Heartache With Hard Work

Fairytale Tourist – The Corner Laughers

One of my favorite records so far this year is the wonderful Matilda Effect by The Corner Laughers. It’s got the strong melodic spine of northern soul, the effervescent delight of your favorite Sarah Records bands, and the joyful vibe of every great jangle-pop song you’ve ever heard. And, within this general recipe they manage to discover quite a few diverse sounds and tones. A twinkly beat here, with a rousing gallop to follow, and then a sweeping guitar solo, all topped off with endlessly clever lyrical turns. And the electric ukulele has never sounded so good!

I particularly love “Fairytale Tourist” – all strident pace and quintessential backbeat, surrounded by a perfectly realized harmonic jangle, and lyrics that cover the range from Hansel and Gretel to Cleopatra to snuggling up with your cats at night. And hey, why not some ‘ba-ba-ba’s to tie everything together?

Another highlight is “Queen of the Meadow” which opens by noting that “Henrietta Leavitt never got the credit for measuring the stars.” Leavitt, for those who don’t know, provided some of the key studies of variable stars that helped confirm the existence of other galaxies. And then there’s the stately march of “Midsommar” which evokes the midsummer of Oberon and Titania, of rousing dances around a summer bonfire while gazing up at a sky full of stars.

But honestly, there’s not a dud in the bunch. It’s a mark of a great band that they can take a relatively simple formula and find consistently interesting and innovative ways to deliver the melodies. On that front, The Corner Laughers deliver in spades. If you like your music dark and lugubrious, this band won’t be for you. But if you’ve got any sort of sweet tooth, you’re in for a treat. Matilda Effect is out in June, and will be the perfect record to usher in the summer.

Patton Oswalt is annoyed with Salon, and his reasons are pretty hilarious.for reasons that are full of some industrial-grade cognitive dissonance:

Let me just make one more point. John Oliver doesn’t have many bigger champions in the media than us.  We have a been a big fan and celebrator of the important work he did on “The Daily Show,” the job he did filling in for Stewart, and then his own show. But it’s valid to look at the big-picture of late-night TV — Fallon, Kimmel, Letterman, Conan, Meyers, Stewart, Ferguson, Colbert — and to say it’s exclusively white. Exclusively white, straight and male. I don’t think it takes anything away from the brilliance of John Oliver to point that out.

It qualifies his triumph in what he does and it makes some people stop looking at the content of what is coming out of the face. All they’re saying is, “another white male,” and they take it down a couple notches.

But if all the faces are white males, shouldn’t people say that? Are we really suggesting that in every case, these are the most talented people?

But in John Oliver’s specific case, what did he have to do with that? If anything, all he’s done is champion the transgendered, champion women that are fighting against oppression and misogyny and stuff like that. So it’s an irrelevant point at that point. Again, it goes back to, you’re just looking at beans. You’re just counting. If you want to do a bigger article about that subject, that’s fine, but to slip it into an article just about John Oliver and his show, what does that have to do with anything?

…

That one sentence, you think, takes away from the individual?

It totally does. You’re focusing on something that has nothing to do with the actual content of what he’s doing.

So let’s get this straight. He thinks it’s unfair and ridiculous to focus on factors that are beyond the individual’s control in assessing the quality of their work.

And that’s his argument AGAINST worrying about the problem that only straight white guys manage to get jobs in this field.

Look, Patton Oswalt is a funny guy, and smart, and he seems to have put some thought into his positions. But it’s sort of like he spent 20 minutes looking over the wine list, asking about each varietal…and then decided to just drink out of the toilet.

Call You All The Time – Vanessa Peters

Vanessa Peters is one of my favorite artists of the last decade. Every record from her is a joy, and With the Sentimentals is no exception. It’s probably the most classically ‘folk’ record from her yet—full of simple songs that draw you in quickly and leave you feeling light on your feet all day. The arrangements are light and relatively sparse, but full of warmth and joy.

After just a few listens, this record already felt like an old friend, a quiet and cheerful confidant—who doesn’t make demands but is just there to listen and smile and keep you company through the dark winter days. As I’ve spent more time with it over the past month, my estimation has only grown. It’s been a regular companion, a friendly voice in my ear as I garden or cook, a whisper of sunshine on my dark and dreary commute.

