There are very few things in music right now that excite me more than the words “new Alasdair Roberts record.” I became something of a Roberts evangelist last year when his album Spoils came out, and since then I’ve been availing myself of his back catalog, which includes several wonderful albums of traditional ballads and songs. His new record, Too Long in This Condition, is another collection of traditionals, and it is a delight. Sonically, it feels closer in spirit to Spoils–which was a (relatively) boisterous album of Roberts originals–than to his earlier traditionals records, in particular The Crook of My Arm, which remains (by a small margin) my favorite thing Roberts has put out to date. But there’s plenty to love about Too Long in This Condition. Highlights include marvelous takes on “The Two Sisters”, “Barbara Allen” and “The Daemon Lover”, the ecstatic jaw-harp-featuring “Kilmahog Saturday Afternoon,” and “The Golden Vanity,” this last being the record’s standout track. Also look out for “Little Sir Hugh,” which as near as I can tell is a song about Jewish blood libel–and I don’t mean “about” in the sense of “discussing” or “critiquing,” but rather in the sense of “features a Jew luring a child into her house and then murdering him for his precious blood.” Ahh, history!
New Madvillain single. (High on Fire and Killa Mike there, too.) New Boduf Songs single and album forthcoming. (Interview with Boduf Songs on HTML Giant in the next few weeks.) Monsters and torture devices on Isaiah Toothtaker’s TUMBLR. (Amazing Edan/Percee P song posted there.)
Suggested Pairings: Guinness and WCWPCCS
Three disc golf discs, a fillet knife, a bill for salt, and an eggshell book arrived at my door. On the cover a blue goat. I was skeptical/green-eyed, but also glimmed a glow—the book obviously cared for/handmade and who here doesn’t respect a literary artifact? The book is titled The Feeling is Mutual. Written by The Washtenaw County Women’s Poetry Collective & Casserole Society (Amy Berkowitz, Beth Divis, Emma Gorenberg, Elisa McCool & Jessica Young). What in the blar is the WCWPCCS? And where is my casserole?
A true sense of collaboration. A gathering and letting go. None of the poems or recipes has bylines. Possibly penned by any of the WCWPCCS or by all or by their mysterious “appearances by” friends or by the goat tied to the persimmon tree down by the bass pond. (The authors say themselves: “We no longer recognize our own words.”)
The ingredients of this poetic porringer?
(ALMOST) SONNETS, SPOOKLES, QUESTIONS & ANSWERS, RETELLINGS, CASSEROLES
There is a patented capsule of nitrogen inside my bottle of Guinness. It looks like a toy submarine (the type you could once find in cereal boxes and fill with baking soda). The capsule clatters around inside the bottle, but also releases nitrogen that agitates the previously dissolved CO2 and this makes for a clean, creamy, immortal pour and a head like the caps of waves washing upon the shore of Innisfree. That’s a lot of wonk-science (like $13 million worth) for a fucking beer, but then again this is Guinness.
This is a fine book. I mean the real deal. Let’s begin with the (almost) sonnets.
July 9th, 2010 / 10:44 am
First you met the man and learned a little about the book. Now, Sex Dungeon for Sale has been made into a short film.
Two Things to Make It Rain
It’s warm out.
1. Commenter kirby pointed to this essay by Jim Rossignol about video games and architecture.
2. Bookstore Memory: I went to this bookstore in Appleton, Wisconsin years ago, and noticed a bunch of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion reviews in frames on the walls. A place of honor was reserved for one from Rolling Stone that was on the same page as a Bob Dylan review. I talked to the owner, and found out that she was the mother of JSBX guitarist Judah Bauer. She told me he had been really excited to see his band reviewed so close to Dylan because, even if he wouldn’t admit it to his punk rock/noise rock friends, Dylan was his favorite artist. “All the tapes in his room were labeled Honeymoon Killers and stuff, but they were all actually Dylan records.” She told me that story while I waited for my change—I was buying, I think, Dr. Sax by Jack Kerouac—and I’m 67% certain she was hoping if she dazzled me with rock gossip, I would forget she owed me for the $20 I had given her.
Got a bookstore memory? Comment.
via Ellen Kennedy’s tumblr, which is rarely updated but always worth checking up on. Did she take these pictures herself? Here’s hoping. I especially like this one, which looks like something tiny that floats near the bottom of the sea:
“PAY FOR SOUP / BUILD A FORT / SET IT ON FIRE”
If one were so inclined, one could buy The Whole Livery Line, 1987, by “Jean-Michel-Basquiat [sic] faithfully recreated by hand using the finest art quality linen canvas and Winsor and Newton oil paints” for just $255 from either of these companies – judging from the templates, presumably run by the same “on the fringes of legality ethics” mo-fos. I wonder if people will openly sell forgeries of Rammellzee pieces in ten or fifteen years, when people realize, maybe, that he was, like, really important, and dead. Probably not.
Another Cool Idea
Some awesome literary projects have started this year like Submishmash and Vouched Books. I’m equally excited for LitSense, a collaborative advertising network for literary communities. I’m looking forward to learning more about this project. It would be great to see something like this take off. Advertising = money and money = good. Math!
Literary Doppelgangers
The subtlest smirk closes in on an untold joke; the heavy eyelids weighed down by ponderous thoughts; the broad nose a bridge to the mind; the fragile inverse window of tiny spectacles. William Butler Yeats and David Foster Wallace don’t have much in common, except to say that the latter did perhaps the far opposite of rhyming, his work mired in syntactical and phonetic difficulty. Notice what looks to be a faint scar on WBY’s cheek, and its uncanny reflection in DFW’s deep crease at the same place. But only one is wearing a bandana, so we know who the gangsta is. That it is white, a soft surrender.