Ah, 2002. Who could forget the International Year of Ecotourism, Mountains, and the Outback (in Australia)? If that wasn’t enough, the queen celebrated her golden jubilee, the king came back with a bang to win the World Cup, and Hollywood decided it would release (almost) nothing but sequels. Of course, there was also a lot of great music, and here’s a selection of our favourites.

Tracklisting:

1) Broken Social Scene – Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl
2) Say Hi To Your Mom – Kill the Cat
3) The Decemberists – July, July!
4) Spoon – The Way We Get By
5) The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Part 1
6) The Mountain Goats – The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton
7) The Libertines – Time For Heroes
8) Mclusky – To Hell With Good Intentions
9) Pavement – Baptiss Blacktick
10) Sleater-Kinney – One Beat
11) The Mountain Goats – No Children
12) Okkervil River – Westfall
13) Thee More Shallows – Where Are You Now?
14) Julie Doiron – All Their Broken Hearts
15) Múm – Green Grass of Tunnel
16) Iron & Wine – Faded From Winter
17) Carissa’s Wierd – So You Wanna Be A Superhero
18) Wilco – Radio Cure
19) Songs:Ohia – Didn’t It Rain
20) Sigur Ros – Untitled I

What did we miss from 2002? Let us know via the usual channels! Be sure to check out our posts on 2000 and 2001, and come back next month when we’ll be turning our attention to… 2003.

The post Millennium Mix: 2002 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Oh, and there’ll one a month from now on, which will give us plenty of time to have a think of a new idea before we catch up to present day.

The year 2000 was remarkable for lots of reasons. We got to be the first people to see a new millennium in, well, a millennium, Putin took over within the Kremlin, Bush Jnr. all but made it into the Oval Office, films such as Gladiator, O Brother Where Art Thou? and the indomitable Chicken Run thrilled the public, and, most importantly, Roberto Di Matteo won the cup (again). There were also some pretty notable musical releases, and we’ve cherry-picked some of our favourites (admittedly in retrospect) for your listening pleasure below:

Tracklisting:

1) Shellac – Prayer to God
2) The New Pornographers – Letter From an Occupant
3) Pedro the Lion – Simple Economics
4) Johnny Cash – I See A Darkness
5) Bratmobile – It’s Common But We Don’t Talk About It
6) Elliott Smith – Son of Sam
7) Cat Power – Satisfaction
8) Sleater Kinney – You’re No Rock ‘n Roll Fun
9) Lifter Puller – Nice Nice
10) At The Drive In – One Armed Scissor
11) Dillinger Four – Who Didn’t Kill Bambi?
12) Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, Like Antennas to Heaven…
13) Yo La Tengo – Everyday
14) Múm – Asleep On a Train
15) Sigur Ros – Staralfur
16) The Weakerthans – Left & Leaving
17) Damien Jurado – Johnny Go Riding
18) Songs:Ohia – The Ocean’s Nerves
19) Ryan Adams – Come Pick Me Up
20) Smog – Permanent Smile

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Illustrated by Joe Sumner, the book charts Wyld’s life, from hearing Aussie fishermen stories aged six to her grown adult self. From the moment her brother is brought the jaws of a bronze whaler by Father Christmas, Wyld becomes preoccupied with sharks. The captivation is not helped when she discovers a book on shark attacks and falls in love with Rodney Fox‘s “salty eyes” and look which said “the whole thing was just fine”.

Back in London Wyld finds obsession continuing, scouring the Sydenham library for shark books while plagued by a fear which makes baths difficult and forces her to sit with all appendages safely on-board the sofa. An ill-advised viewing of Jaws cements her mindset before the family return to Australia and encounter more sharks in a variety of situations (imaginary and otherwise).

What this simplification of the plot leaves out are the small details of familial life squeezed into both the writing and illustration, the astute observations and interactions from Wyld’s juvenile viewpoint which reveal what the book is really about. Wyld’s father, the pale Englishman, often cuts a lone figure, isolated in London by work and wine and in Australia by layers of clothing and high-factor sun-cream, while her mother floats with Wyld in the pool at night because “she is awake anyway”. When Wyld’s older brother begins “linger[ing] in doorways with a blank look on his face”, and returning home cut and bruised, the home is loaded with tension yet remains cryptic to Wyld, and by extension, us. Be they adolescent anxieties, genuine enduring depressions or just good old fashioned existential ennui, the emotions of the adults remain alien, unknowable and for the most part hidden, present only as dark, lingering shapes and ominous choppy wake.

