The Wall Street Journal premièred the lead single, ‘Amerika’, last week, a track which frontman Paul Murphy says was inspired by Walt Whitman. His poem ‘America’ is a hopeful 1888 view of the nation (“Centre of equal daughters, equal sons / All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old”), something Murphy tries to channel in the lyrics, although the Amerika-with-a-K spelling also brings to mind Kafka and his abstruse, crushing systems. The result is something decidedly of the now, a track about being an individual in the arrangement, torn between romanticism and cynicism, hope and dread. About finding shelter and not giving in. Check it out below:

The Great Detachment will be released on the 4th of March. You can pre-order it now via Dine Alone Records.

Photo by Norman Wong

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It’s up for debate whether Alexandra Kleeman’s début novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine is dystopian. I mean, it’s too familiar and life-like to be truly dystopian, although that’s exactly what makes it so terrifying. The world seems to be functioning pretty much as normal, as people go about their days with the aimless sense of duty we are all accustomed to, a far cry from the visions of Orwell or Burgess or Dick. But the definition of dystopia is “a community or society that is undesirable or frightening”, so who’s to say “normal” can’t also be dystopic?

Kleeman’s narrator ‘A’ is blank, mostly faceless with few discernible personality traits. Her job feels temporary and is barely mentioned. Many of her scenes involve her doing very little inside her apartment. Instead she is fleshed out through her exposure to-/interaction with her room-mate (‘B’), boyfriend (‘C’) and the vivid stream of entertainment and advertising (or entertaining advertisement) which seems part of the world’s very fabric. Obvious comparisons are Pynchon and Foster Wallace, plus George Saunders in his being-clever mode (as opposed to his sentimental one), although the focus is very much away from the large-scale political/societal systems in favour of personal, A-centric explorations. All background occurrences (the mystery of disappearing dads, an anti-veal activist who ends up marketing it, even B and C) are filtered through A’s experience.

As the story is told in first person this might seem obvious, but (to me at least) it goes much deeper than that. In most postmodern books the main character is subject to/lost amongst a world of disinformation, whereas in You Too… it’s A herself who feels like the disinformation. The question here isn’t “is the world as the media says it is?” but rather “am I who the media says I am? Who I think I am?” Whether this is an emerging trend in post-postmodern millennial literature, a natural reaction to a world in which identity is unsettled and fluctuating, or just a new, gender-based perspective on things traditionally written about by men is unclear. One thing is for certain, Kleeman is a name to watch among the new generation of writers building upon the work of the aforementioned greats.Here’s a collection of songs that I think are relevant or related to the novel. If you like a particular band, just click the artist name in the tracklisting to be whisked away for more information. Enjoy:

Tracklisting:

1. Too Dark – Frankie Cosmos
2. Sucks Hanging Out With You (It Sucks Even More When You Leave) – Free Cake For Every Creature
3. Slumber Party – Mommy Long Legs
4. What’s Another Lipstick Mark – Adult Mom
5. Unholy Faces – Florist
6. Bedroom – Alanna McArdle
7. TV – Oh, Rose & Sawtooth
8. Death Cult Paradise – Trace Mountains
9. I Saw My Twin – Hop Along
10. Nashville Parthenon – Casiotone For The Painfully Alone
11. Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts – Wolf Parade
12. Oranges – Young Jesus
13. 1994 – PWR BTTM
14. Washing Machine – SPORTS
15. Lookalike / I Lost My Mind – Titus Andronicus

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine is out now on HarperCollins. Quiet, Constant Friends is still available as a download or on cassette via the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. You can read the other Lit Links posts here. If you have a book in mind and fancy a go yourself, just get in touch!

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Mitski/Eskimeaux/Elvis Depressedly/Dude York

“Try as we might to describe why a night of live music can comfort us, relieve us, inspire us, confront us or sometimes even change us entirely, the actual phenomenon is something you have to be present to fully understand” – Erika wrote about the Mitski/Eskimeaux/Elvis Depressedly/Dude York show in Seattle, and drew some pictures too.

Daytime TV

“Lo-fi, psych-tinged, rock music, fusing the DIY indie rock ethos with mid 2000’s British garage rock” – Our thoughts on the self-titled EP from Daytime TV

Ought

Canadian rockers Ought have a new album coming very soon on Constellation Records.

Don DeLillo

“Don DeLillo is a hero of mine. The finest writer of our times… ” – We made a playlist of songs to soundtrack DeLillo’s White Noise, together with some gushing words.

K. Adem

“If further evidence was needed, Beautiful Dreamer confirms Adem’s eclectic songwriting abilities” – Our thoughts on the latest release from K. Adem.

Oh Pep!

“What should perhaps be labelled multi-instrumental indie pop, something akin to Sylan Esso meets Vampire Weekend” – We previewed the upcoming EP from Oh Pep! with some words about first song ‘The Race’

Sorority Noise

“Teenage, I’m-so-misunderstood melancholy is doubly effective, providing a sense of connection to anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in the throes of an adolescent heartbreak, while proving immensely gratifying to everyone else in the way that manufactured grief is always gratifying – a distracting and digestible simulacrum of suffering, a romantic and wistful removed-from-Real-Life pain, like watching an episode of The OC with your name in the main credits. But the thing is, anyone listening closely will soon discover that Sorority Noise are different…” – we explained why Sorority Noise are more than just another emo band

Typhoon

“Let it be known, the stripped back, piano led performance of ‘Prosthetic Love’ is gorgeous” – Typhoon put out a seven-inch featuring some lovely alternate versions of songs from White Lighter

National Museum Cardiff

Finally… We told you about the exciting things coming up in July at the National Museum Cardiff

The post Week in Review: #9 (6th-10th July) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Out on Frenchkiss Records in 2005, this is an album infused with feel-good rock swagger, a trademark of The Hold Steady who are often tagged as a carefree band concerned only with beer and good times. For me (and many others, I’m not speaking of a revelation here), this misses the point entirely. It seems the kind of view held by people who dream of road trips after reading Kerouac. There is a glory in Finn’s work, but it is a glory intrinsically linked to sadness, a Christian glory consisting of everything from sweet nostalgia to cell-splitting, body-selling depression. The characters are going full-throttle because they are afraid of what will happen should they stop, something that brings to mind David Foster Wallace’s ideas on addiction vs. an existential void: “Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties – all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s Dave.”

