Happy Birthday

Also, since it's April, let's wish a Happy 4th Birthday to The Culturephiles -- est. April 1, 2008.  While readership has maintained steady at around zero for the last four years, we want to thank anyone that's ever stopped by, and especially those who may have stopped by more than once.  To those of you who have gone so far as to leave a comment: our hearts are too full for words.  And even though nobody besides myself has even posted since January, let's all take a brief moment to celebrate this meaningless milestone and raise a nonexistent glass.

Happy Birthday to you, you rich source of joy and guilt, you overlooked, under-tended garden of ideas, you ode to Andrew Bird, you stupid blog we lovingly call The Culturephiles.

Three Very Different, Very American Albums

Emmylou Harris - Hard Bargain
Without trying to sound like I'm damning with faint praise, Emmylou Harris' album is much better than her last few -- Red Dirt Girl, Stumble Into Grace, All I Intended to Be.  After a career as one of the premier interpreters of others' songs, Emmylou has started a late-career push as a songwriter, with some pretty varied results.  (It reminds me of Michael Jordan trying to switch to baseball...you just think: why?) But while these songs are stark (a kinder synonym for simple), the production complements/augments them nicely -- though producer Jay Joyce probably owes Daniel Lanois a quarter for all that he has "borrowed" from the sound of Wrecking Ball.

My biggest problem is simply with the songwriting.  The rhymes remain almost exclusively on the monosyllabic level: me-free, end-friend, chart-heart -- someone send along a rhyming dictionary or something.  The deepest Emmylou manages to reach into the pool of multisyllabic words is to break out one partially satisfying "muzzle-puzzle" rhyme in the bouncy, childlike "Big Black Dog."  (I guess if you're looking for complex wordplay, just go with Sondheim.)  The best one can say about these straightforward lyrics is that they have a simple, homespun flavor.  Complex?  No.  Satisfying enough?  Sure.  It's when she reaches beyond the simple emotional expressions of grief, love, longing, melancholy, etc, that the album really stumbles: "My Name is Emmett Till" and "New Orleans" spring to mind.  Simple (and let's be honest, limited) songwriting skills necessitates keeping songs simple.  Historical tragedies like Emmett Till and Katrina require a lighter, more skillful touch, while heartfelt, plain songs about Gram Parsons and Kate McGarrigle pull at the heartstrings without needing filigree.  Most of these songs are satisfyingly simple and sad and heartfelt, put over with the classic style and grace we all expect from one of the all-time greats.

Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane
Paper Airplane is another album that works to reverse the middling trend of the last few Alison Krauss albums. While I could never turn my back on AK+US (as those in the know abbreviate them), their last couple efforts -- New Favorite, Lonely Runs Both Ways -- were fairly lackluster.  Paper Airplane, without being a masterpiece, is a ton more satisfying than either of those last two records.  It feels more focused and consistent -- like a purposeful step forward rather than a meandering series of steps sideways.

I like the song and this album enough that I will even forgive this ludicrous music video, with its contrived neo-civil war aesthetic and Krauss' prarie-girl gingham dress & apron COMBINED WITH FOUR-INCH STILETTO MINIBOOTS!?!?!:


Bill Callahan - Apocalypse
After Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, I picked up this new album from Callahan sight unseen. And while it provides the requisite deep-voiced Americana-inspired weirdness I love, there's something less immediately pleasant/pleasing/engaging about this album; there's more experimentation here than on Eagle.  Yet it's a rich record full of musical and lyrical complexity -- um, hello, jazz flute!  I feel like you need to climb to the top of a wooded hill on a beautiful day, alone with your iPod, to give Apocalypse a proper listen from beginning to end in the appropriate environment.  Ideally, you'd have a pricey stereo system set up at the top of that hill, but I'll let that slide for the sake of convenience.  Please let me know how it goes.

The Weird, Wonderful Keep: Egan Does Borges

The Keep by Jennifer Egan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Keep captivated me (no pun intended?) from the start. An exceptionally well-written book that surprises, thrills, and elegantly weaves perspective, mood, and the act of writing itself into one great big Borges-ian psychological thriller. If it went off the rails somewhat in its final, short section, I can forgive it many times over because I truly enjoyed the act of reading every page. A page-turner both in the sense that I wanted to turn the page to find out what happened next, but also in that I enjoyed each page more than the last. Rare is a page-turner of such quality.

The tricks Egan plays with point of view, narration, and stories-within-stories offer plenty of fodder for thought and dissection, all the while creating rounded characters and a sustained, pitch-perfect mood; I was tense but never scared, anxious but never turned off. My highest compliment goes to the way in which Egan gives you authentic-feeling peeks into her characters without ever letting you feel like you are inorganically inside their mind, hearing their thoughts and feelings.

The people in the story, creepy and weird though they may be at time, seem real -- yet all have rich, mysterious lives extending beyond what the novel tells us. It's a book rich in ellipses: the unknown and unseen is just as compelling as what is said and known. I can't recall a book I've read quite like it. Or one I've enjoyed in the same compulsive, thrilling way. A really unique, wonderful read.