The Fall (La Chute) - Albert Camus

La Chute by Albert Camus was published in 1957. That is the same year that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is eleven years after L'Etranger, nine years after La Peste, trois annees apres L'homme Revolte, et deux annees apres Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Camus est un ecrivain super. Mais, ma francais, c'est fou. Vocabulary is much easier to summon in English.

We must situate Camus in a context. He was 44 when he won the Nobel. He died three years later in a car crash, and I remember reading somewhere that a "lost" manuscript was discovered amongst the wreckage of the vehicle. Is there an element to absurd reasoning we can cull from his end? It is not worth it. His literature should suffice for clues. One tends to consider The Stranger, the first and most popular book by him, a very influential text in terms of its literary style, (while in fact Camus had been influenced by early 20th century American "noir" writers, e.g. James Cain, which is where Meursault's style of speaking comes from) when seeking the heart of Camus's famous perspective. However, this is not about that inarguably classic text, nor is it about the rather difficult to follow Rebel or Sisyphus, one of which I've read and the other of which I always give up after three pages after I tell myself that this time, I am going to get it.

The Fall certainly needs to be situated in a context. I read it about three years ago in Hilton Head, SC to celebrate my graduation my college and because I had just started listening to the band the Fall, who I heard had gotten their name from the novel. Not to mention the fact that they named one album Bend Sinister after a Vladimir Nabokov novel. They are a very literary band. Their singer is more of a writer than a musician. But when I read The Fall the first time, I didn't really understand it. I got it out of the public library in SC and it was packaged in a stark, black volume without any explanatory comments beyond the text itself. I read it, and was totally mystified by it. I had no idea what was going on. I just remember that the ending was really good. It's short. It's only 140 pages. It's comparable length to The Stranger, but there is nothing of that novel's story in it. Whatever story is contained in The Fall, I think, is largely incidental.

This time I saw it and it was the regular Vintage International edition and I decided to give it another try because I've listened to significantly higher amounts of the Fall since then, and I am in a more solid position in life (though that statement is something of a joke as well!), able to take things slowly and consider the author's purpose more clearly. There was a lot of help this time.

First of all, there is the epigraph from Lermontov, in which Camus more or less defines the entire novel. I will quote the epigraph for your synopsis pleasures:

"Some were dreadfully insulted, and quite seriously, to have held up as a model such an immoral character as A Hero of Our Time; others shrewdly noticed that the author had portrayed himself and his acquaintances....A Hero of Our Time, gentlemen, is in fact a portrait, but not of an individual; it is the aggregate of the vices of our whole generation in their fullest expression."

One could say one dodges some individual bullets when they take up the task of taking humanity to task on their inexpiable guilt. However it is not fair to claim that, as Camus's method leaves some ambiguities up to the reader. There were many moments when I thought maybe Camus was seriously just talking about himself, because the main character (I will get to this in a moment) may be a little bit shady, but it is such a clear picture of a person's judgmental faculties that I do not think it can help but be somewhat personal for Camus. I don't think he ever saw the woman on the quay in Paris, or heard the laughter behind him, or even set up shop in Amsterdam, but I do think his pronouncements about the whole of humanity, about the instincts in every human being, ring true enough to be an individual opinion, and not some survey of past institutional transgressions. Yes, there are great parts, as when he describes the spitting chamber as being an invention of man, not God, or when he nonchalantly makes a reference to the Holocaust, "I was interned near Tripoli in a camp where we suffered from thirst and destitution more than from brutality. I'll not describe it to you. We children of the mid-century don't need a diagram to imagine such places. A hundred and fifty years ago, people became sentimental about lakes and forests. Today we have the lyricism of the prison cell." (123-124)

We must be very conscious of Camus's first words in the novel, so famous are the first words in The Stranger (need I repeat them or do I run the risk of talking down to my audience? As yourselves: Do you prefer the colloquial or the formal--Maman, ou ma mere?). In La Chute, it is "May I, monsieur, offer my services without running the risk of intruding?" (3) Given the context of the situation, this is one of the best opening lines in all of literature, too. I long to go to a bar alone and walk up to someone and say, "May I, M. or Mme., offer my services without running the risk of intruding?" It is much better than saying, "Do you mind if I sit here?" Of course, any normal person in 2008 would be like, "What?" They wouldn't be able to hear over the din of the music blasted for what purpose I know not, maybe to hide the fact that nobody in bars is capable of serious conversation beyond, eye contact, drink-buying, being impressive, and all those other things I hate to think about in connection with "going out to the bars." No, I'd much rather go to Mexico City, the bar where most of The Fall takes place.

Mexico City is in Amsterdam, one confusing instance of nomenclature that I am unable to deconstruct (and my old adviser used to always tell me, "Deconstructionism is dead," so maybe I won't try). And the man who utters the opening line, is the man who will utter every line in the book. Jean-Baptiste Clamence is his name, and he talks to some unknown character, which in the end the reader can only take to be himself, despite the fact that we are not generally in a bar in Amsterdam when we are reading The Fall. Thus, the structure of this novel is one of its most significant elements. It is delivered in one fell swoop monologue, but unlike any other first-person novel before it. The "you" being addressed sometimes says things that are not printed, and Clamence will respond to that action so you can fill in the blank yourself with what happened, but it retains the air of mystery as most all of the action of the novel is enshrouded by Clamence's duplicity.

