New Music for Cold Nights

Recently, the Culturephiles have mentioned a litany of good songwriters of the country-infused genre. If that isn't a genre yet, it should be, and perhaps my Pandora will stop playing Faith Hill when I want to hear Emmylou. Surfing the end of year lists has been a great way to find some new bands, and along with my new satisfaction with the Avetts, I wanted to pass along three other artists that fall into our, possibly too-frequent, musings about good songwriting.

Laura Gibson - "Beasts of Seasons"

I blame someone out there for not telling me about Laura Gibson until now. "Beasts of Seasons" reminds me of how I felt when I heard Jolie Holland for the first time. Beautiful, often quirky singing, simple tunes, and some heart melting lyrics to boot. Gibson's album is quiet, almost brittle, and is a headphones record if I have ever heard one. "Come by Storm" is my track of choice. (this video, hot off the YouTube guerilla press) It's chamber pop meets folkie throwback, and that's what we dig around here.

Bill Callahan - "Sometime I Wish We Were an Eagle"

Let's say there are three types of people: those who liked Johnny Cash "American IV", those who didn't, and those who could care less. If you did like it, as I did, then I think this record is up your collective alley. Callahan is better recognized as Smog, but I never listened to previous recordings. His Chicago-based Drag City label is known for a roster of great artists (Will Oldham, Joanna Newsome, Pavement), "Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle" is just cross-over friendly enough that I think we will hear more of Callahan, which is a good thing for even that third group of people, who need more good music in their lives. Upon further searching, Bob Boilen beat me to this guy too, with another Tiny Desk Concert. Boilen is first, all others are two or lower.

Adam Arcuragi - "I Am Become Joy"

Some of Adam Arcusgdrfdisii's (why the hell I can't remember this name without Googling it is beyond me) guitar licks are Jay Bennett (RIP) reminiscent, and when I watched this Tiny Desk Concert I was sold. This is a songwriter's record, great

poetry, and enough country styling and gospel seasoning to make me wonder if this Pennsylvanian is hiding a redneck past. (Google reports a birthplace south of the Mason- Dixon).

Kate McGarrigle (1946-2010): A Small, Personal Appreciation. RIP.

I don't really have a good sense of how famous Kate McGarrigle may or may not be. But she was super-famous in my house growing up, as I was indoctrinated into the folk-country-pop world of Kate and Anna McGarrigle (not to mention Loudon Wainwright, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Maria Muldaur, etc etc). I don't really have a sense of how well-known she is outside of a small hard-core band of 70s-style folkies. That said, though, she is famous enough to rate an obituary in the New York Times, a mention in my favorite blog, Vulture, and a notice on NPR's All Songs Considered website, not to mention a whole piece on All Things Considered. So maybe she's perfectly well-known and my house was like every other. Part of me things she might be better known now as the mother to bigger stars, Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright, and/or the ex-wife of marginally-bigger star Loudon Wainwright. Or as one-half of the songwriter-and-buddy to bigger stars like Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. Maybe I'm wrong. It doesn't really matter; there's no use in worrying about whether she's underappreciated or what. The point is not how famous she is or isn't, but rather that she was a staple of my musical education growing up. She died yesterday at the age of 63, from a rare form of cancer, apparently. I had no idea she was sick.

This news really struck me. What a sad loss. So sad.

Part of that sadness is wrapped up in feeling as if I actually knew her, like she was an adjunct part of my family, though I don't really know her any better than Emmylou Harris or Linda Ronstadt or anybody else whose records I've listened to for a long time. Yet the McGarrigles (since Kate and her sister Anna recorded together as Kate & Anna McGarrigle) really make you feel like you know them, both from the intimacy in their songs as well as the family-feel of so many of their recordings. "The McGarrigle Hour" particularly feels like evesdropping on a talented family just hanging out and playing songs with and for each other. (My impression (based totally on press and the CD-booklet, natch) is that the recording sessions were just that. So of course it felt that way, whether it really was that way or not doesn't even matter! It really feels that way!) It's hard not to want to be as talented, and not to want to be in that living room with that family, singing along. And as I learned about the various interconnections between all these artists I really like -- singing on each other's albums, recording each others' songs -- it really made me feel (whether real or imagined) that they were actual friends. That they hung out and collaborated like I do with my friends. It made them feel real, human, like cool, bohemian aunts you wish were yours.

