I know it’s early, but I’m gonna go ahead and declare The Gloaming’s self-titled debut as one of my top 10 albums of 2014. It’s a hauntingly beautiful—and soulful—collection of tunes that manages to somehow strike the perfect balance between traditional Celtic influences and contemporary songcraft. Listen to “The Necklace of Wrens” to see what I’m talking about. My copy of the CD came from the UK; looks like the album will be released in the United States February 25.
In a fight over prose versus poetry this week, poetry won when a 67-year-old man who had the temerity to call prose “the only real literature” was stabbed to death by a former teacher who prefers verse. According to the newspaper account, “both of the men were purportedly drunk at the time.”
Awesome footage. Be sure to give it a little time to load so you can watch it in full-screen HD glory.
“In 2011, the University of California at Los Angeles wrecked its English major,” begins Heather Mac Donald’s devastating takedown of modern American higher education that appeared in the January 3 Wall Street Journal. (I’d link to it, but it’s behind a paywall.) “Until 2011,” she explains,
“…students majoring in English at UCLA had to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton —the cornerstones of English literature. Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the ‘Empire,’ UCLA junked these individual author requirements. It replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a total of three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing.”
Her best line comes a couple of paragraphs later: “Sitting atop an entire civilization of aesthetic wonders, the contemporary academic wants only to study oppression, preferably his or her own, defined reductively according to gonads and melanin.”
Robert McHenry, a former editor of Encyclopædia Britannica, has his own thoughts—and a theory—about the kerfuffle here.
“…there is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on”
E. B. White, from One Man’s Meat (1938)
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we’ve been a little busy. “Hella busy,” as my daughter would say.
Doing what? Moving. The shot above, taken last Sunday evening from our garage, gives you a sense of where we are. At left is the Spokane Armory; Thomas Hammer Coffee Roasters is at right. The official address is 121 W Pacific Avenue. We’re in Suite 100.
It’ll be a while before we’re completely settled—but don’t let that stop you from swinging by and saying “Hi.”
Been a while, hasn’t it?
We’ve been a little busy—more on that soon. In the meantime, I didn’t want y’all to think we’d forgotten about you. So here’s a mishmash of things to tide you over, beginning with this van I saw in my dentist’s parking lot a week ago:
Then there’s this, from the Aristocrats‘ 2013 album Culture Clash. It’s called “Desert Tornado,” and it’s awesome.
Still wondering about the mutilated cows that recently washed ashore in Sweden? Mystery solved.
Finally, I think I’ll close with the story of an atomic wedgie gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Last week, I posted my list of music picks for 2013. But then, over the weekend, I bought an early Christmas present for the missus: The Ash & Clay by the Milk Carton Kids. Here’s the title track. Can you see why I need to rethink my list now?
So let’s just call it “Aaron’s Top 10™—Now with 10 Percent More Music!”
Check out the Kids here, where you can download their first couple of albums FREE. If that doesn’t convince you to spring for The Ash & Clay, then, well…you’re probably a Lady Gaga fan.
Apropos of absolutely nothing, my son informs me that there’s a striking resemblance between our erstwhile intern Tony Kuchar…
…and German drummer Benny Greb:
Think about it for a second. Designer and musician are both creative professions; “Tony” and “Benny” are two-syllable names ending in “nee.” And I’m willing to bet that these guys have never been seen in the same place at the same time.
I’m not a fan of the animated words. Seen enough of that in the past couple of years to last me a lifetime. But what Fry says in this video is certainly thought-provoking. As a confessed member (in good standing, I might add) of the Grammar Police myself, I’m a bit chastened. However—and this is something Fry and his ilk never seem to address—before you go around breaking rules, oughtn’t you first know those rules?
Fry’s elitism (“semi-educated”) grates, and his defense of “actioning” is simply deplorable. But it’s well worth a listen anyway.
Like I mentioned last week, this is the time of year when you can’t throw a stick without hitting a best-of list. We’re going to join the fray with a selection of ten albums I liked from 2013. To avoid making any judgment calls, I put them in alphabetical order rather than rank them.
Blackfield, Blackfield IV
Carla Bley/Andy Sheppard/Steve Swallow, Trios
David Bowie, The Next Day
Bob Dylan, Another Self Portrait: 1969–71 (The Bootleg Series Vol. 10)
Henry Fool, Men Singing
Dave Holland, Prism
Charles Lloyd/Jason Moran, Hagar’s Song
Pat Metheny, Tap: John Zorn’s Book of Angels, Vol. 2
Various Artists, ECM—Selected Signs III–VIII
Steven Wilson, The Raven That Refused to Sing
Regular readers will wonder why no classical albums appear on this list. I have to admit I was surprised myself. But the ECM multi-volume set includes works by Shostakovich, Reich, Pärt, Kurtág, Mansurian, Bach, Haydn, Kancheli, Silvestrov, et al., so I think we’re good on that score.
My favorite of the bunch? Hard to say. It depends on my mood, really. Steven Wilson’s Raven probably got played the most, but Dylan’s is the album I’ll still be listening to in twenty years.
This brief remembrance of Alvin Eisenman, who started America’s first university graphic design department at Yale in 1951, is worth a read—particularly for type geeks and fans of “clarity and chaste simplicity.” As a long-time subscriber of The New Criterion, I’m not at all surprised that its appearance is the result of careful, intentional, lasting design. Professor Eisenman died in September at ninety-two.
Two of my favorite things—jazz and album cover art—come together in episode 9 of A Noise from the Deep, the Greenleaf Music podcast. Trumpeter Dave Douglas and bassist Michael Bates talk with New York-based designer Steve Byram about his process and oeuvre, which, strangely enough, includes the covers for the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill and Slayer’s Reign in Blood. Check it out.
I’ve taken several versions of the Myers-Briggs personality assessment over the years, and have always come up with the same result: INTP. According to this, that makes me Yoda. And according to this, I’ve somehow stumbled into an appropriate career. Good thing.
Here’s a quick and painless test you can take to determine your type. And don’t laugh—the results can be pretty revealing.
“There is no technology, no time-saving device that can alter the rhythms of creative labor. When the worth of labor is expressed in terms of exchange value, therefore, creativity is automatically devalued every time there is an advance in the technology of work.”
Lewis Hyde, from The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World