Tracklisting:

1. A Hospital + Crucifix Made of Plastic – Florist
2. Richmond – talons’
3. Say – Indoor Voices
4. Aeroplane – House Plants
5. When I Was an Island – David Karsten Daniels
6. The Gentleman’s Apocalypse – JR Green
7. Hitman – Mrs. Hopewell
8. sun drops – ratbath
9. A Cruise – Brian S. Cassidy
10. Orpheus – Matt Kivel
11. Your Love – Jeremy Squires (INTERVIEW)
12. Blood Moon – C.M. Slenko
13. Bake – Broken Beak
14. Brushes Like a Fox – Saint Corsair
15. daniel – francie cool
16. Baby Blue – Mount Moriah
17. For You – Free Cake For Every Creature
18. Have This Dance – Govier
19. Goodness (trailer) – The Hotelier
20. The River Because – Sawtooth
21. why are you so cool? – Dying Adolescence
22. cockroach – tall friend
23. Waiting – Faint Peter
24. Heart Destroyer – Lazy Legs
25. Take it Forever – Beat Radio (INTERVIEW)
26. Every One of Them, Dogs – Quarterly
27. like a feather or a pawprint – Field Medic
28. Lay For June – Old Earth
29. 2 old 2 broke – Gorgeous Bully
30. Funny Man Routine – Table People
31. House & Home – Arlo Aldo
32. Cave Song – Sea Ghost
33. Everywhere (Fleetwood Mac cover) – Boosegumps (from Sugar Rush)

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According to Wikipedia, Americana is “an amalgam of American folk music formed by the confluence of the shared and varied traditions that make up the musical ethos of the United States”. It might then be fair to expect Post-Americana to be a bit further down river from said confluence, although quite how far is up for debate. ‘Dead Dog Eyes’ opens with an off-kilter sound, folk music amped up with psychedelica and blues to reach something at once celebratory and weird. “They came in through the front door,” he sings. “They came in with dying dog eyes”, ensuring the strange vibe extends to their lyrics. ‘Memorial Day Crossroad Blues’ is slower and folkier still, the arrangements serving up a dose of warm dusty nostalgia through which rises the repeated and rather desperate refrain of “at the crossroads!” ‘The River Because’ is skippy and jovial and odd, like the words of a mountain hermit so long removed from civilisation that they no longer care about how they look in the eyes of others.

“I will reason with your reason
I will eat my slice of cake
but you will find me at my best
when we’re swimming
in the river because
when we’re swimming
in the river because”

Without wishing to exaggerate the oddness, the peculiar-but-cordial analogy holds through much of the record. Should ‘Please Excuse Me (4th Ave Blues)’ be a traditional Americana song, it would most likely have existed as embittered and tortured and sad, a man-tones-down-masculinity-to-reinforce-it kind of deal where the narrator baths in his heroic melodrama. But here, while the thoughts are sincere and undoubtedly wistful, the lyrics circumnavigate macho schmaltz with offbeat deftness (just listen to the opening: “and please excuse me / for never for never for never for never / writing you that letter”). ‘Leave Me Be’ shows a quiet and removed side, while ‘Rendezvous On North Rodger Road’ is their travelling number, a twee pop version of a communal folk song which incites an American dream of a different variety, where simple pleasures are all you need. This is built upon with ‘Life is a Book’, a song which feels like a neat summation of Sawtooth’s ideology:

“You can wear my glasses if you want
But you will never see just as me
You can watch these words flow like slow molasses
and hopefully you’ll catch them as I speak
so untie your shoes sit down and get real high
cause you’ve been dancing in the rain
tryin to feel something other than time
and your singing with the stereo
feelin bigger
bigger than time”

The blues in ‘Florida Blues’ are literal, a moody wordless agitation, the sort of song that goes looking for its enemies in poorly-lit dive bars too late at night, while ‘I Don’t Need No One To Win My Freedom’ sees the return of upbeat, VanGaalenian folk. ‘Empathy/Apathy’ is a slow-burning imploration that you choose feeling and courage over indifference and excuses. “Don’t let your empathy / turn into apathy,” he sings, again resisting the cool cynicism of many Americana heroes. “Don’t let yourself be so sold / well we’ve all been there before.” ‘Kindness Comes’ emerges from this crescendo,  level and sombre, the sober next-day insistence that everything said was true, that these words mean more than a good time.

