Fort Frances' new EP, No One Needs To Know Our Name, is only 7 songs (well, 5 songs: 2 of them are unplugged variations): only 24 minutes, but well worth playing on repeat. Lead singer-songwriter David McMillin graduated from DePauw University as an English major, as did most people worth hanging out with. "Anonymous" seems especially fitting for NYC, but it's probably fitting no matter where you are. So much of living in a packed, packed city is trying to get away: escaping within the chaos. "Oh, let's be anonymous: we can hide, hide, hide, hide away from the world, from the world..." No one in NYC wants to give up on NYC (necessarily) but we sure as hell all want to get away from it: we want to find the cafe and the bar and the park that's only ours. "These Are the Mountains Moving" isn't for NYC: it just takes you to the mountains--to Montana or Colorado or wherever you've met mountains that move you--home. The percussion in these songs is great. The piano and the brass and the lyrics are great. This is great.
Read
I feel like my mother wrote this, which is why I bought it. My mother is not a prize-winning author, and Lydia Davis is, but otherwise, the stories in, Can't and Won't, seem like things my mother would say or write or tell me on the phone. These are ordinary moments: experiences that we all have and let flutter out the window. Many of these stories are on a single page: some of them in a single sentence. Some of them are interesting facts, and revisions, and overheard conversations. They are prose poems and realizations and explanations. They are dreams and letters and translations. There's a lot of truth here, and a lot of funny.
Listen
If you live in Brooklyn, you've likely seen Bryce Dessner around; or else, you've seen his twin brother Aaron. They're both in The National, and, Bryce especially, is very present. The brothers put on an incredible tribute to music each year at BAM: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (that's a Whitman reference, kids). But Bryce has been doing a lot without his brother lately, too. In fact, he's designed a new instrument. Pitchfork calls it a "hammer dulcimer and electric guitar hybrid." The new album is called Music for Wood and Strings, and even though the instrument only plays two chords, the rhythms and different sets of strings allow for an impressively varied combination of sounds. This "album" (it's tough to call these songs: it's all continuous) seems like something to be highly productive with. It's delicate and profound. It's simple but with a genius amount of precision going on. You can listen to it here.
Watch
NBC bills American Odyssey as a thriller, but that makes it sound less sophisticated than what it is. This is entertainment, just a step away from reality: a scary thing, which is what keeps us anxious for where it goes next. It becomes clear that a US company is funding Islamic terrorists; it becomes clear that the public doesn't have any concept of what they don't know. Sergeant Odelle Ballard (Anna Friel) is the only surviver of an attack in North Africa: her biggest challenge (besides staying alive) it to try to convince people back home that she is alive. There are several threads to this story: plenty of questions to ask, plenty of characters to like, and then despise. Also, parts of it were filmed a few blocks from my apartment in Harlem: true rough meets TV rough. Watch this show.
Listen
I was fortunate enough to see B.B. King live, on his 80th birthday tour: front row seats at the Indiana University auditorium. It was amazing. He had more energy at 80 than I have now, and sharp as hell. He died yesterday, in Las Vegas, which seems fitting. He belonged in a bright-light city. He was 89 years old. Listen to any of his more than 3 dozen studio albums today. Listen to his live albums. Listen to his collaborations with Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Mark Knopfler, Van Morrison. Even if you're not into the blues or the harmonica, appreciate the fact that King's sad songs were also made for getting your boogie on. One of the best songs to watch/listen to King play when he was a spry 80 was "Nobody Loves Me But My Mother." That man could get down.
Watch
The Sessions portrays the incredible life of poet and journalist Mark O'Brien, who was struck with polio as a child. As an adult, he is limited to about 3 hours a day outside of his iron lung. He is hilarious and smart and creative. The actors here are amazing. John Hawkes (from Me and You and Everyone We Know) fully becomes Mark O'Brien. William H. Macy is remarkably cool for a priest. Helen Hunt makes us realize how largely uncomfortable we all are in our bodies, until we accept them. This is a film about disability; but more than that, it's a film about ability. It's about sex, but also about love.