You cannot be sure if he is telling the truth, and you cannot be sure if he is lying, and this is why The Fall is one of the more hidden gems in the recent history of Western Literature: the conceit mimics reality. Do you trust your friends? What about someone you meet in a bar and hangs on you for the next four days---but it even appears that you enjoy Clamence's company! Indeed, at the end of the novel, you even go to Clamence's house and have your final discussion with him while he is in bed! You go out of your way for him! But the mystery of Clamence, and why he says what he does, and why he feels the need to say all this, this is the closest thing you can find to "plot" in the novel. It may not even be called a novel! It might be more accurately described as a philosophical essay. I believe at heart it is interested in the question of whether or not a person can admit their own guilt in a situation. When do people talk about the bad things they've done in their past? Never! No one does that, except me. Perhaps that is why I like this novel. And Clamence does not so much talk about the bad things he's done in his past as he makes excuses for all of his bad behavior, most especially his attitude towards women. But then, you can never be sure if he is just saying something for effect, or if he is actually telling the truth. His story about being named the "pope" of the prison camp seems a tad absurd in the context of the story he tells about it, but the story of the woman jumping into the Seine to her death does ring true, as does the mysterious laughter that unnerved him. But the duplicity in the novel, while it is not far from authentic experience, also lends an element of frustration to it. Clamence sums it up himself near the end when he says, "You see, a person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: those who prefer having nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden. I'll let you choose the pigeonhole that suits me." (119)

So you can never be sure, or rather, the novel can be read two different ways, but will inevitably read the third, and probably the only way. Regardless, the text is a treasure. Camus could barely have tried to write a more "punk rock" novel than The Fall while receiving the Nobel the same year. And it is not lacking in the profundity of his other work. Finally, before I wrap things up, it is worth noting Clamence's profession, which also serves as the "plot" of the novel. He is a judge-penitent. The second chapter opens up with, "What is a judge-penitent? Ah, I intrigued you with that business." So the reader anticipates finding out what a judge-penitent actually does and the answer may be less surprising than they realize. However, Clamence used to be a lawyer, and he mostly talks about his life outside that profession throughout the work. One other thing I want to do in bars after reading this: when people ask me, "what do you do?", I want to tell them, "I'm a judge-penitent." And when they say, "What's a judge-penitent?" I will try to explain myself appropriately.

Finally, why would the Fall name their group after this work? This is the question I sought to answer the first time reading it, when I was a Fall amateur and only had Bend Sinister, A World Bewitched (collection of 90's material) and This Nation's Saving Grace. Now I have like fifteen or twenty more albums than that and am a Fall fanatic.

It is not a coincidence that this book is reviewed on the day that Imperial Wax Solvent is released. This review is a dedication to that band and their singer. But really, why would MES name his group after the book? Well, for one thing I didn't realize, it was published the same year he was born. (Thus I should name my group The Language Perverts, but it doesn't quite have the same ring to it now does it?) The conceit of the book though is not far off from the conceit of their music. Their music is not necessarily accessible, but still catchy most of the time. Same goes for the book--it's really weird, but it's written in relatively simple language, betraying the complexity of its total meaning. Does MES mimic Clamence, in that the book is one long first person screed and the Fall's music sometimes looks like one person's long 30 year screed? Yes, MES is interested in taking the piss out of hypocrites, and The Fall can more or less be seen as a treastise on human hypocrisy. MES obviously has a far wider range of subject matter, but the foundations of his early artistic r'aison d'etre (on display through, say, Hex Enduction Hour) may have their seeds in this work by Camus. Regardless of whether you like that band, or Camus, The Fall is an interesting book to check out, but a difficult one to write about, and probably a hard one to talk about, but you cannot deny that it is perfect company for a barfly. And if you ever find yourself at a bar in Amsterdam by yourself, this is inevitably the situation you want to imagine yourself in.

Tobias Wolff, Jane Smiley, Ron Carlson - "Serious Fiction" Panel, 4/27/08, UCLA Schoenberg Hall, "Agents Voices" Panel, UCLA Moore Hall

The "Serious Fiction" panel featured three "heavies" as the moderator Susan Sutler-something said to introduce the three prominent, modern authors. Each is in their fifties or sixties and each has a career spanning more than 30 years and two of the three are pretty much writing instructors and the third (Smiley) recently published the well-regarded "13 Ways of Looking at the Novel." Thus, you could say this panel represented the "MFA Contingent" of the Festival of Books--Wolff teaches Stegner fellows in Stanford's program, and Carlson did not specify where he taught as far as I can recall.

To be honest, I did not hear all that much that I didn't already know (except that Trollope was extremely prolific, and that Graham Greene might be worth reading), that I hadn't already been told by the dozen or so writing teachers I've had in the last ten years, though Wolff had at least two or three comments which impressed me with their profundity. Still, I do not expect to be reading him. I am past the point where "This Boy's Life" can be assigned to me for required reading (it was in high school for other English teacher's courses--not mine) and I read a short story by him imagining what gays in the military are like in Best Short Stories of 2006 and while it was one of the more "different" stories in the collection, it did not particularly effect me. I also think I read Smiley's "The All True Travels and Adventures of Lydie Newton" which was assigned summer reading in high school and which was a title which all of my classmates and siblings (and myself) mocked.

But Sanda Djikstra mocked Amy Tan's original title for Joy Luck Club--"Wind and Water"--saying, "I'd have been laughed out of Manhattan if I used that title!" Sandy was the only agent (amongst 4) that I have sent a proper query letter and 50 sample pages of my first novel to...It goes without saying that she rejected it. This panel pissed me off for so many reasons that I can't even get into all of them. But let's start with the raising of our hands.