“Kindness comes so easily
from the ones who challenge existence”

Maybe Post-Americana isn’t further down the Americana stream at all, but rather sailing along a similar-but-strange river in some parallel universe, where folk tropes are easily broken or else don’t even exist. You can buy it now from the Sawtooth Bandcamp page.

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Because we still have a fair amount of tapes left, and obviously want to raise as much as possible for Worldreader, we have decided to run a special holiday offer. So, as suggested below in stylised sans serif, entering the code ‘HOHOHO’ at the checkout on Bandcamp will get you a handsome 40% off both digital and physical copies of the compilation. This will still cover the production cost of the cassette, but remember all profits go to charity, so every extra pound you give will be a pound well spent.To refresh your memory, here’s what you’ll be getting if you put some of your hard earned cash towards Quiet, Constant Friends:

Side A

Danielle Fricke – The Well
Lotte Kestner – Cattleya
Wes Tirey – Akhnilo Blues
Pasture Dog – Everything That Rises Must Converge
Old Earth – Pretty Steep
Salt Altars – Little Big Man
Henry Demos – Not Her
Beat Radio – Mexico City
Sondra Sun-Odeon – Hair

Side B

Nathan Amundson – Haruki Murakami
Windmill – Jim & The Rather Large Nectarine
ARMS – The Book of Love
Oh, Rose & Sawtooth – TV
Free Cake For Every Creature – Don’t Go Away (Ahumpf Acgroof)
John Ross – The Overlook Hotel
Kissing Fractures – I Drank Phosphorus With Aunt Lucy
Nice Legs – Past Lives
Ben Seretan – King of Crumbs
Trouble Books – Oak and Linden Tree Abridged
Lewtrakimou – I’m a Book on Tape
Nadia Reid – Runway

Grab a download or cassette now via our Bandcamp page, and be sure to remember to use the code ‘HOHOHO’ for your discount.

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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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We’ve been big fans of Oh, Rose for quite a while now, feelings which peaked over their latest album SEVEN, an album of quite spectacular ferocity and strangeness. As we wrote in July:

“The vocals have the quality of an exorcism, like the unnatural utterings of a twelve year old as some jaded man of faith flicks holy water at her forehead. Here Rose sounds quite literally possessed, as if channelling something old and malevolent and playful in a mean, spiteful way”

Sounds cool, right? So cool in fact that we asked Oh, Rose to be a part of our project. Accepting the offer, they teamed up with fellow Olympians Sawtooth to make ‘TV’, a song which first appeared on Because Mountains Are There To Climb, an excellent compilation from the ever-reliable Fox Food Records.

How does this tie in with the books theme, I hear you shout! Well, let’s just say it’s down to your own interpretation. I think there’s an interesting discussion ongoing on books vs. TV/internet, and the slow deliberation of reading vs. instant gratification, and even the most square-eyed among you would admit that having something so easy to digest being beamed out of the various screens in your home might have a tiny influence on your reading habits. But anyway, buy the compilation, listen to the song and stare in a catatonic daze at the artwork below.

You can pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now on our Bandcamp page, and all profits go straight to Worldreader! Why not grab a tape, complete with super-limited edition art prints?

The post Quiet, Constant Friends: Oh, Rose & Sawtooth – TV appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers”

So says Charles William Eliot, and I tend to agree with him. And not just because I’ve thrown my lot in with the literary world. Books are where you learn that others share your weirdest thoughts and experiences, and are able to describe them in a way that makes you want to squee with delight or tattoo the words into your skin. What’s more, they let you experience life as someone else, allowing you to get a grip on the unseen forces which batter some while you relax in ignorant shelter. I can confidently say I would be a different person had I not become acquainted with John Singer and Don Gately and Ignatius J. Reilly, with JR from New York and Ruthie from Fingerbone and Oscar Wao from the Dominican Republic, now of Paterson, New Jersey. That’s without mentioning Esther Greenwood or Hazel Motes or the Glass family, nor Mr Small or Spot the Dog or any of the menagerie of Redwall mammals, ie. any of the hundreds of fictional folk who helped build the world as I now see it.