Read
The thing about poets (and writers) is that, usually you read their stuff and love it, and then you meet them, and it's like, "Ugh: I liked you better when I only knew your writing." That's not true for Sharon Olds. Sharon Olds is so kick-ass. And, I imagine, that was also true for Galway Kinnell. I had the honor of meeting Sharon Olds at a university where I was teaching several years ago. I facilitated a Q&A after she read, in front of a lot of people. I was nervous. I had read and taught Sharon Olds for years, and loved her. But then, when I was on stage with her in front of so many, it was as if we were alone. I actually said to her (still in front of the people), "Oh man: we're the same person, just different ages." She's written a poem for the New Yorker: an ode to her friend Galway Kinnell, who died last fall in Sheffield, VT. This is a beautiful poem. It is a perfect circle, which may be the last perfect thing left.
Watch/Listen
Watch this herd of cattle react to Moon Hooch playing "Cattle Dance Party." They're so scared! And then curious. And then confused. And so on. Moon Hooch is pretty remarkable. An undergraduate student of mine told me about this band a few years ago, when they were largely unknown. Back then, you could find a few homemade videos of them, and they'd announce late-night street parties or subway jams a few hours before they happened. I always wanted to go. Soon, they started getting actual gigs, despite having a reputation of busking. Now they're doing world tours and TED talks. But at the end of the day, they still seem really content just messing around with music and cooking good meals (their website features some pretty amazing vegan recipes, complete with videos and backstory for each meal).
Listen
Mumford & Sons' new album "Wilder Mind" is really solid. If you think these guys only have one song, this album might change your mind. They're like the author we all want to be: instantly recognizable, but always doing something slightly new. (Actually, the author I want to be just plays the drums really well, so they're that, too). I feel like this band is sentimental for a lot of people. They make me think of Indiana. They make me think of one of my best friends who loved this band and left us way too early--that guy lived his life with the windows all the way down. "The Wolf" is great. "Monster" is great. "Hot Gates" is great. There are new beats here: I wish these guys were still playing small venues.
Read
Speaking of Pulitzer Prizes...Gregory Pardlo read at Book Culture last night, with several other authors from Four Way Books. Pardlo is instantly likable and honest. He read from his prize winning collection, Digest. Of his poem, "For Which It Stands," he told the audience that when he and his wife decided to have a baby, they had to admit to themselves that they didn't know their own roots very well: that they needed to take some trips to where they had come from, so that they could adequately teach it. Pardlo is funny, too: he doesn't take himself too seriously; or, he encourages us all to just be a little more real with ourselves. These poems are full of growing up: what it means to learn a few things the hard way. They're full of pop-culture and familiar places: superheroes, and literary heroes, and ordinary men.
Watch
Netflix just posted the third season of A&E's Longmire. I lived in Montana for 2 summers, and it's homesick-inducing to see the gorgeous, empty land. I read that this is largely filmed in New Mexico, even though it mostly takes place in Wyoming, near the Cheyenne reservation. Marcus Redthunder advises the creation and depiction of Natives and the reservation. The show is hugely entertaining on its own, but it's also fairly remarkable in its education of Native traditions and its use of Native actors. Australian actor, Robert Taylor, is also surprisingly believable as a Wyoming cowboy-sheriff. Some of the other actors take some warming up to really like, but this show is doing a lot to depict a wild, largely forgotten land.
Listen
There isn't much out there on The Japanese House. We know that this is a young woman: a London-based artist. This music is a combination of sounds that are both natural (like, sounds of waves--the ocean--and sounds of dogs barking) and unnatural: electronic. But it's all beautiful. The mix works. It almost makes sense that we don't get to know much about this band, because it's sometimes hard to figure out exactly what we're hearing. What's making those sounds? The EP Pools is up on Spotify, and elsewhere. Soon we'll probably know a lot more about this band, so enjoy the secrecy while you can.