Indeed, this sharks-as-emotions allegory can be extended further than sadness. From her father’s well-meaning day trip to ‘Vic Hislop’s Killer Shark Show’, to her encounter with an uncomfortably comic doctor, pretty much all of Wyld’s interactions are surrounded by the unseen forces of love and loss. Sumner’s artwork highlights this paradoxically by adding photo-realistic sharks and wounds to his otherwise simple drawings, beasts which often stalk Wyld when, consciously or otherwise, she is considering losing a loved one. Although she doesn’t quite understand it yet, she is thinking about love through its most illuminating prism – the loss of it. She is thinking about death.

While this morbid idea is true and central to the plot, it would be naive and unfair to dwell on it without noticing that, amongst it all, life not only goes on but flourishes. Wyld is never caught by the shark, nor is her brother or mother or father. She might have felt ill examining the colossal White Pointer at Vic Hislop’s museum but the next day she was braver in the sea. Our relationship with sharks is changing, with The Discovery Channel and National Geographic and the seemingly monthly event of ‘Shark Week’ beaming out pro-shark propaganda in which deep-tanned marine biologists preach education and understanding and love. Similarly, the message from Wyld seems not so much ‘LOOK OUT LIFE WANTS TO EAT YOU!’ but rather ‘life could eat you, sure, but such occurrences are exceedingly rare and even then you can poke it in the eye and escape to the hands of kind strangers who prod your guts back into your body’. In other words, learning to accept the atavistic, bone-level violence and pain as something natural, unaware and worthy of careful respect. Its strikes are few and far between, and even then, it’s nothing personal.

Everything Is Teeth is out now on Jonathan Cape/Random House.

As per usual, we’ve made you a playlist of songs that are related to the book. Nothing too subtle this time, I’m afraid, just plenty of teeth and blood sprinkled with Australians and capped off with the definitive garage-rock  anthem for sharks.

Tracklisting:

1. The Race – Oh Pep
2. Teeth – Bowerbirds
3. Drawn to the Blood – Sufjan Stevens
4. Swim – Surfer Blood
5. I Want Blood – Water Liars
6. Ocean’s Nerves – Songs:Ohia
7. Jaws of Life – Wintersleep
8. Find Me In The Ocean – Will Samson
9. Blood Song – Stupid Loser
10. Everywhere I Go Smells Like Fish – Donovan Woods
11. King Fish – Sun Kil Moon
12. Lurk Underneath – Trouble Books
13. Blood – The Middle East
14. Shark? – Shark?

The post Everything Is Teeth – Evie Wyld & Joe Sumner appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Be sure to check out the other volumes which can be found here. Enjoy.

Tracklisting:

1. Thirteen (Big Star cover) – The Point
2. Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper cover) – GRMLN
3. Sofia (Mannequins on 7th Street cover) – Spark Alaska
4. Sunflower (Low cover) – T E Morris
5. Hideaway (Kiesza cover) – Eliza Shaddad
6. It’s the End of the World as We Know It (R.E.M. cover) – Free Cake for Every Creature
7. Peach, Plum, Pear (Joanna Newsom cover) – FemFemFem
8. Fake Empire (The National cover) – Thad Kopec
9. No Lion (Boom Forest cover) – PHOX (Fuel/Friends Chapel Session)
10. Last To Swim (Strand of Oaks cover) – Our Griffins (Root Down in the Shadow Covers Club)
11. Unfucktheworld (Angel Olsen cover) – Nadia Reid
12. You’re Not the Only Monster (R.L. Kelly cover) – DIY Scarves
13. I’m on Fire (Bruce Springsteen cover) – Low
14. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Bob Dylan cover) – My Bubba
15. Tugboat (Galaxie 500 cover) – Finnmark!
16. Frog Went a Courtin’ (Traditional) – Eef Barzelay
17. Lost on the River (Hank Williams cover) – Radiator Hospital (Birdtapes compilation)
18. Just Be Simple (Songs:Ohia cover) – Water Liars (Out of Town Films)
19. Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory (Guided By Voices cover) – Arms
20. Can’t Help Falling in Love (Elvis Presley cover) – Eels (KCRW)

Covers Mix #12 from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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