These songs are tender, casually-constructed, and intimate. They touch on heavy subjects and strike some deep emotional chords, but they do so with such an extraordinary gentleness and sense of good spirit that it never risks feeling oppressive. Even as she sings (on Getting By) “And I hope you know how hard I try / to live here in the present / not be a ghost of the past / ‘cause some days I’m barely getting by,” you still feel the hopefulness, the chance for a sort of happiness that can step out from the shadow of pain and loss.

My  favorite track is Call You All The Time, which is jaunty and fun and beautifully sunny, the sort of ‘breakup’ song that we almost never hear: one that remembers fondly but accepts the necessity of moving on, which acknowledges the breakdowns and recriminations but which doesn’t dwell on them. It makes me think of a box stashed somewhere in the back of closet, full of old photographs of smiling faces from relationships long gone. You almost never look at them these days—you’ve moved on, after all, and it doesn’t pay to live in the past. But you still hold onto them. Because you know that the happiness they represent was real. And it’s a mistake to think that something can only be truly good if it lasts forever. There are many forms of joy in the world, and joy isn’t any less true because it was momentary.

Grimes scrapped her followup to Visions, including this track. Which leads me to wonder: is she going all Brian Wilson on us? Because this song is great.

Her voice is ethereal, as always, as she bobs and weaves amidst a woozy dance beat that feels effortlessly constructed and yet pitch-perfect. Incredibly catchy without being the slightest bit overstated.  It’s the sort of song you can listen to on repeat endlessly, fall into a groove, and only come out on the other side to realize that hours have passed.

This is the best song I’ve heard from The Tallest Man on Earth in a long time. It might even by my favorite song of his yet.

Following the path laid out by The War on Drugs last year, Kristian Matsson is mining the 80s for ideas. And the result is the sort of music that Dylan himself (an obvious influence for Matsson in all his work) was trying to make at the time, but without all the hiccups along the way.

It’s synth-driven and gorgeously constructed and just a lovely song. And it’s got me super excited to hear the rest of the album. Dark Bird Is Home comes out in May, and I will be pre-ordering my copy now.

Came across John Kerry’s comments on the Defense of Marriage Act from back when it was being debated in 1996. While he declares himself to be against gay marriage, his comments are measured and generous and empathetic. It’s Kerry at his best.

Anyways, he was one of only 14 Senators to vote against the bill, and that’s a testament to just how far the needle has moved.

The truth that we know, which today’s exercise ignores, is that marriages fall apart in the United States, not because men and women are under siege by a mass movement of men marrying men or women marrying women. Marriages fall apart because men and women don’t stay married. The real threat comes from the attitudes of many men and women married to each other and from the relationships of people in the opposite sex, not the same sex. Yet, this legislation is directed at something that has not happened and which needs no Federal intervention.

Obviously, the results of this bill will not be to preserve anything, but will serve to attack a group of people out of various motives and rationales, and certainly out of a lack of understanding and a lack of tolerance, and will only serve the purposes of the political season.

If this were truly a defense of marriage act, it would expand the learning experience for would-be husbands and wives. It would provide for counseling for all troubled marriages, not just for those who can afford it. It would provide treatment on demand for those with alcohol and substance abuse, or with the pernicious and endless invasions of their own abuse as children that they never break away from. It would expand the Violence Against Women Act. It would guarantee day care for every family that struggles and needs it. It would expand the curriculum in schools to expose high school students to a greater set of practical life choices. It would guarantee that our children would be able to read when they leave high school. It would expand the opportunity for adoptions. It would expand the protection of abused children. It would help children do things after school other than to go out and perhaps have unwanted teenage pregnancies. It would help augment Boys Clubs and Girls Clubs, YMCA’s and YWCA’s, school-to-work, and other alternatives so young people can grow into healthy, productive adults and have healthy adult relationships. But we all know the truth. The truth is that mistakes will be made and marriages will fail. But these are ways that we could truly defend marriage in America.