How many of you have published a book? A few people in the crowd, actually a pretty surprising total. Now, how many of you have finished a book and are actively trying to get it published? Oh a lot of you, okay. Well, you all have to leave now. Haha! Just kidding.

How about the one agent named Kim (I don't remember her last name but it is not far off from Thayil, though that should not be significant other than me making multiple Soundgarden references in my parenthetical usages on Flying Houses) who was definitely the most attractive, but who had been in the business for over twenty years and so must have been somewhere in her 40's (though she looked in her 20's from where I sat) and who represented none other than...David Foster Wallace. I was shocked. I was dismayed. To think that she was the one that "saw the point to" Infinite Jest. It both infuriates and amazes me. How I wanted to talk to her after and tell her that I was good enough for her! But I was so upset by the whole ordeal that I couldn't give any of those agents another damn second of attention. Except for Kim. And for Georges Borcherdt, who was French by birth but a New Yorker, agenting since he was 19, and I believe actually represented Elie Wiesel when he wanted to put out Night and he sold it for (get ready): $125, payable in two installments.

Sandy was my personal agent familiar, and she seemed (along with the other lady on the end) to be the type LEAST interested in the sort of stuff I wrote. So, I should try to send it to Kim or Georges, except they said they have two ways of receiving manuscripts: through referrals and through random submissions "Slush Pile" et. al. Now, how am I going to get a referral? And how to get their attention? Sandy said to "distinguish yourself from the rest," and I haven't done a good enough job of that already?

The best moment occurred during the Q & A Session. The first dude that asked a question was kind of gangly and oddly-spoken and the panelists gave him weird looks and said, "What's your question?" The last guy asked a question like, "Okay, I spent a few years working on my first novel, I've read all the advice about how to submit to agents, I've sent out query letters, one of them to you (to Sandy, the same as me), and I've received 22 rejection letters. What else am I suppose to do?" They sort of laughed and they said, "What's your question?" to him too, and eventually they said, "Thank you," early to him and moved on to the last person after him, even as he tried to ask more. He was a hero! He was the hero of the hour! I wished I had stood up and started applauding the man! How brave to stand up to those "greater" snobs who couldn't possibly be more destructive to literature than anyone---except Hitler! Perhaps that is hyperbole, but I wanted to trace my way back to Bradbury with that statement.

That man who asked that question is like the crazy man that gets pulled away by the authorities even though he is the one that knows the truth. I know the truth too, and as much as agents may want to claim that they have to "fall in love" with a book or see it its clear enormous commercial potential in order to want to represent it, the truth is probably that they only work with their current authors, and their current author's friends. They don't scout "new talent" because they don't have the time. Borcherdt himself admitted that the only time they had to read new submissions were nights and weekends! Truly these people DO devote themselves to reading (massively!), but it is obviously nowhere near as important as working the phones, contacting the publishers, and negotiating contracts, all while knowing there's something in it for them too. I am sorry to all the agents I may offend, but they are really as low a form of life to me as the current President they all find so fashionable to denounce. They wouldn't know a good book if it hit them on the back of the head (except for Kim and Georges, who were realistic, but less cruel in their sweeping statements). I don't care if "Daylight Savings Time" is a title that would have gotten Sandy laughed out of Manhattan (like "Manhattan" is as stick-up-their-ass as her....she said the title was the first thing any publisher would see, so it's very important--she even mentioned "Some writers say, 'oh, we'll work on the title later,'" which I myself mentioned directly in my query letter to her), she's a fool for passing it up! Obviously I'm not cool enough to fit in with other, more professional writers. I don't know enough about being young yet. Or I haven't been able to write a good novel yet. And yes, DST is a hard novel to sell, but it's not as bad as everyone wants to say it is. It's much better than most chick lit I would presume! There's no room for other voices in mainstream literature.

Thank God I went to the Akashic Books exhibit and talked to them about submitting (they don't go through agents, you can send it directly to the house's editor-in-chief, but this may also explain why they are "done" for now and won't consider new submissions until June or July) and thank God there are smaller presses that don't make you feel like you have to be Khaled Hosseini just to have someone say yes to you. Regardless, "Self-Mutilation" is two, three, or four times as good as DST and when it comes time to send that puppy out and when it comes time to see that agents don't want it either, I'll be able to say with even more confidence that agents are stupid, more people submit to them than should, and that they are slowly destroying literature as they build up film and television into the pre-eminent forms of entertainment Sorry for theater! Music is also very lucrative, but unfortunately literature and music rarely coalesce, though it is often musicians who make up a good part of the reading public not consisting of soccer moms or housewives, desperate or otherwise. You can't sell a CD with an author unless it's a Book-on-CD, and come on, who is thinking that far ahead with a debut novel? I've said all I need to, but just remember: if you are a writer and you are trying to sell your book, don't "play the game" with the agents for one fucking second. That heroic man who asked that question also mentioned that he overheard someone say in a conversation, "Publish your first by yourself, then let an agent come to you for your second." The panelists tried to push him for clarification, "What did you say to them?" "I wasn't part of that conversation," (great response from that hero!). And then Sandy said, "No, you need an agent." Right Sandy, all us desperate writers need someone like you to take us to the top. Right.

