Whether Garth Risk Hallberg lived up to the hype is up for debate. I’d suggest there is a certain ‘hype threshold’ past which people will ensure you get a fair share of criticism regardless of what’s between the covers. What is not up for discussion is the beauty of the writing on show, nor is the sheer scope of the world it brings to life. Here we find a network of characters linked by blood or love or sheer chance which grows through schizophrenic POV changes and creative interludes. To give you some idea: There’s Mercer, a man struggling with being gay and black in 1970s New York and his relationship with punk musician/artist William, heir to the Hamilton-Sweeney fortune who’s music with the now-defunct Ex Post Facto “seemed to promise complete freedom, on the condition of complete surrender”. Then there’s William’s estranged sister Regan and her troubled relationship with husband Keith, who are themselves caught up in the Hamilton-Sweeney machine, plus loser-loner Charlie and his friendship with punk cool-kid Sam, and their link to the Post-Humanist Phalanx. That’s not to mention the police detective, the art dealer, the shock jock radio presenter. The investigative journalist, the firework-setter, the transvestite keyboard player. The anarchistic, arsonist cult leader.

So… yeah, it’s all too detailed to review properly, though the key plot is strangely simple. Packed with the sort of suspense/drama you might expect from a film or television show, the book is not as challenging (difficult, ‘literary’) as you might expect. What Hallberg does achieve is to conjure New York at a specific time. The web of characters produce a panoramic snapshot of a generation, palpable nostalgia and a good sprinkling of well-used topics (troubled artists, drug addicts, traumatised and/or damaged lovers) creating a view of the seventies perhaps as we’d like to remember them. The spirit of the book is captured nicely near the beginning, when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Day :

“For a second the city seemed to lean forward and make contact with a future self: ruined, de-peopled, and nearly still. In a sealed hanger, forensic economists move around numbered lots with scales and callipers. Believing themselves to have evolved beyond delusion and loneliness, beyond illness and longing and sex, they hum distractedly and wonder what it all meant”

As books go, City on Fire is pretty easy to soundtrack, so this playlist could have been a hundred songs. But anyway, here are twenty songs which go some way to capturing the time/place/mood Hallberg created. I’ve included a mix of classics and newer stuff to keep things interesting, and the order isn’t important.

Tracklisting:

1. Blank Generation – Richard Hell and the Voidoids
2. Art is Hard – Cursive
3. To Hell With Good Intentions – Japandroids
4. Kimberly – Patti Smith
5. Chinese Rocks – The Heartbreakers
6. Roar of Nothingness – Sun Organ
7. Docking Guard – Northern Primitive
8. Today, More Than Any Other Day – Ought
9. Aloha Steve and Danno – Radio Birdman
10. The Kids – Lou Reed
11. Orphans – Teenage Jesus and the Jerks
12. Stevie Nix – The Hold Steady
13. Who Do You Belong To? – The Spirit of The Beehive
14. You Can’t Hold The Hand of a Rock and Roll Man – Okkervil River
15. Our Lives Would Make a Sad, Boring Movie – The Hotel Year
16. Using – Sorority Noise
17. Fireworks – Radiator Hospital
18. Your Own Place To Ruin – Rivulets
19. New York Hardcore – Talons’
20. This Heart’s on Fire – Wolf Parade

City on Fire is out now via Knopf Doubleday (US) and Jonathan Cape and is available from all good book shops. Quiet, Constant Friends is available digitally and on cassette via the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page.