I don't really know where the line between Kate and Anna were drawn -- who wrote what, who sang lead vs. harmony, etc. It always seemed like them both, for better or worse so I have no need to try and parse it all out now. Their (plural) songs were (are!) gems: little short stories, packed with the abundance of specifics and details that is the mark of good poetry, not just good song-lyrics. And while their vocals might (or might not) land somewhere in the "acquired-taste" category, their songwriting absolutely belongs in the "unimpeachable" category. Always personal, sometimes heartbreakingly sad, oftentimes really, really funny, occasionally both funny and sad at the same time -- their songs work regardless of who is singing, be it a McGarrigle sister or one of their famous friends (or one of their famous progeny). Their family life seems to have been a total firestorm, as a 2007 Vanity Fair Profile displays more than adequately, while still inspiring many dozens of great songs from the char (from two different generations and counting!). Yet, even the author of that semi-salacious VF article was so taken with the charm of Kate McGarrigle that, upon learning of her passing, he penned this gentle and generous tribute.

If you're unfamiliar with Kate & Anna McGarrigle, you might start investigating their career via some of the many, varied, and famous covers of their songs. I have tried to put together a little primer below, of both The McGarrigles and the (perhaps) more famous covers of their best songs. Regardless, the sisters themselves really carved a place out for themselves in the pantheon of my formative music years. I can't say that I ever saw them live in concert, or ever penned a fan letter, or ever had any interaction of any sort more than pulling their LPs off the shelf at home. But that was enough to make them feel like family. And more than enough to feel a sharp pang of sadness to learn of Kate's passing. I was struck how sad it is to lose someone who you feel like you've grown up with, someone who feels like they are part of your DNA. Maybe that's the greatest compliment you can offer to a singer and a songwriter: they made themselves as familiar as family, as intimate as an actual friend. I never really knew Kate McGarrigle but I will truly miss her.

Talk to Me of Mendocino:




Linda Ronstadt's cover:




Heart Like a Wheel:




The famous Ronstadt cover:




Going Back to Harlan:




Emmylou Harris cover:




Going Back to Harlan with Emmylou AND the McGarrigles:




Emmylou and The McGarrigles from The McGarrigle Hour sessions:




Linda and The McGarrigles from The McGarrigle Hour sessions:




A little more fun, upbeat track from their sophomore album, "Dancer With Bruised Knees":




Lastly, I couldn't find a video to embed of what is probably my favorite McGarrigles song, and the best version of it is on their album "Pronto Monto" which has apparently (amazingly) never been released on CD. A somewhat lesser version of this song appears on their aforementioned album The McGarrigle Hour, but anyone that is truly interested I humbly suggest you do some legwork to track down the original, the best, from the 1978 LP. The song is "NaCl," written by Kate, and it is both a chemistry lesson AND a jaunty, hilarious love song. It's brilliant and funny and though it almost borders on "novelty tune" territory, I probably love that song the best of all their brilliant songs. Strange but true.

If you are interested, I would suggest immediately downloading their debut album, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, and then moving onto their follow-up, Dancer with Bruised Knees, and then perhaps the much-discussed The McGarrigle Hour. Really, they recorded so few albums, you probably can't go wrong. But the early stuff is really brilliant and genuinely beautiful. It is also inextricably linked with a powerful sense of nostalgia for me, tied in with a time and a place and a particular set of formative feelings. It's all very familiar-feeling at the same time as it's still exciting and eye-opening and comforting and sad.

I'll miss you, Kate McGarrigle. Thanks for everything.

Guest Post: "i am changing my name to sita; everyone, please call me sita now."

As the "wife" in Martin’s post below about Sita Sings the Blues, I wanted to respond to the review to clarify some points and add others. So it is with great pleasure (and some trepidation) that I write my first guest post on the Culturephiles.

