A few things happen when a favorite artist doesn’t put out an album for a few years. The first is that the already-existing catalogue ossifies into what seems like a closed canon. The second, and basically inverse, reaction is the lingering fear that the next project is going to be the shitty one, the one where the star ratings in the AllMusic.com discography suddenly jag downwards. Hearing new songs in advance of a new record can be exciting, if scary. What may’ve seemed like a perfectly balanced body of work suddenly needs to admit something new; and one must make room in whatever his conception of the band is.
This week, both Yo La Tengo’s “Beanbag Chair” and Wilco’s “Is That The Thanks I Get?” made the cyber-rounds. I am still assimilating, though I have happily listened to “Beanbag Chair” many times, but have been semi-afraid to take a second glance at “Is That The Thanks…,” for fear it might confirm my initial impression. Likewise, a friend directed me towards a page of live recordings from the current Radiohead tour, including much of their new material. I have not yet had a chance to listen (see above).
Because I like the moon, a bit of Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino:
How well I know!–old Qfwfq cried,–the rest of you can’t remember, but I can. We had her on top of us all the time, that enormous Moon: when she was full–nights as bright as day, but with a butter-colored light–it looked as if she were going to crush us; when she was new, she rolled around the sky like a black umbrella blown by the wind; and when she was waxing, she came forward with her horns so low she seemed about to stick into the peak of a promontory and get caught there…
There were nights when the Moon was full and very, very low, and the tide was so high that the Moon missed a ducking in the sea by a hair’s-breadth; well, let’s say a few yards anyway. Climb up on the Moon? Of course we did. All you had to do was row out to it in a boat and, when you were underneath, prop a ladder against her and scramble up.
“John Wesley Harding” – Wilco (download here)
“I Shall Be Released” – Wilco (download here)
recorded 5 March 2005, Vic Theater, Chicago, IL
(files expire on May 24th.)
I love when I listen to a good live recording so often that I know it as well as an album, accidentally have the banter memorized, can identify its sound instantly when it comes on shuffle, and the likes. One of my favorites is a Jeff Tweedy solo gig from last March, which concluded with Wilco joining him onstage for the final encore. It is paced perfectly with a vibe all its own, perfect for long Sunday mornings. It doesn’t hurt that the recording is a rich and beautiful soundboard. During the encore, Tweedy & co. played a pair of reverent Bob Dylan covers, “John Wesley Harding” and “I Shall Be Released” that I am extraordinarily glad to have in my collection. Especially in the case of the former — the title track from Dylan’s stark, well-aged masterpiece — Tweedy picked well.
With lyrics that scan like terse prose, The Mountain Goats’ Tallahassee paints a disintegrating marriage of an “alpha couple” in suburban Florida with sympathetic, literate strokes. Achieving a rare mopeless melancholy, John Darnielle’s songs are rendered with a subtly glorious production: a tapped cymbal here, a wash of static there. If concept albums tend to reach for the bombastic arcs of opera for their inspiration, then Tallahassee finds its forebears in the understated drama of Raymond Carver and John Cheever’s short fiction. Darnielle’s couple could be anybody anywhere, but they’re in Florida, in the lush air, and there’s no mistaking anything about them.
“Comin’ Correct” (live) – RANA (download here)
from Subject To Change (2003)
released by Rockslide
“Buy, Sell or Break” – RANA (download here)
from What It Is (2004)
released by RANA/Bone Saw Records
(files expire on May 22nd)
RANA played long and late and raucous at the Knitting Factory on Saturday. Three-quarters of the way through the set, back to back, they jammed their great lost/unrecorded double-A-side 7-inch: Comin’ Correct (Metzger) b/w Buy, Sell or Break (Durant). I’m not sure how the world would be different had it ever been released, let alone recorded, but these two songs live together in my mind. Here are the two songs, in marginally less than Platonic form.
Okay, so the name wunderkammern-twenty-seven-dot-com doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, I admit it. Neither does Jesse-Jarnow-dot-com, but at least it’s (sorta) easier to remember. In an act of rare common sense, I finally bought the domain over the weekend and set it to forward over here. Y’know, in case that makes life easier for you or anything…
o YouTube has the original, 1994 short film of Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket. I’m looking forward to watching this one. (Yepyep, Kottke.)
o A list of various “open content” projects currently occurring in Brazil, including details about Gilberto Gil and John Perry Barlow’s Canto Livre program, which aims to digitize Brazilian culture, assign Creative Commons licenses, and distribute via peer-to-peer networks. See also the Estudio Livre program, a series of public, government-funded recording studios run on open source software.
o The second episode of Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour is available for free via the same route as the first. (username: press1, password: xmr0ck5!) It is a great pleasure to come back from a night out and be able to fire up the freshy Bobmix. (Big ups, Expecting Rain.)
Apropos of absolutely nothing, a quote from Struggles and Triumphs, the 1869 autobiography of P.T. Barnum. Here, Barnum describes the burning of his second American Museum, where mermaid bones were displayed side by side with genuine artifacts:
The cold was so intense that the water froze almost as soon as it left the house of the fire engines; and when at last everything was destroyed, except the front granite wall of the Museum building, that and the ladder, signs, and lamp-posts in front, were covered in a gorgeous framework of transparent ice, which made it altogether one of the most picturesque scenes imaginable. Thousands of persons congregated daily in that locality in order to get a view of the magnificent ruins. By moonlight, the ice-coated ruins were still more sublime, and for many days and nights the old Museum was ‘the observed of all observers,’ and photographs were taken by several artists.
“Ragtime Nightingale” – David Boeddinghaus (download here)
from Crumb soundtrack (1995)
released by Rykodisc (buy)
(file expires on May 17th)
Even without an inch of vinyl crackle, ragtime pioneer Joseph Lamb’s “Ragtime Nightingale” sounds mysterious and old. One gets the sense, though, that the song has exactly the same emotional impact as it did when it was first composed; that it is not simply the nostalgia of listening to ragtime in the early 21st century, but an objective emotional effect of the music. It’s just beautiful. The genre’s signature rhythmic force gives shape to the melody, which is so closely entwined that it is almost elusive, a shadow turning within a shadow.