Ray Bradbury - 04/26/08, Royce Hall, UCLA Campus, Westwood, CA

On Saturday at 4:30 PM, Ray Bradbury was wheeled onto the stage of Royce Hall after having been nicely introduced by a longtime friend who told stories about their pasts and how he brought Bradbury to a restaurant on the Left Bank of Paris where they had a giant book of author's signatures and asked the maitre-de if he could sign it and the maitre-de said, "qui?" And later he signed it, in the same book that Moliere had once signed.
Bradbury is 82 years old. He was born in Waukegan, IL, so I explained to the cute Asian-American freshman Neuroscience major from Northern California who sat next to me. I sort of went off to her to kill the time before Bradbury would be introduced. I talked about how Bradbury and Dave Eggers and I were all from the same area, and I talked about how F. Scott Fitzgerald had written about the Market Square area in Lake Forest, IL 80 years before I would frequent that locale, and I talked about how being in the same place as something else that happened long before it, and knowing that it had been recorded, had a value which approached indefinability. This would later be a prescient point, as Bradbury would tell how he completed Farenheit 451 in the basement of UCLA's Powell Library, 200 yards from where we sat, renting out typewriters for .10 per half hour. He said he got a big bag of dimes (at which point everyone burst out laughing) and wrote the first draft with $9.80. He also said they should give him some sort of plaque for that, and everyone burst out laughing at that too. He also talked about how he lives forever and I think everyone in the audience found his speech very inspiring, but more on that later, I have been caught on a digression about the girl who I sat next to. I talked about Kerouac, because I'm reading Desolation Angels (on page 226) and I told her she should just find an author she likes and read as many books by them as she can. It's better than just trying to seek out all the masterpieces. Otherwise, it's hard to find a lot of books you really like. She told me she read Cormac McCarthy's The Road and I told her I couldn't see what all the fuss was about him, and she said she just liked his style, and I asked her what she meant by his style, and it was hard for her to define, but we basically came to the conclusion that she meant readability, going from line to line without being jarred, or something to that effect. Like saying, now I'm listening to "Grinding Halt" by the Cure, and it just seems to fit?...I also told her that Desolation Angels took place in San Francisco and we also talked about how seemingly bizarre pockets of the USA hold random massive immigrant populations--like how her area in California was heavily Asian, and how most of her high school classmates were Asian. It is just further proof that the American identity is a constantly expanding catalog of nations, with the only shared element being a language that is a) used decreasingly, and b) used improperly, and c) spoken with a regional accent rather than an ethnographic one. There is very little we all have in common anymore beyond our style of speaking. You may say, what about east coast/west coast hip-hop feuds, and I will point to their language. Maybe I am not able to pick up on the subtle differentiations of "street talk" from one coast to the other (and the middle thrown in for good measure), but in all my experience the differences are minute. The words are the same, the attitudes are the same, the tone is the same. Only the truly salient individual with the ability to communicate their unique perspective as an "anomaly" will be able to separate themselves from the crowd, and there is such a fear these days about not being "with the crowd!" Perhaps this will come into play more precisely when I talk about the "Agent's Voices" Panel that I saw yesterday. But I still have to report on Bradbury, and also the "Serious Fiction" Panel I saw featuring Tobias Wolff, Jane Smiley and Ron Carlson.

Bradbury name-checked Federico Fellini (who embraced him and cried, "My twin!"), John Huston (who hired him to write the screenplay for Moby Dick in Dublin), Bernard Berenson (a Renaissance historian who invited him to Italy, began a lengthy correspondence, and became a surrogate father to him), Aldous Huxley (who proclaimed, "You are a poet!" to him), Gene Kelly (who appreciated his praise of "Singin' in the Rain") and probably a few others I am forgetting. He said he was a novelist, short story writer, poet, and screenwriter (and mentioned that most of his novels might just as well be screenplays), but above all, what had served him better than any other pursuit, he made abundantly clear, was being a lover of different things. If there was a theme or narrative thread running through his hour-long monologue, it was this. His loves of film, magic, the planet Mars, and libraries led him towards events, colloborations and art works which would have their seeds sometimes two or three decades prior to their actualization.

I am not a heavy Bradbury reader--I have only read "Zen and the Art of Writing," which I made clear to a few people was probably not the best "teach-you-how-to-write" book. However, it is probably as good as any other (the only one I can think that is actually canonical is John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction"). I read a short story about a strangler in small town USA, the first story in a collection of his that my family had in their library. I never read Farenheit 451, the Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, etc. I'm not all that familiar with Bradbury's work actually, but I felt in reading "Zen..." I got an idea of the sort of writer he was. While I am not necessarily going to rush out and buy them all, I feel I owe it to myself to at least read Farenheit. Regardless, the man in person was a very huge presence. There were deafening standing ovations for both his entrance and exit off the stage. There were lessons to be learned from his talk, however upon reflection I feel as if he oversimplifies things and is way more positive than anybody else is. But for the hour of the talk, you could say he held the audience in the palm of his hand. One could say he is a very happy person, and it was rewarding in a way just to see him talk about how lived the way he did because he did what he loved all along. Nobody walked out of that thing thinking, "I should just give it up; literature is useless now."

These New Puritans - Beat Pyramid

Buzz bands come in all shapes and sizes, but English buzz bands tend to wander around the same territory. That is post-punk. These New Puritans follow after the Arctic Monkeys and the Klaxons in the mining of similar influences (Gang of Four chief amongst them). TNP even share a certain quality with Art Brut. And actually, they sound a lot like Franz Ferdinand at times too. It's just too bad that Vampire Weekend had to come in and spoil everyone's fun...TNP might sell a few copies in the UK, but I am 90% sure they will never be more popular than any of those above-mentioned post-punk revivalist bands in America. Bloc Party will continue to dominate the genre in this country, and it's getting dicey to call Franz Ferdinand post-punk when they share a certain quality with Interpol, and then you're starting to lose your post-punk dedication to driving beats, an attitude beyond pissed off, and some atonality/avante-garde noise textures thrown in to separate the bandwagon-jumping frat boys from the more sneering snobs of modern rock criticism. TNP won't necessarily be for everyone, but they do what's been done before as well as anybody to come along in recent years. And their name is a reference to a Fall song (a fact no one ever mentions, which just goes to show that the Fall continue to be unappreciated, despite overwhelming evidence that they may in fact be one of the greatest groups of all time), so they have to have some intelligence, right?