First of all, I should report that the reason we found ourselves movie-less on the couch on the aforementioned cold January evening, was because Martin explicitly did not want to watch a movie claiming he did not have the attention span- even for a movie lasting only an hour and 20 minutes. He started playing Sita with the intention of watching only the first few minutes to get a taste, but we nonetheless found ourselves sucked in by beautiful and imaginative animation and watched the movie until the last credit rolled through. Perhaps that explains Martin's impatience with some of the movie's slower parts.

I was captivated by the movie and continued to think about its themes and message for the next couple of days (to me a sign of a good, thought-provoking movie). While I really enjoyed the four different styles of animation purely from an artistic, aesthetic perspective, I also loved how the disparate styles mimicked the tradition of oral storytelling- stories passed down through so many generations that you end up with three or four or more versions. In fact, by the end of the movie we were so captivated by the story of Rama and Sita that I dug up my old Penguin Classics book of Hindu Myths from my college course on Religions of India. It turns out that there are actual two different endings to the story; director Nina Paley chooses to depict just one of them.

Apart from the creativity of the animation and its suitability for expressing a Hindu myth/story/belief, the movie also takes on a definitive feminist flavor. It exposes the double standard between males and females in the story of Sita and Rama, but also in the modern-day, autobiographical corollary of Paley’s relationship, which constitutes one of the four styles. The feminist message is clear, but communicated in a comical, light-hearted way. In the end, Paley chooses for Sita to be subsumed by the Earth-from whence she came- rather than the more traditional ending of the myth where she returns to Rama as wife. In the movie, Rama sheds a single tear when he realizes that he has just lost his wife, who had been true and devoted to him all along.

Judging from Martin’s post, it’s possible to watch the movie and not make much of the revisionist portrayal, but for me it transformed Sita Sings the Blues from animated eye candy to a multi-layered story that will continue to play our for generations of women and men.


PS- I think Jim Fleming is a heartthrob! [Ed note: Gross.]

Sita Sings the Blues, Online (or: The Somewhat Inexplicable Passion of Roger Ebert)

As my wife and I sat around on our couch this weekend, too cozy and tired to venture out into the cold to rent a movie, and too cheap (and too hate-filled towards Comcast) to pay for anything "On Demand," I found an old link that had been floating around on my computer for some time: a link to an animated film, Sita Sings the Blues.

The various backstories and behind-the-scenes tales of Sita Sings the Blues -- the legal (not to mention financial) struggles surrounding its creation and release, the unorthodox distribution, the high-profile support of the film by Roger Ebert, notably -- nearly threatens to overwhelm the actual movie itself. I am now no longer certain where I first heard about Nina Paley and her highly personalized, discursive take on this Hindu legend, but have I read and heard enough about it that I almost felt like I was no longer interested in actually watching it. Well, a cold and quiet Chicago evening on the couch eventually became just the right time.

If you want to know about all the hubbub...well, that's what Google is for. For the artists' perspective/overview, take a look at the official website and/or Nina Paley's blog. I think (now that I am googling this) the first thing I heard about the movie was this NPR broadcast/podcast "To the Best of Our Knowledge" -- which begins talking about Sita around 13:30. (To the Best of Our Knowledge, sadly, features one of the worlds' most pretentious, ponderous, and unlistenable NPR hosts, Jim Fleming.) Anyway, that piece on the radio then inspired me to look around online for the film, which brought me to probably its first champion: Roger Ebert, who took a special shine to the movie, showering it with effusive praise in his blog, then again in the Sun-Times, and finally on one of his top ten lists for 2009. A glowing New York Times review by A.O. Scott followed Ebert's praise by almost exactly a year. If you want the giant, all-encompassing overview...I hate to say it, but Wikipedia might be your best bet. Like I said: the backstory and surrounding machinations threaten to overwhelm any discussion of the movie itself.

