Top 10 Albums of 2012

: : : Honorable Mentions : : :

Swans - The Seer | Daniel Lopatin and Tim Hecker - Instrumental Tourist | Deerhoof - Breakup Song | Purity Ring - Shrines |  Frank Ocean - Channel Orange | Deathspell Omega - Drought | Friendzone - Collection I Mixtape

10. Jens Lekman - I Know What Love Isn't 

9. Krallice - Years Past Matter 

8. Scott Walker - Bish Bosch

7. Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid, m.A.A.d City

6. Saint Etienne - Words and Music by Saint Etienne 

5. Lil B - God's Father 

4. Mount Eerie - Clear Moon / Ocean Roar 

3. Flying Lotus - Until the Quiet Comes 

2. Spiritualized - Sweet Heart, Sweet Light 

1. Lambchop - Mr. M

Walton Muyumba on James Wood's "Narrow Realism"

Walton Muyumba reviews James Wood's The Fun Stuff and Other Essays for the Dallas Morning News:   

"Wood’s skillful examinations have even persuaded some readers to place him in the literary priesthood. No wonder: As his exceptional piece, 'Robert Alter and the King James Bible,' attests, Wood is great when he’s thinking literarily and theologically simultaneously. But Wood is best as an authoritative conversationalist, not an autocratic cultural priest. This new collection is worthy of serious reading; however, it should be argued with — not revered."

: : :  More at studio-wmuyumba : : :

"The Abeline Paradox"

"On a hot afternoon visiting in Coleman, Texas, the family is comfortably playing dominoes on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests that they take a trip to Abilene [53 miles north] for dinner. The wife says, 'Sounds like a great idea.' The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group and says, 'Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go.' The mother-in-law then says, 'Of course I want to go. I haven't been to Abilene in a long time.'

The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad as the drive. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted.

One of them dishonestly says, 'It was a great trip, wasn't it?' The mother-in-law says that, actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic. The husband says, 'I wasn't delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you.' The wife says, 'I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that.' The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored.

The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon."

: : : via Menthol Mountains : : :

"Take Ecstasy with Me"

(alternate vocal: Susan Anway)

From Merge Records' 10th anniversary compilation, Oh, Merge (1999)

"The Charm of 5:30"

"The Charm of 5:30"
David Berman

It's too nice a day to read a novel set in England.

We're within inches of the perfect distance from the sun,
the sky is blueberries and cream,
and the wind is as warm as air from a tire.
Even the headstones in the graveyard
     Seem to stand up and say "Hello! My name is..."

It's enough to be sitting here on my porch,
thinking about Kermit Roosevelt,
following the course of an ant,
or walking out into the yard with a cordless phone
          to find out she is going to be there tonight

On a day like today, what looks like bad news in the distance
turns out to be something on my contact, carports and white
courtesy phones are spontaneously reappreciated
          and random "okay"s ring through the backyards.

This morning I discovered the red tints in cola
          when I held a glass of it up to the light
and found an expensive flashlight in the pocket of a winter coat
               I was packing away for summer.

It all reminds me of that moment when you take off your sunglasses
after a long drive and realize it's earlier
and lighter out than you had accounted for.

You know what I'm talking about,

and that's the kind of fellowship that's taking place in town, out in
the public spaces.  You won't overhear anyone using the words
"dramaturgy" or "state inspection today.  We're too busy getting along.

It occurs to me that the laws are in the regions and the regions are
in the laws, and it feels good to say this, something that I'm almost
sure is true, outside under the sun.

Then to say it again, around friends, in the resonant voice of a
nineteenth-century senator, just for a lark.

There's a shy looking fellow on the courthouse steps, holding up a
placard that says "But, I kinda liked Reagan."  His head turns slowly
as a beautiful girl walks by, holding a refrigerated bottle up against
her flushed cheek.

She smiles at me and I allow myself to imagine her walking into
town to buy lotion at a brick pharmacy.
When she gets home she'll apply it with great lingering care before
moving into her parlor to play 78 records and drink gin-and-tonics
beside her homemade altar to James Madison.

In a town of this size, it's certainly possible that I'll be invited over
one night.

In fact I'll bet you something.

Somewhere in the future I am remembering today.  I'll bet you
I'm remembering how I walked into the park at five thirty,
my favorite time of day, and how I found two cold pitchers
of just poured beer, sitting there on the bench.