The album starts fast and doesn't let up for a good long while. Ignoring the transitional/"fake" tracks that consist of a few seconds of noise experimentation (such as the opening and closing tracks, "ce I will say" and "This twice, I will" or whatever the cut off is, further giving the appearance of the album as a cryptogram), opener "Numerology (Numbers)" could be a single and features the infectious barked interrogative, "What's your favorite number? What does it mean?" Singer/guitarist Jack Barnett then goes into detail about what most of the numbers from 1-9 represent ("Number 1, is the individual, Number 2, duality...") and the song is extremely thought-provoking.

If the first track isn't catchy enough to be a single then the second track "Colours" might be, but I feel it's also the most reductive track on the album. It opens up with a huge slashing guitar and a big, bounding beat of the drums, then Barnett, "If not now well then when? If not now well then when?" He starts going off about different colors or something and then settles on "Gold! Gold! Gold!" as the chorus line, which is probably the worst part of the album, but succeeds very well in sounding like Franz Ferdinand.

Following track, "Swords of Truth" opens up with a sample that could be taken off a hip hop track. Then the drums come in again, and I can only describe it as sounding like a sped-up version of "Spector vs Rector" with Barnett giving his best MES derivation when he sings "This music is weightless, This music's so funny, And when I sing, So am I, you'll be slashing at the air..." then it goes into its crazy instrumental chorus part that also sounds like "Spector vs Rector"'s inscrutable utterances. Yes, I love "Swords of Truth" because it sounds most like the Fall than any other track.

"Doppelganger" is a 90 second instrumental break from the proceedings. It could almost be on a Deerhunter or Atlas Sound album if the more electronic elements of it were toned down.

"C. 16th +-" is hard to properly document with the symbols available on they keyboard, but it is a really cool song that is also single-worthy. It's much more fast-paced and restless than "Colours" and so might be the best candidate for radio play--but it's also really short and is just about how Barnett keeps repeating, "We were right we were right we were right we were right," but it's really awesome.

"En Papier" comes in like another Fall-track, gradually adding instrumentation after each bar until Barnett enters. There is a really cool bass part that comes in after the chorus as well as a little instrumental breakdown. It sounds somewhat similar to "Colours," is not as fast as "C. 16th" but may serve as the most representative track of the album as a whole. It references the themes of the other songs and conceals whatever message it may contain behind a wall "kitchen sink"-type experimental instrumentation, which drowns out the last minute of the song.

"Infinity Ytinifni" also sounds like it could be a single upon its opening and expands upon the already stated TNP formula, but then turns it into probably the best song so far on the album. It's the song where Barnett goes off about "the Pre-Socratics" and "Heraclitus" and "conspiracy theories" and the hits upon the chorus, "Infinity's not far for me" or does it turn into "Infinity's not as fast as me." ?

"Elvis" is a pretty amazing song, that I think actually is the first single off the album. It's very direct--"We're being watched by experts," could be about the buzz surrounding them. Whatever, "Elvis" might be the best song on the album. It stays more confined within pop parameters than anything else here. It may not be as interesting for the fact, but this would be this album's "A-Punk," except, as shown, it is not clearly the best song on the album, it only might be. Any song could be anyone's favorite on this one, I think.

After "Elvis," there's "9 $" (four pounds-retarded US keyboard currency exchange rate), and I have no clue what it's about. It's not annoying, but it's probably not in the running for best song on the album, though it is a pretty tidy number. "MKK3" is another pretty short song starting with your basic Gang of Four guitar slashing and bass chugging and is a good example of how Barnett can also sound like Art Brut's Eddie Argos at times. However, TNP is better than Art Brut because while they do not offer as crazy lyrics or sentiments, their message is nowhere near as clear, thus they are not quite as easy to pin down or write off.

"Navigate Colours" introduces the bizarre end to the album after a little sonic-palette cleansing, and actually sounds like a sadder, post-punk song. It sounds more like Interpol than anything else here. It's probably better than "Colours" and goes off into something different from anything else on the album by its last two minutes.

"H." is a thirty-second transitional track before closer "Costume." This is a very strange song. Very somber. Almost sounds like the Knife at first blush. Then it almost sounds weirdly enough like Sunset Rubdown when the synthesizer and vocals come in. Except Barnett doesn't sound like Spencer Krug--his voice is more fragile here than anywhere else, but it is kept simple and somber, without veering into melodrama. By the end it becomes layered and almost sounds like Radiohead-type ambitions.

That's everything on the album, and I think it shows that TNP is more interesting than TNV or VW, but I don't think they'll get as much attention as either. They aren't all that original in terms of the territory they're working within, and they sound too much like other bands. However, if they imitate the Fall more on their next album, they will probably deliver album of the year and will be a buzz band two years from now and no one will remember their debut coming out or else they will drop off the face of the Earth and no one will remember them in three years. Still, a very promising debut, and a hint of more exciting things to come in from the English music scene.