So at ANY rate, we found Sita Sings the Blues a pleasant diversion. It's dazzling visually; the different styles of animation and visual contrasts contribute a ton to the overall work. And I think it's probably no surprise that the music is the probable highlight of the whole thing for me -- inspiring a Pandora radio station based on 1920's superstar Annette Hanshaw. Yet my review will not be quite as ga-ga as the usually even-keeled Roger Ebert. (How could it be? He really loves this damn movie!)

To me, the whole thing just felt somewhat slight. It only runs about 1hr20min total, but it dragged in plenty of places. Little things, like a 2min45sec "Intermission" where we are forced to watch all 165 seconds tick away for no discernible reason whatsoever, feel stretched and bloated. Why not a 30-second intermission, or maybe a 60-second intermission, max? It felt like nothing more than padding, and I would argue there was too much padding throughout. Some scenes dragged a bit, some shots were held a fraction too long, the overall pace sometimes felt a little too sluggish. Sita is on the short(er) side as it is, but it could have been ten minutes shorter and a much stronger, more propulsive film. And while most of the animation is beautiful, some parts do feel self-indulgent, like an extended rotoscoped dance sequence towards the end of the film, which a generous critic would say showed the heartbreak and confusion experienced by the animated Sita and the animated Nina (the filmmaker's stand-in, whose modern-day story parallels the ancient Hindu one). A less generous critic might call the sequence self-indulgent, and someone with no class whatsoever would call it a waste of time. Regardless of the kind of critic I am, it felt disconnected from the rest of the movie, didn't contribute nearly enough of anything to justify its inclusion, and was too long, period.

Yet the animation was undeniably beautiful, and the different styles were all inventive and engaging (save perhaps that "dance"). The film tells the story of Rama and Sita (entirely new to me) in a wonderfully conversational and informal manner, which I loved. I would absolutely watch an entire film of just the three "narrators," in the form of shadow puppets, retelling the legend, correcting each other, clarifying each other, talking exuberantly and boastfully over each other -- hilarious and great. Likewise, the sequences featuring Annette Hanshaw's singing (still utterly vibrant some 80-odd years later) are adorable as well as fabulous renditions of some classic songs.

It's a good movie, all in all, interesting and gorgeous, stylized and tuneful -- complete with a wild backstory full of post-modern copyright issues, artistic perseverance, and personal heartbreak. I'm not 100% sure why Roger Ebert totally flipped his lid over it, or why it has taken on this indie/online-to-mainstream momentum, but more power to it! Would it make my list of top 10 films for the year? Nope. But was it the perfect thing to find online for free on a cold winters' night? Absolutely.

(That's all!)

"Shadow Country": Do You Like Your Books Big, Your Men Tough, Your Violence Brutal, and Your Romantic Notions About Frontier America Obliterated?

Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Shadow Country is BIG, in every way, shape, and form. In fact, it used to be three books -- a trilogy written in the 90s by Peter Matthiessen, which he says he wrote as one enormous book and had to split into three at the behest of his publisher. Once published, though, he spent a decade rewriting and revising the books back into one volume -- albeit one 900-page behemoth of a volume. The single novel, (re)titled Shadow Country, is set in southwestern Florida in the 1890s and early 1900s, and retains the loose structure of three sections, or "books," which each detail the life of E.J. Watson -- a notorious Florida sugarcane planter, outlaw, family man, murderer, etc etc -- from different perspectives. First we hear from those people surrounding Watson, his "friends" and neighbors. Next, his son Lucius assumes center stage as he pieces together his fathers' history for a biography years after the fact. Lastly, E.J. Watson himself narrates his own tale. If it sounds like a lot, it is.

I didn't do myself any favors when I convinced myself I could read this book during a two-week span over the summer, before starting a grad program. Needless to say, I finished only the first third by the time my allotted weeks were up. Then once my school started, any time to read for pleasure diminished to nonexistent levels, so I grabbed sections of the book as best I could, wolfing down as much as I could in brief moments, here and there, between assignments, on weekends when I couldn't read one more page of schoolwork. It helped/hurt that the book is incredibly readable and sucks you in in an instant. Recently (it's winter break now, so I'm blissfully free) I missed my train stop and then stumbled onto the wrong train as I completely lost myself in the story -- the last book that caused such engrossed confusion in my life was The Road, one of my very favorite books. The point is that this isn't a book you can breeze through in a week, it's a book you want to settle into over the course of a month or more. In my case, almost four months. Hey, what can you do?