I am remembering how my friend Chip showed up
with a catcher's mask hanging from his belt and how I said
great to see you, sit down, have a beer, how are you,
and how he turned to me with the sunset reflecting off his contacts
and said, wonderful, how are you.

: : : From Actual Air (Grove, 1999) : : : 

"Mary Had Brown Hair" (2005)

According to Internet lore (read: Wikipedia), a young Gary Wilson once received the following advice from John Cage: “If you aren’t irritating people, then you’re doing something wrong.” Gary apparently took these words to heart and, having since occupied his rightful throne as the dark prince of creep-funk anxiety, has accrued a reputation among those in the know of being one of the strangest and most rewarding players in the obtuse arena of outsider art. 

Given that Wilson’s father, an IBM technician by trade, spent nights playing stand-up bass in a local lounge band, and that Gary himself was a proficient multi-instrumentalist by the time he entered primary school, the “outsider” label might seem a bit of a stretch; but a cursory listen to 2005’s Mary Had Brown Hair, Gary’s return from self-imposed obscurity and his first record in over 25 years – a deeply strange, obsessive and oftentimes troubling album filled with nasty hooks and pitched-up schizoid robot voices – reveals that there isn’t much about Gary Wilson’s paranoid brand of basement electro-funk that you might call “approachable.” 

This album tends to garner the kind of criticism often hurled at similar weirdo bastions of the avant-garde: it’s alienating, obnoxious, and occasionally unlistenable. I’ll concede that this album isn’t for everybody, but supporting the record’s veneer of abstraction and repulsion is a bedrock of unstoppable groovescapes and sticky pop perfection. In the face of these foiled impulses, Mary Had Brown Hair prompts listeners to ask a very basic question of themselves: “Am I the kind of person this album is meant for?”

And the deduction process is surprisingly simple: If you’ve ever struggled with the impulse to move into your mom’s basement, make a dedicated commitment to spurn the daylight and its constant threat of humiliation, pour a bag of flour over your head and aggressively stalk an unresponsive lover while making everyone with whom you come in contact intensely uncomfortable – and, really, who hasn’t? – then, congratulations, this weird shit might just be for you.

"This Morning, This Evening, So Soon"

“The cop says, “Hey, boy. Come over here.’ So you go on over. He says ‘Boy, I believe you’re drunk.’ And, you see, if you say, ‘No, no sir,’ he’ll beat you because you’re calling him a liar. And if you say anything else, unless it’s something to make him laugh, he’ll take you in an beat you, just for fun.The trick is to think of some way for them to have their fun without beating you up."

- James Baldwin, "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon"

From Going to Meet the Man (Vintage, 1995)

Momus: "The Hairstyle of the Devil"

: : : From The Hairstyle of the Devil 12" : : : 

"Political Science"

[via NPR.org]

Radiolab's Robert Krulwich writes today in his science blog, Krulwich Wonders, about the hidden geological politics of the deep south:

"This, says marine biologist McClain, explains that odd stretch of Obama blue; it's African-Americans sitting on old soil from ancient organisms that turned sunshine into fertilizer. So plankton remain a force in Southern elections — though not always, not continuously. After the Civil War, when the South voted solidly Democratic and Jim Crow laws ruled, many blacks couldn't vote, so the pattern disappears. Voting rights laws hadn't been passed during the Goldwater-Johnson election of 1964, so in this map, the African-American difference is invisible." 

"Obama's Secret Weapon in the South: Small, Dead, But Still Kickin'"  

"Junot Díaz Hates Writing Short Stories"

"As Díaz pulled out one document after another, I got the sense that, if only he could have carried a big-enough folder — maybe one the size of a couple of continents — he would have packed in just about everything he has ever seen or heard or (especially) read: libraries of fan fiction, rusty knives, third-world crowds, petroglyphs, secret police. His work is defined by this kind of radical inclusiveness — the language of drug dealers and Tolkien dorks; the problems of destitute Dominican women and their more privileged American sons. This receptivity to all the possible sources of inspiration is what makes Díaz’s work both so distinctively rich and, it seems to me, so difficult for him to write. It’s like trying to distill the ocean down to a glass of water."

Sam Anderson interviews Junot Diaz for The New York Times magazine.

Césaire's "Notebook"

“I defy the craniometer. Homo sum etc. / Let them serve and betray and die / So be it. So be it. It was written in the shape of their pelvis.”

 - Aime Césaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (Wesleyan U. Press, 2001)