‘Hornets! Hornets!’ introduces us to Holly, the Bones Brigade-watching, Kate Bush-miming, Nabokov-referencing woman who goes with whoever’s going to get her the highest. It’s never quite clear exactly where she is or what is happening, a vagueness which continues onto the next track and indeed throughout the whole album. ‘Cattle & the Creeping Things’, packed with Biblical references, has always made me think of AA/NA (especially as Holly mentions going through the program), the collection of dysfunctional characters and hijinks similar to those of Infinite Jest’s Ennet House. Whether Finn intended to portray this scene is unclear (Separation Sunday is that sort of album). ‘Little Hoodrat Friend’ goes on to describe how pain and joy are linked, as in addiction, something symbolised perfectly by talk of tattoos (she’s got blue black ink and it’s scratched into her lower back. It said: Damn right he’ll rise again”). ‘Banging Camp’ tells of her descent into the nitrous-fuelled tent community pitched on the banks of the Mississippi and her refusal to slow down despite the risks:

“Holly wore a cross to ward them off.
She said if they think you’re a Christian then they won’t bring in the dogs.
And if they think you’re a catholic then they’ll wanna meet your boss.
Holly wore a cross to ward them off”

‘Charlemagne In Sweatpants’ introduces the pimp Charlemagne, a figure with whom Holly becomes entangled (“and it’s not like she’s enslaved. It’s more like she’s enthralled”) and it seems likely that Holly is accelerating, increasing elevation to avoid the comedown (“first it makes her feel tall then it makes her feel small and it’s all a sweet fleeting feeling”).

But the second half of the album sees a transformation in Holly. During ‘Stevie Nix’ the first rays of light poke through (“I was half dead. Then I got born again. I got lost in all the lights but it was ok in the end”) and ‘Multitude of Casualties’ sees the beginning of redemption (“she was feeling out the 5:30 folk mass… the night that she got born again”). ‘Don’t Let Me Explode’ is Holly’s plea for rescue (with her calling on Saint Barbara, the patron saint of a number of occupations linked to sudden death) and ‘Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night’, while not mentioning any characters by name, comes across as an advert for The Scene that Holly is leaving behind:

“We mix our own mythologies. We push them out through PA systems.
We dictate our doxologies and try to get sleeping kids to sit up and listen.
I’m not saying we could save you.
But we could put you in a place where you could save yourself.
If you don’t get born again at least you’ll get high as hell”

But Holly is out the other side. Holly saves herself. ‘Crucifixion Cruise’ sees her wake in a confession booth, sick and tired but feeling brave enough to change or at least attempt it:

“She said Lord what do you recommend?
To a real sweet girl who’s made some not sweet friends.
Lord what would you prescribe?
To a real soft girl who’s having real hard times”

The final track, a contender for my favourite, ‘How a Resurrection Really Feels’, tells of Holly crashing from the confession booth into Easter Mass. She stands among the pews in her dishevelled state and says “Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?” The track is a culmination of all that Separation Sunday stands for, regret and joy swirl around the church as Hallelujah confesses her adventures and troubles and finally earns her full name.

There is a section of Don DeLillo’s Underworld (an extract later released as the title story in his collection The Angel Esmeralda) that captures this atmosphere perfectly. Two nuns travel to a run-down area of the Bronx where a crew of graffiti artists paint an angel for every child that dies. The two Sisters are disillusioned by the violence and sadness they see but at the end of the story witness the inexplicable appearance of an image upon a billboard in a busy street. An image of a murdered girl, Esmeralda:

“Her presence was a verifying force, a figure from a universal church… Everything felt near at hand, breaking upon her, sadness and loss and glory and an old mother’s bleak pity and a force at some deep level of lament that made her feel inseparable from the shakers and mourners, the awestruck who stood in tidal traffic.”

Holly is away from home for a long period, a victim of her generation, mourned by her loved ones whether she is dead or otherwise (“they wrote her name in Magic Marks, on stop signs and subway cars, they got a mural up on East 13^th that said Hallelujah rest in peace”). In her absence she’s a saint, in her return an angel, her redemption is full of the sadness, pity and glory. But the redemption is not hers alone. It is fundamentally personal yet communal, shared by all. What has come before happened to everyone and no-one, means everything and nothing. To return to DeLillo: “she was nameless for a moment… a disembodied fact in liquid form, pouring into the crowd.” What has happened has happened but, for that moment at least, Holly is not alone.

This post has rambled on too long already and I’ve barely mentioned the array of references scattered across the album from Nelson Algren to Rod Stewart, Mary Tyler Moore to Jackie Onassis. I’ve not mentioned how Finn references old Hold Steady songs and even older Lifter Puller songs. I’ve not revealed that Holly reappears later in The Hold Steady catalogue. What’s worse, I’ve passed over killer lines that make the whole thing so special (“She drove it like she stole it. She stole it fast and with a multitude of casualties”). The truth is you could do a PhD on this thing. Maybe somebody already has.

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