The epic and erratic length of time it took me to finally finish this Bible-sized novel didn't help me keep track of the immense cast of characters, all of whom are related by birth or marriage (or common-law marriage), and many of whom (primarily but not exclusively the women) increase confusion by unhelpfully changing their names. I eventually gave up on flipping back in the book to keep everybody straight, and by the end, I had ultimately intuited pretty much what I needed to know about the characters. Surely a better and more thorough reader would have kept a comprehensive character list handy...sadly, I am not that reader. When I reread this book, though, shortly after my retirement, I will absolutely put together that character list.

With my own foolhardiness and general poor timing working against me, in combination with the sheer mass and complexity of the book, it's a miracle I enjoyed the thing at all. And I didn't just enjoy it, I loved it. It's an absolutely incredible book, as harsh and unflinching as Cormac McCarthy with some of the beautiful sentences and easily digestible, yet poetic, descriptions that I love from Richard Ford or Philip Roth. There is brutal frontier violence, striking psychological insight into literally every character that appears in the story no matter how briefly, and huge themes about the building of America, the natural world, destruction in the name of progress, the struggle for individual power and freedom, the United States' history of racial prejudice, the nature of truth...and more. Matthiessen's author bio describes his "parallel career as a naturalist," which is apparent throughout the book in his lingering, elegiac descriptions of land, flora, and fauna -- all of which adds an extra layer of poignancy to the whole tale as one reflects on how much more progress has been made at the expense of nature than that which these characters at the end of the 19th century all lament. Remember: if it sounds like a lot, it is. It was also more than worth it in the end. I haven't been so engrossed in a book in quite some time, in spite of everything.

Side note: although this comparison is largely backwards, I was often reminded of P.T. Andersons' movie There Will Be Blood as I read Shadow Country -- E.J. Watson, the main character in the book, is huge and indomitable and perplexing and frightening, along the same lines as Daniel Plainview from that film. (Embarrassing or not, I often heard Daniel Day Lewis' voice when Watson spoke; is it wrong to utterly conflate two totally different works of art like that?)

At any rate, I can find virtually nothing to criticize about this novel, aside from, perhaps, the massive length. If I had to find something to complain about -- and I do, natch -- I might suggest that "Book II" starring E.J. Watson's doting son Lucius, dragged occasionally. The immediacy of books one and three are undeniable, and Lucius combing through historical records, trying to get at the decades-old "truth" about his father can't quite match the arresting excitement that the deeds themselves afford. But even at its dullest, everything still really moves at a terrific clip -- I suppose trying to squish three books, and 1300 pages, back into a 900-page whole will force a certain amount of expeditiousness.

In spite of everything, I loved this book, massive in size, scope, and theme; it never failed to fascinate and thrill and disgust and rivet throughout. The only thing sadder than having taken four months to finish the damn thing is that now it's over and I have to say goodbye.

View all my reviews >>


PS: For more on Shadow Country, check out this excellent New York Review of Books piece by Michael Dirda...

Music With Some Good Old Fashioned American Heart and Soul: The Avett Brothers, Justin Townes Earle, &c.

Recently I've been feeling a little adrift in the world of indie-rock, being increasingly left cold by electronic bleeps and esoteric blerps, the structureless, meandering electro-jazz-pop-somethingness of bands like Animal Collective, Radiohead, Grizzly Bear, Department of Eagles, Of Montreal, Dan Deacon, Passion Pit...the list goes on and on of hot, buzzy bands and artists exploring the intersections and boundaries of electronic music, pop, rock, jazz, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with any of those guys (sometimes), just that I have found myself lately yearning for some verse-chorus-verse-chorus music with a bit of good ol' fashioned American heart and soul, some finger-pickin' and some twang.

