January Music

A new Fosco Lives! feature: Music Mondays.

You may recall that, in preparing his half-baked end-of-the-year recommendations, Fosco discovered that most of the songs he really liked in 2008 were actually released in 2007. Well, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, because Fosco has spent these first few weeks of 2009 grooving to some great music from 2008.

At one point recently, Fosco complained that he sometimes feels adrift in the world of contemporary music, with no reliable guide to what new music he might enjoy. Basically, Fosco was bemoaning the demise of radio as a source of music that appeals to him. But then, something miraculous happened: Fosco's friends came through for him! Ted Gideonse announced his Golden Teddy Awards for Music which introduced Fosco to TV on the Radio and Fleet Foxes. And then the always reliable Todd chimed in to recommend The Gaslight Anthem and Cut Copy.

But then things got even better, thanks to... The New Yorker?

I guess Fosco shouldn't be too surprised. I mean, after all, he does owe much of his initial interest in Radiohead to an Alex Ross piece from 1997 (right after the release of their masterpiece, OK Computer.) And he learned about the importance of Wilco from an excellent review of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

But ever since the arrival of full-time pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones (who is not, as Fosco believed for over a year, a woman), music criticism in the The New Yorker hasn't been that helpful to Fosco (except for one great piece that introduced Fosco to Slint). The problem is probably the extraordinary catholicity of Frere-Jones's taste: he is interested in everything in pop music. Fosco not so much. Fosco may be sheltered or narrow-minded, but he just can't that excited over a review of Little Lil Wayne's newest mix tape.

And then, just days into 2009, things got better. The New Yorker ran Kelefa Sanneh's profile of Will Oldham, who (as of late) records and performs under the name of Bonnie "Prince" Billy. The profile is glowing and it made Fosco curious about this obscure musician who is quietly extending the authentic tradition of American country music. Also, any musician who uses quotation marks in their name is totally cool in Fosco's book.

Well, it turns out that his music is really amazing. Powerful lyrics and simple melodies. The only problem with Will Oldham's oeuvre is that it is huge and much of it is recorded on odd labels and under many different names. However, if you start with the easy-to-find iTunes stuff (I'm still there), you'll be just fine. This is a song called "Easy Does It" from the most recent Bonnie "Prince" Billy album, Lie Down in the Light. I have no idea what the video accompaniment is.



Try to get a hold of his songs "New Partner" or "I See A Darkness."
Be forewarned: BPB can get much darker than the rollicking tune you just heard.

The next week, in the following New Yorker issue, Sasha Frere-Jones wrote a review of his favorite album of 2008: Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago. Apparently, the entire album was recorded by one man alone in a cabin in the woods near Eau Claire, Wisconsin (much multi-tracking is involved, which is one of the things that make the songs so great). The lyrics are mostly (Frere-Jones's phrase) "word salad." And the whole thing is absolutely gorgeous. Fosco has listened to it almost nonstop since last week. This is Fosco's absolute favorite song from the album, "The Wolves (Act I and II)". The auto-tune in the second half of the song is absolutely exquisite. Seriously.



Frere-Jones spends a paragraph of his review talking about the beauty of the sentence fragment "what might have been lost" from this song. The "might" is what makes it so powerful. As he notes:

Those words are what get me—joined with melody, they seem like a summary of the entire album, especially with that highly conditional “might.” Trying to keep track of everything lost? Or celebrating what wasn’t? When the band was done, and the crowd had filed out, I was still in my seat.

There is a new Bon Iver EP making the rounds on the intraweb and Fosco can recommend it. Other highlights of For Emma include "Flume" and especially "Re: Stacks" (Fosco's second favorite song on the album). This is exactly what music is supposed to sound like in January.

The Foscovian Update: Still Here, Still Queer.

It's been over a week since Fosco last blogged (did anyone win the betting pool?). But that doesn't mean that Fosco hasn't been thinking, Dear Reader. He's been thinking up a mess o' somethin'! And what thoughts have been rattling around in his gigantic gourdic cranium?

