Never Again

I can't imagine the process of moving all your shit from one location to another as anything less than traumatic, but I made the serious mistake some years back that acquiring Stuff was an Adult thing to do.  For some reason it became important to have a full complement of domestic trappings at the ready.

It's not, though.  Having nice things might seem nice, but it's far from necessary.  Stuff is for stooges, fings are fo' fools.  Everyone should only own five things, including a toothbrush and a change of underwear.

Libraries!  I resolve to use libraries more often.  Why the hell do I own all these books?  Books are heavy.

Anyway.  One not-nice thing I owned was a casserole dish of stuffing from Thanksgiving 2005.  It's not like my refrigerator was a perpetual Petri dish, but this particular piece got buried in the back after the holiday and forgotten.  I was too afraid to confront it when I rediscovered it, ceded it space on the bottom shelf, wished it well.

And almost three years later, it didn't look as awful as I'd hoped.  Dried out, rock hard, moldy.  I wanted stench and spores and speech.  I fancied myself a Frankenstein, killing my own creation, fighting off UN Peacekeepers and the Cliché Police.  Next time maybe I'll add some hot sauce or something.

*

Volcano!'s (myspace) first record was called Beautiful Seizure, which seemed about half right.  A sort of mathproggy hodgepodge it came unassembled and missing pieces.  The Chicago trio's second, Paperwork, comes with instructions in English and Spanish and a helper monkey.  It's too awkward and embarrassing to be furniture, but it's functional and decorative in interesting ways.

Volcano! - Slow Jam (mp3) (buy)

The sex is lousy, but there's love there.

I'd like to think the opening of that song as lame camouflage, its typical bad spare guitar/light percussion combo would have me changing the channel - more indie blah - had it not arrived in the middle of a very good album.  But Volcano! does the flipping, turning the song into an overbusy layered herkjerk, then a hilarious smoov come-on.  The important thing is that, instead of settling into an endless series of confusions, the song starts to cohere.  Writhes a bit, but doesn't get away.

The band is just better on this record, though vocalist Aaron With can be a real love/hate wildcard.  He's less mannered on Paperwork than Seizure, which is good; but his identity shifts so much that he abandons it.  You can't stop comparing him to other higher-pitched male singers who dabble with falsetto.  By turns he seems to be doing impressions of Thom Yorke or Ted Leo or the Oursy/Muse-y take on Freddie Mercury or even Adrian Belew.  Here, he's a bad R&B singer, the only bone he's working effectively is the funny one.

There are moments of real beauty on Paperwork, it chops, it sweeps.  You will want it in your house somewhere.  But not anywhere near your bedroom.

The band has a Twitter, a format that would makes sense for them were they to utilize it more often.

*

The problem with political conventions is that they're political, that extended exposure sours you on process.  Though I suppose it's impressive that simple speechmaking held attention over seven cumulative days this year.  The Dems had a good build over their week, and Obama's presentation was even-keeled and matter-of-fact and assuring.  The Republicans had the excitement of an unknown and a subversive old standby to keep things interesting.  But the latter, a party that likes to think itself the home of righteous bootstrappers, always comes off as sad slogan-chanting zombies; the former, as they haul out the same sad fairy dust every four years, deluded losers.

I respect John McCain a lot and I think that had he been the Republican nom in 2000 our country wouldn't be circling the bowl with so much suck.  I like that for a little while last night he told a room of tack-seated happy hands that their party, as much as the other, was responsible for some bad things and people (though it came long after some disheartening praise for the bad people currently serving in the office which he seeks).  And I think it might be possible that his running mate was a personal choice, something to help reveal the handlers and facetime folk he clearly despises as the empty hypocritical shits they are.  (Here's hoping he'll start rebelling by dropping the creepy smile.)  In the best of times, John McCain is not the worst president we could have.

But these are not the best of times.  And the Palin choice should be a scary one for a country that's spent five years mired in a war created solely out of our executive branch's personal issues and ambitions.  Impulsiveness can lead to big things, great things!  But when you're a rebel that believes in marching over yolks on your way to Omletteville, impulsiveness can lead to a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering and bad wars.  We just had eight years of "cowboy."  Now it's going to be four years of "maverick?"

Sorry, John.  Ours is a hope-based economy, and we need a hope-based president right now.  Your fiscal ideas really are just to let everything ride, and you can't bring everyone together while the wealth is divided so drastically.  (And for those stuck on the "most liberal evuh!" crap, The New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy, worthwhile analysis of Obama's pragmatic economic mindset a couple weeks ago.)

Sarah Palin is fucking star material, let's acknowledge that.  She's not going away.  She's fantastic at saying what certain people want to hear and has no moral qualms about lying to make a point; these are two things that can make a successful politician.  If she isn't #2 this time, she'll still wind up sticking out of the Warshington mud somehow.  Her speech won over everyone who was ready to embrace her, effectively scared the rest of us.  That ego can fill a big room (don't buy that bullshit about "oh, dear, I never meant to run for office") but she still plays small-town petty politics.  Her snarky insults taste less like wit and more like every pathetic local attack ad we've come to despise.  She's sort of evil, and we'll be seeing a lot more of her.

*

Suarasama - Lebah (mp3) (buy)

Kasai Allstars - Kafuulu Balu (mp3) (buy)

Suarasama is an Indonesian ensemble founded by a pair of US-educated ethnomusicologists.  The Kasai Allstars collective (myspace) was formed from five different Congolese musical and ethnic groups; they were piled together in a bus then mixed and edited by a Belgian producer.  The former's album, Fajar di Atas Awan, was first released in France in 1998 and is now being released here on Drag City; the latter's, In the 7th Moon, the Chief Turned Into a Swimming Fish and Ate the Head of His Enemy by Magic, is the third in the Congotronics series that gave us Konono N° 1.  Each album features twenty or more musicians.

You have to soak yourself in them.

At its worst, Suarasama will have you building a time machine so you can go back and destroy everything Americans associate with The Sixties (there are finger cymbals).  But it can be very pretty stuff, and it succeeds in gently complicating its reassuring base.  If you enjoyed Jose Gonzalez' mantraishness, there's no reason you shouldn't allow yourself some of this.

I prefer the Kasai record to the Konono one, maybe because the track times feel shorter.  The same problems/rewards are here, it catches and loses fire, keeps going no matter what.  But there's an abundance of sound, the shifts are exciting, it's fun losing yourself in the vigorous thickness of it all.  You can stream the entire thing at Paper Thin Walls (rip).

*

Erykah Badu, My Morning Jacket, "Tyrone," Dallas

tags: obamarama  palindrone  volcano  kasai allstars  suarasama  

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