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Tracklisting:

1. Red Coat – Adeline Hotel (Interview)
   2. S.O.B. – Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
   3. Daughter of the Sea – House of Wolves (Interview)
   4. Monarchy – Table People
   5. Ruin – Doomking
   6. Lonely Boy – Titus Andronicus
   7. New York Hardcore – talons’
   8. Roar of Nothingness – Sun Organ
   9. Slow Dark Water – Furnsss
   10. You Are Arrived (But You’ve Been Cheated) – The Spirit of the Beehive
   11. It Was Gone – Orchid Mantis
   12. Big Sis – SALES
   13. No Comprende – Low
   14. The Washing Machine – SPORTS
   15. Shark? – Shark? (Everything Is Teeth by Evie Wyld and Joe Sumner)
   16. Christmas in Milwaukee – Advance Base
   17. Only Friend – Valley Maker
   18. My Track ’92 – Pet Cemetery
   19. Dusk; Falling Asleep, Know That You Are Loved – Sabbatical Wilderness
   20. Theremin Demonstration – Leon Theremin (Us Conductors by Sean Michaels)
   21. The Lemon’s Cousin – Boy Scouts
   22. Audrey Horne – Teen Love
   23. Mia – Spencer Radcliffe
   24. Return To The Moon – EL VY
   25. Bug – Alex G
   26. Wild Hearts – Kodiak Deathbeds
   27. Waves – Abby Gundersen
   28. UR = UO – No Touching
   29. Sparrow & Stone – Eva Foote
   30. What Can Be Taken – ÒOR

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‘SFK’ opens proceedings with blaring, droning horns before a clatter of drums gives way to a rumbling and rebellious lo-fi racket, the lyrics vague but with a dose of offhand apathy, “they want my body / I’ve suffered major damage to my brain / I’ll never think the same / necromancing in private rooms / I think I botched my future too soon”. The second half forgoes conventional vocals for samples, ending in one about rich kids from private schools and the chemicals they bring into town. Next up is ‘WORLD ACCESS’, a syrup-thick, plodding rock song with yelps and bursts of sheer noise and vocal samples which plead “wait wait wait” and “no no no”. The song possesses the fuck-it ethos of punk rock, before decelerating abruptly with 40 secs left, giving way to acoustic guitars.

The title track is slower still, slinking along in a narcotic haze, lyrics setting a tone of Easton Ellis-style self-destructive nihilism, “way back when since grade school, I’ve been down, kicked around, scratching eyes from prick third graders, sniffing glue in strangers’ cars, passing out on vomit soaked vintage couches”. ‘NATURAL DEVOTION’ has big crunchy LVL UP style guitars and chugs along behind spoken vocals which sound like sound bites from the best teen movies never made.

“Bobby took me down to the shore yesterday. he pointed at the ocean and said “can’t you fucking see?” and I said “sure, what’s in it for me?” Natural devotion. When we held hands for too long if worry people might stare. But bobby passed away last week. I bet he never cared. now I live all alone. I disguise my voice on the phone.”

‘JOAN’ opens with a really weird witchy voice, like some garbled curse. The song itself is almost shoegazey lo-fi dream pop, with male/female vocal harmonies and lyrics strung-out and wondering. The track ends with ambient sounds of kids running around, a sound which somehow seems to marry perfectly with the cover art. Closer ‘WHO DO YOU BELONG TO?’ is all jangling, wailing guitars and punky vocals

“I’m alone in this house like I’m alone with these sentences. Every step I take is one more closer to the void. I’m afraid. I’m annoyed. I’m convulsing with the boys and I’m through. Fear is in the dark, in the cracks in the walls, in my veins via syringes, in my eyes, in my balls. I’m unsure. All those photos showing smiling faces turn. Twist and bend to new proportions. Speed up. Slow down. I can see your face in a dream”

That last line encapsulates something that was on my mind mind after a few listens of this record. Namely, this is what dream pop would sound like if it were based on the actual dreams of disaffected youth and not fluffy floaty Hollywood ones. It’s dense and messy and overwhelming, built up of layers and layers of glimpses and snatches, of voices real and imagined, of thoughts and worries and rebellions, concurrently furiously aggressive and yawningly empty, with lulls of slinky eerie quiet and spasmodic blasts of power-tool noise.

YOU ARE ARRIVED (but you’ve been cheated) is out in September. You can preorder it now in a variety of prettily coloured records via Ice Age Records (cream or light blue vinyl) or Ranch Records (cream or light green vinyl). Alternatively you can download it on a name-you-price basis via the The Spirit of The Beehive Bandcamp page.

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