – Alternately evoking sympathy and discomfort, the new Mecca Normal album mostly documents singer Jean Smith’s experiences with online dating as a woman in her 40s. Her lyrics are dry and matter of fact, so the awkward situations and most self-involved moments related in the songs are especially cringe-inducing, mainly because they are so mundane and depressing that you’re bound to either recognize them from your own life, or the lives of people you might know. Worst of all, you can get the gnawing fear that you might end up living some of this later on if you’re not lucky. (Click here to buy it from Buy Olympia.)

Any Day Or Three

Tender Trap “6 Billion People” – Wow, this is tuneful and fun and great, but most of all, it would make for an absolutely perfect jingle for an online dating service for hipsters. (The chorus goes “six billion people in the world / three billion boys, three billion girls / how to find the perfect one for you”) TweeHarmony.com, all the way! Someone out there, get that hooked up and get these people sorted out with their rent for a year or three. (Click here to buy it from Ear Rational.)

As you can tell from the previous few entries, my Mac account is maxed out once again and my other account will not be working properly until later on today. This is massively frustrating for me, so please do not pester me about it. The most recent tracks will be reposted, but not this evening. Today’s song will work, as will a few of the older tracks below. If you haven’t already, check out my ASAP column for this week. Those mp3s will be working just fine.

When The Sun Shines In Between The Blinds

My second Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site. This week’s column includes a Gene Serene & John Downfall song that will be familiar to regular readers of this site, and very good songs by The Coup and Bishop Allen that have never been featured here.

Irving @ The Knitting Factory 5/10/2006
Situation / I Want To Love You In My Room / She’s Not Shy / If You Say Jump, I Will Say No / I Can’t Fall In Love / Care, I Don’t Care / Jen, Nothing Matters To Me / Did I Ever Tell You I’m In Love With Your Girlfriend? / L-O-V-E / The Curious Thing About Leather

Irving “I Want To Love You In My Room” – I don’t know why I was even a little bit surprised to have so much fun at this show. Though Irving will not be winning any awards for pureness and originality of vision any time soon, they are a remarkably gifted indie pop band with a knack for stealing the best bits from classic (and not so classic) acts of the mid-60s, late 80s, and early 90s and filtering out the annoying or obvious tics that tend to be emulated most often by lesser bands. I knew all of that coming into the show, and yet they still impressed me, playing an extremely well planned and utterly dud-free setlist with an energy and charm that I hadn’t been anticipating. Strangely, I had not realized that there were actually three lead singers in the band until seeing them perform in person. This united front only makes me appreciate their commitment to writing lyrics that come off like episodes of a tongue-in-cheek indie soap opera that much more. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Bardo Pond “Moonshine” – Bardo Pond love the jams, and indeed, the jams run free once again on their forthcoming Ticket Crystals. Though the band had fallen into a textural rut on previous releases, this album is a revelation with its mix of shroomy psychedelic jammery and acoustic tunefulness. The album’s twin highlights are a woozy but gorgeous cover of The Beatles’ “Cry Baby Cry” and “Moonshine,” a pastoral epic with overdubbed layers of vocals from Isobel Sollenberger that fall out of phase for a lovely effect, and eventually disappear into a backmasked haze. (Click here to pre-order it from Ear Rational.)

The End Is Always Near

The Knife “We Share Our Mother’s Health (Trentemoller Remix)” – I must say that I was a bit nervous about the prospects of “We Share Our Mother’s Health” remixes. Though the album version is just about perfect (it’s my second favorite Knife song after “Heartbeats,” which is saying a lot), it did need at least an edit to make it work better in DJ set. There’s a tendency toward abstraction in a lot of dance remixes, and my fear was that we would end up with loads of nondescript mixes that would erase most of the song’s appeal. Thankfully, Trentemoller aims for function, embracing the song’s formidable hooks and amping everything up until it’s sort of ridiculous. It starts off a little slow, but stick with it – it seems as though it was designed so that people who already know and love the song would go bananas with every new dynamic shift. It’s pretty damn exciting, especially when he pitch-shifts the vocals even more on the breakdown, and then builds it to this ecstatic climax of snare hits before dropping back into the track’s signature groove. (Click here for The Knife’s official site.)

Paul Oakenfold featuring Brittany Murphy “Faster Kill Pussycat” – Yes, that Brittany Murphy. It turns out that she is actually a pretty solid vocalist, and a fairly distinct one at that. I mean, there’s a few songs from that last Lindsay Lohan album that I like a lot (I’ll link to something I wrote about them a few weeks ago when it finally comes online in a week or so), but Lohan has almost nothing to do with why those songs work – her persona as both an actress and as a celebrity is conspicuously absent from every vocal performance on that record. Murphy, however, sings exactly as you might imagine based on her trashed-up performances in movies like 8 Mile, Spun, and Sin City. She’s definitely going for the damaged sex kitten thing and she pulls it off rather well. Of course, most of the appeal here comes from Oakenfold’s track, which is a relentless Jaxx-ish dance-pop-rock beast that nearly outdoes the best songs from Cish Cash. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

Happy Ending Or A Broken Heart

The Futureheads “Skip To The End” – The Futureheads still sound as though they’ve never heard any music written after 1982, but this time around they’re emulating The Clash rather than some other much less tuneful punk bands, and unsurprisingly, they’ve come up with a winner. As far as songs expressing indecision and caution go, this is quite fun, and is actually a strong contender in the stakes for the title of Summer Jam ’06 in the alt-rock bracket. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Oneida “History’s Great Navigators” – Much of Oneida’s forthcoming album admirably embraces the joys of burbling and bleeping electronic textures, but this track goes in more of a mid-period Can direction. Ordinarily a rapid one-note keyboard attack would seem quite anxious, but the calm vocals and mesmerizing beat transform it into more of a soothing drone. (Click here for Oneida’s official site.)

I Just Want You To Pop

Christopher and Raphael Just (featuring Fox N Wolf) “Popper” – The girl from Fox N Wolf has such a strange voice. The sound of it is almost cartoonishly childlike, but she’s always communicating sexuality and/or aggression in a way that seems to deliberately invite cognitive dissonance. In this collaboration with electro duo Christopher and Raphael Just, she practically throws a tantrum on the dancefloor between sweet Scissor Sisters-does-the-Beegees disco choruses and cut-up vocal fragments. The track is a relentless machine, building towards an intense peak so great that even a little bit of bad white rapping is excusable. (Click here to buy it from Rough Trade.)

Temposhark (featuring Imogen Heap) “Not That Big (Metronomy NotThatRemix)” – The best sort of minimalist pop accompaniment does not call attention to its starkness, but rather creates a musical illusion of fullness and depth. This track is a fine example, built mainly around a snakey keyboard part, simple percussion, sparing lead, and a stuttered vocal sample. The most exciting moment comes when the tempo of the keyboard part on the break suddenly speeds up for moment before settling into the second verse. Is this what it means to “temposhark”? (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)