Read
I've been pushing #teamcoyote and the coyote take over of Manhattan lately: those little guys clearly know how to party. This article from The L Magazine, sort of says it all. But I still have a few questions. Like, why haven't the coyotes gotten to Brooklyn yet? Do they prefer bridges to tunnels? Are they friends with French bulldogs, or enemies? How do they feel about the cops giving tickets to cyclists in Central Park? @LonelyCoyoteNYC has some of the answers on Twitter, but someone really needs to get the "What I've Learned," from an actual coyote. I assume Esquire Magazine is on that?
Watch
All the Light in the Sky is quiet: subtle. I'm tempted to say that this is a film for women, but that seems outrageously unfair. It's definitely not a chick flick. It just, captures women well. It captures aging well. It captures the reality that we're all doing the best we can, and we all kind of want to be better, but even more, we all just want to be comfortable. We want to be attractive and strong and interesting. But we also want a really normal place to just be. We want someone to like us, even love us, when we're groomed, and when we're not. Jane Adams is perfect in this. It takes place in Malibu, which makes everything seem calm and beautiful. It makes all the light worth noticing.
Listen
Honestly, when I wrote about Alabama Shakes' album Sound and Color, it made me think of City and Colour, but they don't have a new album out. I saw City and Colour with The Low Anthem a few years ago in Indianapolis. It seems a lifetime ago. But probably, they'll see this blog and release a new album so that we can celebrate that. Dallas Green (a city, and a color, get it?) has a gentle voice. Damien Rice, Alexi Murdoch, Samuel Beam, but with a little extra. A little more beat. A little more ache. Listen to "The Grand Optimist;" if that line after the beat drops, "I guess I take after my mother," doesn't haunt you, well: lucky you. Little Hell is a great album. This band has done more than you might know: I'm looking forward to hearing new work.
Read
Anthony Doerr is getting a lot of press lately: a Pulitzer Prize will do that. All the Light We Cannot See is worth the hype. It's one of those books you can't put down, and then, when you're nearing the end, you dread to finish. You get attached to the characters: you think about them throughout your day. All of the sudden, the things you learned about in history class, are entirely imaginable. This is a story about human beings. Marie Laure and her father (Papa) live in Paris. Marie goes blind, and Papa creates intricate models so that she can learn and master where she is. Her story converges with that of a German boy, Werner, who loves radios, and anything that he can take apart, and fix. Doerr is poetic in his ability to weave snails and keys and music into these dark scenes. Read this, but take your time.
Listen
I know that as a "hip-ish" person who has lived in "Brooklyn" I should know better than to listen to "mainstream" bands that Spotify "tells" me to. But still. I like the new Alabama Shakes album. It feels like they're finally not trying so hard to please, and instead just playing. It's slower, for one, and raw: it's not over produced. It's genuine. Eerie and haunting are becoming cliches in the description-of-music/poetry/literature, but this is both of those. It feels like a slow New York City evening in an ageless era. It feels like an outdoor concert. And I'm sure that concert will actually happen, and I'll have predicted the future. I also predict that there will be fireflies there, and cold beer, and a breeze. You're welcome. See you in September, or something.
Watch
Beginners , written and directed by Mike Mills, starring Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, and Melanie Laurent. I haven't actually watched and enjoyed a film a several weeks. I've been watching a few different shows on Netflix (Daredevil, Halt and Catch Fire, Death in Paradise, The Code), so I feel like I've almost lost my patience for anything I know won't be a finished episode in 52 minutes. But this film had me floored. McGregor is fully Oliver Fields. One of the key players is Arthur, a Jack Terrier, who speaks to Oliver (we get subtitles). This isn't so much a coming-out-at-old-age story, as much as a there's-no-time-for-self-pity story. The editing and directing are amazing here. I might re-watch this film weekly. This rocks your perception of relationships, and what it means to be present.