Every now and then, I enjoy the reading of books and the listening to records. Of course by "every now and then," I mean "fucking constantly." I've taken it upon myself to occasionally review said books and records as a means of clearing my brain. Let's get it going.
Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life- Steve Almond
As you can imagine, this book is about music. It is a tome dedicated to the way music acts as a catharsis in your life and in the case of folks like me, how it completely controls the way you act, think, exist. While the title of the book is cross-shaped, there is no Jesus or religion talk, aside from Almond mentioning his roots in "European Jewry." He describes what he calls the "Drooling Fanatic," the music fan for whom just knowing the songs and liking a band is not enough. The Drooling Fanatic needs to know EVERYTHING about the band or artist he or she is currently obsessing. Fanatics need to know the backstory of the song, how the band formed, why they write the songs they do. They delve into the lyrics to find some sort of deeper meaning in the songs, trying to make the words fit into their lives. Fanatics usually have no musical inclination when it comes to playing or writing music.
Almond spins yarns about discovering unknown acts, like Nil Lara in Miami, fawning over them without relent, hoping they'll making it big, and pining over why it never happened. Trying to forge a relationship over song with an un-ironically devout Air Supply fan, replete with an exegesis of their smash hit "All Out of Love," one of the books funniest moments. You can imagine how this went. The highlight of highlights is Almond attempting to get things going with a lady by playing Nick Cave's Murder Ballads album ending in spectacular failure. I feel his pain, as I once tried to set the mood by playing Local H's "Keep Your Girlfriend," which contains the gem "Keep your girlfriend away from me/ I've got no sense of camaraderie/ I've got a couple hits of ecstasy/ So keep your girlfriend away from me." The only thing I "got" that evening was to listen to the rest of the album alone. I feel your pain, Steve.
The life of the Drooling Fanatic is not for everyone, and neither is this book. If you're a casual fan, you may enjoy this book for its humour, written in a Klosterman-esque manner. If you take your music far too seriously, too anally, and music takes up no fewer than 88% of your conversation, then you are in luck. This is the book for you. I certainly was for me.
Rating: ****1/2
The Strokes- Angles
Ah, The Strokes. Possibly the 21st century's most important band. They brought back the no-frills, beer-and-cigarette clouded rock reminiscent of The Stooges and MC5. For their new record, the first since 2006's slightly disappointing First Impressions of Earth, The Strokes seem focused and actually share songwriting duties, taking some of the burden off of Julian Casablancas, which explains some of the disjointedness of several tracks. They also sincerely ape the 1980s Pop Rock scene quite ably. "Two Kinds of Happiness," the album's best track, could easily have been sung by Ric Ocasek or Peter Wolf in 1984. The lead single, "Undercover of Darkness" is classic Strokes on display. Nick Valensi & Albert Hammond, Jr's seemingly out of tune guitars carry the tune and Casablancas finds his upper register and uses it masterfully. For a record that was ostensibly so difficult to make, the results are their best record possibly since Is This It? Valensi recently stated that they'll begin work on their next album in mid-April, so we won't be waiting another five years for a follow-up.
Rating: ****
This post was typed under the influence of Alex Chilton.
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