It was fortuitous then, that long-lost-Culturephile Greg recently Christmas-gifted me The Avett Brothers' most recent release -- their first on a major label -- entitled I And Love And You, as well as a sprawling, rambling, rock & roll record by a band/collective known as Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. Both records made his list of top ten albums of 2009, and both are, indeed, excellent. (Whether either or both would have made my own 2009 top ten, as Greg predicted to me upon gifting, will forever remain a mystery; I made my top ten, carved it into blog-stone, and that's that.) At any rate, I augmented these two albums by perusing a slew of country/Americana/alt-country/folk/rock music blogs and determined the consensus favorite release of 2009 among them was Justin Townes Earle's sophomore effort, Midnight At The Movies. (This helpful top 20 list was created by vote of 30 "like minded bloggers" and admittedly made my searching really easy -- not to mention further overstuffing my Google Reader.) Lastly, Amazon.com put The Avett Brothers second-to-last album, Emotionalism on sale for the unavoidable price of $1.99 (and who knows how long that will last) -- so that rounded out my recent music-binge.

All these albums are great and scratch that musical itch had been bugging me. The Avett Brothers have been getting more and more recognition (as Greg mentioned) and I can't say why I haven't jumped on board their train until now, but it's worth jumping aboard now, or anytime. I and Love and You definitely sports a bit more of a pop-oriented sound and feel, compared with Emotionalism, but both have a ton of heart and soul and finger pickin' and acoustic rockin' and rollin'. (I and Love and You also seems more austere and piano-driven, for which I mostly blame wildly overhyped superproducer Rick Rubin, of course.) The Avetts remind me a ton of the sadly defunct good-time band The Format on I and Love and You; on Emotionalism they feel more sui generis. Regardless, both albums are great in their own ways and I really don't know why I have been so uninterested in them for so long -- I think I (wrongly) assumed they were more "cowpunk" and sloppy than they really are. They are sometimes a little ragged around the edges (esp on Emotionalism), but not in a bad way -- their songs still have plenty of catchy melodies they don't lack musicianship at all. (Raggedly rocking out is fine, but I still need healthy doses of melodicism and intricate balladry and brokenhearted solemnity in my music, thankyouverymuch.) The Avett Bros. aren't just hammering away at acoustic guitars; these guys are genuinely talented and their songs span a wide and catchy range.

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes is apparently a sprawling, hippie, fun-loving (not to say nutballs) 9-to-12 member "collective" of California-ish musicians. The Huffington Post seems like as good a place as any to get their backstory -- hey, why not? -- so I humbly submit this link and invite you to check them out. Their self-titled debut album is a trip (literally as well as figuratively?). Think The Polyphonic Spree meets Calexico meets The Magnetic Fields meets Gram Parsons. Got it?

The best of all, though, is this Justin Townes Earle album; I am now chastened for having avoided poor Justin, worried that he was just cashing in on the family name, and being pretentious by plastering that equally famous middle name everywhere. (For the necessary background if you are unfamiliar with Steve Earle or Townes Van Zandt, check out Justin's page on wikipedia and click on all the names in turn.) At the end of the day, though, I should, can, and will forgive & forget all my silly notions about names because his album is ACES from beginning to end. Sounding a lot more like Ryan Adams and Hank Williams than Steve Earle (but a little like Steve Earle, too, obviously), Justin romps through toe-tapping hoedowns, relaxes into a number of excellently sad ballads, and even throws in some good neo-folk tunes, like "They Killed John Henry." It is a stellar album, no question about it, and my hat is off to this consortium of twang-loving bloggers for identifying it perfectly. I get the same excitement and wonderful sadness from this album that I get every time I listen to Heartbreaker or Gold, two of my absolute favorite albums of all time. Rare is the album that's able to move from smoky soul to western swing and back (and forth) with total ease, but Midnight at the Movies does all that, and with total assurance -- natural and effortless. It's a remarkable album, drawing on more varied genres, sounds, and traditions than those aforementioned Ryan Adams albums, but with the same level of openhearted (often brokenhearted) soulfulness.

If you are looking to get your 2010 off to a rootsy, country-ish, quintessentially American start, look no further than these excellent discs. Happy New Year, Culturephiles.