If, then, you cannot read, you automatically miss out on an army* of literary friends to entertain you and hold your hand and generally remind you that you are not alone. You may or may not know that UNESCO estimate there are 757 million adults, including 115 million youths (15-24), who cannot read or write the simplest of sentences. They even have a cool interactive map to give you a better idea of where the problem is biggest.

Worldreader is non-profit organisation dedicated to creating a literate world through digital education. Their Worldreader Mobile app (available on even the simplest feature phones) brings digital books to families around the planet, allowing communities without access to any print books to connect to a library of over 28,500 titles in over 40 languages. And this sort of programme extends far further than helping people gain basic skills. Take the current Ebola outbreak as an example. With such a deadly disease it can be difficult to provide adequate information to those in danger, particularly when moving around increases the risk of transmission and worsens the situation. Worldreader are utilising their mobile reading app to disseminate information to help save lives, from vital health advice to inspiring stories from survivors, while minimising the need for movement on the ground, and thus transmission.

Of course, all this ignores the whole special, reading-as-a-magic-activity side of things that Charles William Eliot was getting at. Books are fun and comforting and inspiring and door-unlocking in so many ways, and I believe quite firmly that increasing the number of young people reading is one of the best ways to deal with current issues and prepare ourselves for future ones. Worldreader actively curates books by African and Indian authors, so rather than just beaming the same dusty classics all over the world, they’ve developed a library representative of the diversity of interests, tastes and subjects seen around the globe. Better still, the mobile aspect will help transform education into an unstoppable force. No longer will your gender or religion or race prevent access to education, nor any disabilities, nor your social standing. With a small amount of help from charities like Worldreader, we can overcome privilege and prejudice by placing education in the hands of the people. We can be each other’s quiet, constant friends.

It’s all pretty inspiring. So much so that I decided to try to help with my own version of community and worldwide collaboration. Quiet, Constant Friends, a compilation of literary-themed songs by some of my favourite artists, will be sold in support of Worldreader, with every penny of the profits going straight into their good work. Some of the songs were recorded especially for this release, some are from upcoming albums and others are old favourites which fit nicely with the theme. You can listen to one new track, ‘I’m a Book on Tape’ by Lewtrakimou, right now:

I’ll be unveiling more songs between now and release, so keep your eyes peeled for that, and check out the artwork and full tracklisting below:

1. The Well – Danielle Fricke
2. Cattleya – Lotte Kestner
3. Akhnilo Blues – Wes Tirey
4. Everything That Rises Must Converge – Pasture Dog
5. Pretty Steep – Old Earth
6. Little Big Man – Salt Altars
7. Not Her – Henry Demos
8. Mexico City – Beat Radio
9. Hair – Sondra Sun-Odeon
10. Haruki Murakami – Nathan Amundson (of Rivulets)
11. Jim and the Rather Large Nectarine – Windmill
12. The Book of Love – ARMS
13. TV – Oh, Rose & Sawtooth
14. Don’t Go Away Ahumpf Acgroomf – Free Cake For Every Creature
15. The Overlook Hotel – John Ross
16. I Drank Phosphorus with my Aunt Lucy – Kissing Fractures
17. Past Lives – Nice Legs
18. King of Crumbs – Ben Seretan
19. Oak and Linden Tree Abridged – Trouble Books
20. I’m a Book on Tape – Lewtrakimou
21. Runway – Nadia Reid

As if collaborating with 20-odd acts wasn’t exciting enough, we’ve also enlisted the talents of a range of artists and illustrators to design special-edition postcards for each song. Again, I’ll be unveiling these as time goes on, but check out the piece for Lewtrakimou’s song by Ji Hyun Yu below:Huge, huge, huge thanks go out to everyone involved. It has been so great to see how nice and enthusiastic people can be about a simple idea, and how it can evolve into something much better than I ever expected. I owe you all.

Quiet Constant Friends is out now. You can buy it from our Bandcamp page, including a limited edition cassette, complete with some super-limited edition art postcard prints (you can browse the complete set of artworks here).We decided against having this as a free download in an attempt to raise as much for Worldreader as we possibly can. Obviously, if you choose to pay more than the suggested amount you are donating more to Worldreader, so feel free to do that. That said, we know times are tough, so if anyone wants a download, just drop us a message/tweet/email and we’ll sort you out, no questions asked.

* I’m taking suggestions for the best collective noun for friends who only exist in books.

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