• Just like my third grade teacher always said, California seems to be the likely location of the coming apocalypse (although I think she meant it more eschatologically--and no, that doesn't mean what you think it means). And while all those insatiable wildfires were nowhere near Fosco's beloved Bay Area last week, the local media didn't lose an opportunity to remind us Northern(ish) CA residents that our doom is imminent, whether from a nearly overdue "tectonic time bomb" or our own giant flaming holocaust. The End is near! Whee! Even so, I'd rather die in a flaming crack in the earth than from getting lung cancer in a casino boat while losing my social security check in the slots.
  
  But seriously, if you want to read about the SoCal fire experience, check out my friend Ted's blog.
  
  
• Hey, did you hear that Dumbledore is gay? Fosco had known this for years, ever since he was fellated by the wizard in a Minneapolis airport mensroom. Even so, Fosco isn't quite sure what to feel about this whole story. To some extent, he'd rather let his friend Ted do the blog work for him (thanks again, Ted. At this rate, Fosco Lives! will eventually just be one big hyperlink to your blog). Fosco would like to raise two questions about the story that seem worth considering:
  
  1. Does a gay Dumbledore make up for Rowling's repulsively heteronormative epilogue to the seventh book ("Seventeen Years Later..."), in which everyone is happily married (heterosexually) with kids?
     
  2. What is the status of an extra-textual author's statement about a character? Could Dr. Seuss (from beyond the grave) tell us that the Lorax is gay? Would we have to believe that?
  These are the problems that a gay Dumbledore raises for me.
  
  
• Fosco was planning to spend most of this month in a blissful Jimmy Eat World coma. See, they're one of Fosco's favorite bands and the last three albums have been amazing. The previous release, Futures, obsessed me for several months. Plus, the first single ("Big Casino") from the new disc was the soundtrack to Fosco's September (because it rawks). But here's the thing: the new disc is TERRIBLE. With the exception of "Big Casino," there is no song on the disc that this Jimmy Eat World diehard fan ever wants to hear again. Fosco is sad.
  
  So what has filled the musical void in Fosco's month? Things have been a bit weird, to tell you the truth:
  
  • Radiohead's In Rainbows, which upon first listen sounded inaccessible and boring, but really gains by repetition. And I'm not just saying that because I paid £5 for it. Good tracks: "Reckoner," "All I Need," and "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi."
    
  • a short but excellent Bach chorale: "Heilig, heilig" (BWV 325). Bach is usually too boring for me, but I like the calm this month.
    
  • a trance track: Agnelli and Nelson's "Wear that Dress." Trance is great for driving and paper-writing. Really!
    
  • "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want," The Smiths. I could revive a different Smiths song every month and be happy. Well, actually, sad. I wear black because that's how I feel inside.
    
  • Bruce Springsteen, Magic. I've mentioned this one before.
    
  • an amazing work by my blogpal John Mackey called "Kingfishers Catch Fire." It is seriously one of the most amazing compositions I've heard this year. The CD comes from Japan, so it might be easier to hear it streaming on his website (under "Works" on the main page). The first movement is gorgeous, but the second movement knocks it out of the park. I've been listening to it a lot in my car.
  
  
  
• Has anyone else noticed that the New Yorker section "The Critics" has become the Harvard Faculty Lounge? I suspect that it's the influence of longtime New Yorker contributor (and Harvard English prof) Luke Menand. In addition to reviews by Menand, Fosco has recently run across reviews by Professor of History Jill Lepore, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History Niall Ferguson, and the (oddly-titled) Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism James Woods James Wood. Their ambition has lead them beyond traditional academic publishing and I, for one, welcome our new Harvard overlords.

I see water and buildings...

Alas, it's been five years since September 11, 2001.

I'm not interested in writing a long post recalling painful memories, mourning the victims, praising heroism, or expressing my anger at what has happened in the US and the world ever since. I suspect that you can correctly guess what I would have to say on each of those topics.

Instead, I would rather take a moment to mention the most moving artistic responses to the events:

• On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams.
  
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.
  
• "Twilight of the Superheroes," the title story in the collection by Deborah Eisenberg.
  
• and how could I forget: Bruce Springsteen's The Rising
  

These works of art have made the last five years a little more bearable.

For a moving post on the personal aftermath of 9/11, visit The Gideonse Bible here.

N.B.: the title of this post is taken from the devastating libretto for Adams's "Transmigration."