Superchunk - S/T

There are very few bands like Superchunk.
The closest ones: Black Flag, Beat Happening, Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys.
The connection? Each band started their own label.
The difference? Merge is bigger than SST, K, Dischord or Alternative Tentacles years after its founding band's heyday.
The reason? Merge has legitimately been after talent since they opened their books--Dischord and K skewed regional, Alternative Tentacles seems like more of a hobby than a business, and SST is just a clusterfuck historically. SST may have been the coolest label in the mid-80's, but they probably did not take as good care of their artists as Merge does in the late 00's. And they even have some of the same bands (i.e. Dinosaur), not to mention Spoon and the Arcade Fire, and, to bring us back to our main point, Superchunk.

I do not want to get into all the specific details of how Mac McCaughan started this label with his girlfriend when they were in their early 20's or any of that, because to be honest the chronology is rather difficult to place, since I believe Superchunk's self-titled debut is actually the third or fourth record to be released on the then-young Matador label. It is clear that a few wildly influential personalities intersect in this band's infant years, and so it is not surprising that they would reach the heights they later did (Nirvana opened for them once; they sell out anytime they play post-2004). Still, Superchunk is mainly familiar to the masses through vague name recognition. A while ago they were talked about when Emo became mainstream, but besides their style being aped beyond recognition and stupidity, there is not much reason for anyone to talk about them. Their last album was 2001's Here's to Shutting Up. Portastatic is a significantly more active presence in the music industry than Superchunk at the moment. And in a way, the last 2 Portastatic records were like "Superchunk-lite," as I heard them described as by a fan at their show. But this is about before any of that. This is before Nirvana, before Pavement, when Sonic Youth was writing Goo, and NIN was putting out Pretty Hate Machine and the Smashing Pumpkins were putting out Gish. This is before Steve Albini became their producer and before the words "indie" and "Chapel Hill" went together. I.e. This is when "Slack Motherfucker" was written.

Oeuvre rule before we start: I know all Superchunk. I would write a book about them if Mac would let me. But that's probably not necessary, given how well they document themselves on the insides of their CDs, on their website, and in various liner notes. At least everything's known about the process of making each of their albums--the gossip about the band remains largely under wraps and would not be prudent to uncover. The mystery of their lyrics adds a great deal of interpretative possibilities to their music as a whole. On the surface, Mccaughan screams like a frustrated teenager and everything's usually really fast and loud. It's punk, in fact it's pop-punk, and it's really the closest thing there ever was for providing a blueprint to Emo. The Get Up Kids would not exist without Superchunk. Neither would Saves the Day. Nor would Chris Carraba ever have come into prominence. Don't even talk about New Found Glory. Or even the Alkaline Trio. Or Fall Out Boy. Even Weezer!

But it is not fair to compare Mac to Rivers, because Rivers is interested in super-popular pop-radio-gem hits, and Mac is interested in consistent, quality albums. To get to the point, Superchunk's debut is the last album I bought by them, the last one to complete my total possession of their catalog (minus a few random b-sides and special charity compilation songs--i.e. I really want "mistakes and misfits" or whatever their newest song is called, I heard them play it twice in 2007 and it rules.). Situating their self-titled amongst No Pocky for Kitty, On the Mouth, Foolish, Incidental Music, Here's Where the Strings Come In, Indoor Living, Come Pick Me Up, Here's to Shutting Up, and Cup of Sand (not to mention Tossing Seeds, which covers most of the same period as S/T), it unfortunately comes in dead last. All the other albums are consistently better from beginning to end. That said, No Pocky for Kitty is often heralded as their essential release, and while the first 5 songs are just about perfect on that album, for me On the Mouth is their masterpiece. But I've listened to that album so many times that I think Here's Where the Strings Come In might actually have better songs on it. Foolish is usually mentioned for being "slower" than their other albums, but I really don't think that's a fair representation of it at all. Incidental Music and Cup of Sand may contain the most exciting songs by the band, and they are B-Sides. Indoor Living is very solid and so is Come Pick Me Up and if anything Here's to Shutting Up is their "different" album, and each of the three shows a steady progression of Superchunk "maturing" and sounding more like adult-contemporary than underground-punk. Regardless in 2007 they showed no signs of slowing their performance speed, even as they all turn into forty-somethings. On further review however I would have to admit that I do enjoy the very first album more than their very last album (and here is hoping that they haven't made that yet, and that I'll have to revise my post a year from now).

The first track "Sick to Move" sets the bar impossibly high not only for the album, but for the rest of Superchunk's future song catalog. Later in their career Mac would mention the formula for a Superchunk song, and 95% of their material nearly matches the model without detour. The songs that don't are notable. On S/T, "Slow" is the closest thing that DOESN'T match. On NPFK, "Tower" does not necessarily match. OTM has "Swallow That" which is definitely notable in their catalog, but this is not a survey of all the songs that don't match, and it shouldn't turn into that.

Still, "Sick to Move" is an amazing opening song for the album, and an excellent introduction to the band. It's hard to say what it's about beyond being sick to do anything, even look in the mirror.

"My Noise" is also on Tossing Seeds, but the version on the album is better and has a fuller sound.

"Let It Go" is the weirdest song on the album, definitely an anomaly for the band. It sounds almost like metal or something. I think they played it the first time I saw them live and I didn't know what it was and it didn't really affect me much except for being a little bored. This is probably the weakest song on the album.

"Swinging" is a basic Superchunk song, nothing that sets it apart and places it on the level of classic Superchunk song. "Slow" could be classic, as it is the first time they veer from their formula, and it still works pretty well.

