Luckily for us, Lauren Rearick from The Grey Estates seems out to disprove the Bad Winners/Good Losers notion. After fighting through the formidable gauntlet of macho vanity and arrogance that makes up the music industry (see also: college, school, life), she has made her blog into one of the best, most consistent sites covering independent music right now. Mirroring her own attitude, she covers music made out of necessity, bands fighting a multitude of prejudistic blindspots because to not-fight is not an option. It might not be overtly militaristic or political, but the very act of persevering in the effort to create/promote such music is a strong statement. This sort of quiet commitment might be often overlooked but the importance of recognising and celebrating it cannot be underestimated. As if to mark her achievement and symbolise what it stands for, Rearick has teamed up with Negative Fun Records to put out Sugar Rush, a compilation of covers featuring female and gender-neutral musicians. The aim of the album is simple – to try to address the balance (or lack thereof) represented in contemporary music. As she explains:

“A glance at festival lineups, year-end lists and favorite bands are often missing a huge ingredient – female and gender-neutral acts. Sugar Rush was spurred by the idea of giving these individuals a voice, and introducing listeners to their sounds in a most unique way – with cover songs.”

Sugar Rush features contributions from some WTD favs, including Boosegumps, PONY and Kississippi, as well as a whole host of bands and artists that we’re unfamiliar with, just waiting to be explored. Claire Morales and Jena Pyle kick things off with a saccharine rendition of Pasty Cline’s ‘Strange’, the heartbreak flowing thick as molasses, while Kississippi’s cover of Sixpence None the Richer’s ‘Kiss Me’ is minimal and spacious, dreamy as a lovestruck gaze. Boosegumps reinvents Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Everywhere’ as a pretty and understatedly resplendent bedroom pop song and Seattle-based dream pop band Sundae Crush provide a quietly sweet take on ‘Unpretty’ by TLC.

The B side sees a change of mood, as Rearick puts it:

“We thought of the A-side as the sugar-y side, the sweet candy you enjoy before the B-side, when all that sugar begins rushing through your veins, leaving you ready to dance, party and load up on more sugary goodness.”

PONY begin the transition into upbeat danciness, updating Blink 182’s ‘Feelin This’ into a sharp and dynamic shoegazey pop song, before Susan take on The Violent Femmes’ ‘I Held Her In My Arms’, stumbling across a verse which could be used to sum up the compilation as a whole: “I will not kill /  the one thing I love / In this world of wreckage, I look above / Help me, Lord, help me understand / What it means to be a boy and what it means to be a man”. Next, Pearl Earl offer a brash take on Devo, Mommy Long Legs bring their familiar energy to The Cramps and Alright race through a Bouncing Souls number. The penultimate track sees Philadelphia’s The Pretty Greens cover Lucille Mathis’ ‘(I’m Not Your) Regular Woman’, before Daddy Issues finish on a cool, dreamy version of ‘Riot Grrrl’ by Keel Her.

It’s likely there was no small amount of anxiety, doubt and stress involved in the making of Sugar Rush and The Grey Estates as a whole, so it’s no exaggeration to consider the whole time-draining, energy-sapping endeavour a noble quest indeed. While nobody is naive enough to think that one compilation and a dozen artists will ever be enough to win the big fight, it’s just possible that an accumulation of such small victories could eventually build into the coup de grâce for this discriminatory industry. So, if you are in a position to strike a blow of any size but need some reassurance and motivation, take a look at Rearick and then rush head-on into an attack of your own. Because make no mistake, a fight this certainly is.

Sugar Rush is out today (the 29th February) and you can buy it now via Negative Fun Records’ Bandcamp. If you need further convincing, the good people over at The Le Sigh are streaming it in full.

The post The Grey Estates & Negative Fun Records present… Sugar Rush appeared first on Various Small Flames.

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!

The post Alexandra Kleeman – You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine appeared first on Various Small Flames.