"Slack Motherfucker" was (legend has it) written as a vituperative against a lazy co-worker at Kinko's. No one will miss its message, but it is easy to misinterpret from the other side. On the one hand, it could be taken as a song that glorifies slacking, i.e. thematic element of early 90's indie rock, pot smoking, etc. However, it is easy to see that the song is as much about the band themselves as any outside circumstance, or rather, could be taken as a mission statement. Regardless of what it means (and it means that you will always have co-workers who are lazy and who end up asking you to do all the work for them while they hide out in their little comfort zone where no one bothers them), the song is an absolute classic and deserves to be listed in the top 10 songs of the 90's (except there's no video to play on VHI Classic, so "Black Hole Sun" probably outtrumps it).

"Binding," like "Swinging" is a basic Superchunk song that is neither offensive nor particularly memorable. No slight on it, as "Down the Hall" follows. "Down the Hall," like "Sick to Move" or "Slow" is another surprisingly good song off this debut, as is its follow up, "Half a Life." "Not Tomorrow" ends the album on a very strong note, emphasizing the very immediate, very present, very prescient nature of the band's music. This is much better than Here to Shutting Up and it is probably better than Come Pick Me Up and it is a toss-up whether Indoor Living is better or not, but it cannot lay claim to being as strong an album as anything in their "blue" period (NPFK through HWTSCI). In any case all Superchunk albums are essential. They should be boxed together a la Beat Happening's catalog, and Black Flag should follow suit (only they won't because they'd rather charge $17 per album). But still, their music is not for everyone. My friend that got me into most indie rock our senior year in high school told me not to play Superchunk for him because he found them annoying. That is the biggest criticism you can make of their band. They sound like a bunch of annoying kids.

It is interesting to compare this debut with Vampire Weekend's (I am not even going to go there in terms of Funeral). In the fight between "A-Punk" vs. "Slack Motherfucker," who do you think wins? What about in terms of originality of sound? Yes, Vampire Weekend sounds relatively unique, but what did Superchunk sound like to everyone in 1989? The Ramones? The Smoking Popes, maybe? I don't know. Descendents maybe? X? Germs? The point is, they made all of those dirty, inaccesible punk bands a dot on every emo kid's radar. Someone who likes the Get Up Kids better not be an idiot and think they are the bread and wine, body and blood of indie rock, no, they would be smarter to go back further, to see who came before them, to see who succeeded where they failed, to see who lasted when they broke up, to see what was possible before the Internet and Pitchfork and the Blogosphere and MP3 Encoding changed the way music was heard forever.

Vampire Weekend - S/T

preface:
JK said: April 18, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I am going to post an anti-VW rant on Flying Houses. I have not listened to them, really. Maybe i will buy their album and review it. they seem like the shins to me.

prologue:
I bought the album that night, amidst a rather bizarre encounter that never necessitated words. Vampire Weekend is the #1 seller at Amoeba Music. It was the night before Record Store Day. Jello Biafra was at the Amoeba Music in San Francisco, but nothing all that interesting appeared to be going on at the L.A. Branch, but maybe I am vastly mistaken and went shopping 12 hours earlier than I should have.

I also bought These New Puritans debut album Beat Pyramid and Superchunk's self-titled debut, which will be reviewed next for reasons of comparison. Superchunk are a legit indie rock band. Vampire Weekend could very well be the next Arcade Fire, though I do not think they are going to catch on in such a big way. These New Puritans are probably better.
Without futher ado...

review:

Okay, you can now officially add my name to the list of people that thinks Vampire Weekend sucks. Or, you can add my name to the list of people that is jealous of them. Or, the list of people that thinks they are insanely lucky. Or, the list of people that thinks they are o.k., and kind of like their single, but aren't exactly blasting it out of their car and relishing every line that can be sung along to. Someone posted a comment in Justyn's blog calling it "the sound of cowardice," and I feel that is in apt description--you wouldn't want to blast this music out of your car for the same reason you shouldn't put an NYU bumper sticker on your car--someone will key it.

There are like three or four songs I like on this album more than the other six or seven, but of those three or four, two of them might mention Cape Cod. Now, I am going to take issue with the Cape Cod theme of this record because I spent three summers on that elbow-like peninsula during the heart of my adolescence. I took sailing lessons there and tried to work on an ambitious piece of writing and played many video games and went to the beach and my parents had a house there and they did nothing there except eat lobster and sit outside in the warm summer air. Now, in an environment that is as close to a hypercultural "void" as can exist (Nantucket being the only greater example of this locale that is, overrun by the fiscal elite, outsnobbing every bourgeois town in the country, and completely devoid of worthwhile contemporary culture), Vampire Weekend has established themselves as the first band of preppies to wear their image on their sleeves.

I grew up with these people and they are probably perfectly nice but they are certainly not punks! Maybe they are punkish in their everday life, but it is highly possible that I may have been in the same sailing school as any of these band members and nobody (except for the one kid who used to sing "Lake of Fire" over and over while we were out on the water) had any anti-establishment aspirations whatsoever! If you are in a band, you must be interested in destruction. "A-Punk" is an interesting title. It goes without saying that it is the best song on the album, but it is calling attention to the word "punk," thereby equating their generic indie pop sound with its earlier and more nihilistic punk roots. But the music supposedly has "African" roots! What, do they want to be like Talking Heads part II or something? While listening to this album, a friend pointed out that they were playing with Paul Simon in Central Park this summer, and then pointed out that the next track was a total "Graceland" ripoff. Now, I don't listen to much Paul Simon, so I don't know about that, but if Paul Simon is even a more obvious referent for this band than Os Mutantes, they really should not be calling any of their songs "A-Punk."

There's a million ways you can diss this band, and I think I've done enough. They're not offensive. They're pleasant music to play in the background as you invite friends over for a drink to catch up on the recent happenings in your lives. But they are not music I want to blast, or sing along with, or learn to play along with (maybe I will try to learn how to play "A-Punk" just so I can "rip it off" and have a radio-ready single for my first album), and maybe I am just crazy but that wasn't the case with any of those other 2002 buzz bands I mentioned in earlier post about TNV.

I continue to love !!! and would prefer to seem live any day over Vampire Weekend. Both will play the Pitchfork Festival, and that is shaping up to be the premiere concert event of the year. I must go, and I will try to see VW and review their set (along with everyone else's) and I'll be able to stand through it without getting too bored, I think, but I'm way more excited to see Dinosaur Jr., Mission of Burma, Jarvis, Atlas Sound, Spoon, Les Savy Fav...I think Vampire Weekend will stick around and all their band members will be able to make a successful career out of it, but I think they're getting off rather easy.

Times New Viking - Rip It Off

What wonders hath the "blogosphere" wrought? CYHSY, TnT, and now TNV, a band I should technically like because they're loud and shambolic and they get compared to Guided by Voices and Beat Happening and are signed to Matador Records. Somehow, I am finding the process of converting myself into a TNV fan to be painful--to my ears, to my head, and to my heart. To wit:

Ears: In much pain after listening to Rip It Off and its subversive production.
Head: Aching after trying to read along with their lyrics, printed in a size 4 font, squeezed on the inside front cardboard flap of the product.
Heart: Breaking as I prepare to diss my first band and reveal myself to be a jerk. TNV does not deserve to be dissed. Any normal person who heard two seconds of Rip it Off would immediately say, "Turn that racket off!" They are defiantly unlistenable music. No one is going to give them a snowball's chance in Hell unless they've heard a lot of good things about them. Indeed, I wanted to get their last album when it came out in 2007, and I saw a video of them playing a song live and it looked like a really exciting concert experience and I thought they might be the first great "undiscovered"-"discovered" (bands written up in blogs all over the place, but still not in the perceptory field of any of my friends) band to save rock and roll after the White Stripes, YYY, !!!, Liars, Strokes meltdown in 2002. This is what I thought before hearing any of their recorded material. TNV do not deserve to be dissed.

But it is my duty as a "mark" to warn others that Pitchfork's glowing patronization of this lo-fi wonder is potentially linked into some kind of weird partnership with Matador, whereby they review records that aren't going to sell well really well, and review records that they know will sell well poorly, to create a weird kind of supply and demand economics driven system towards the criticism, proliferation and capitalization on indie rock (Krist Novoselic's sarcastic comment, "Indie rock is a viable commodity" from the Nirvana! Live Tonight! Sold Out! video doesn't seem like such a joke when Pitchfork has turned into the behemoth it has, Lollapalooza has re-established itself, Coachella has raised its price from $140 for 2 days to $270 for 3 days, new festivals in exotic locations throughout the globe get added every summer, and Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, and Mission of Burma have quietly managed the respect that comes with being a 2 decades plus strong indie rock careerist while only now beginning to gain the respect of the mainstream) taking place since 2001 and getting stronger and more expensive every day.

TNV are always described as "lo-fi." There is nothing crisp or clean about them. If you were to collect all of the most poorly recorded GBV songs there were, the audio quality would match that of Rip It Off. It is the lowest of the lo-fi. It is worth noting that this band is on Matador. If Pavement is on Matador, they end up working with Nigel Godrich. Maybe TNV doesn't get the same size budget to work with, but they are still on Matador. If they wanted to sound better, they could. Is it time yet to take direct issue with the Pitchfork review of this album, which gives it a robust 8.4? The reviewer goes as far to admit that this band will not sell Volkswagens, but they also refer to the "layer of fuzz" that swathes the album in over-trebled obscurity as a "security blanket." Their security being that they will not win many fans, but those that take time to understand TNV will be richly rewarded, because they are one of the last "exuberant" bands left that don't care about appealing to the masses. This makes very little sense to me.

OK, I will admit I put "Mean God" on my running playlist for today after work, and "Drop-Out" is O.K. and "Off the Wall" sounds like an actual song. But the only well-titled song ("Times New Viking vs. Yo La Tengo") is boring. None of the songs really separate themselves from the bunch. I feel like I could make this album. The singer sounds like a tiny bit like Bob Pollard or really any other regular guy screaming on a lo-fi recording. The other singer sounds like she should be on K records or in a Riot Grrl band. Most of the songs sound the same. They are mostly about a minute or two. They have the same dynamics.

I will say that their lyrics appear interesting. They are extremely direct (I think "Relevant: Now" is about how people are supposed to be taking them seriously now) and the lyrics often work well in the context of their songs and their style. However, they are printed very tiny and it hurts to try to follow along with them as you listen, just one more way that TNV are difficult and don't really care about being nice to their fans.

The only way they are generous with their fans is with how prolific they have been in a relatively short time. One can hope that they will actually put out their own Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain or Do the Collapse in another four or five years. However, if they remain stubborn and anti-pleasure, they will not develop anything more than a small cult following. I would like to see them live once so I could comment on their live sound, their energy, what the show was like, but I cannot recommend this record. To do so would be unfair to anyone reading this review, because later they could confront me and say, "Why would you like that?"

I don't like that. I can barely see why Pitchfork does. Maybe they are a decent band, but the album is crazy and for no one. Maybe they saved a lot of money recording that way. They sure are lucky to be on Matador.