Ka'tsina, the Smooth Talkin' Mountain Spirit

Leslie Marmon Silko, “Yellow Woman,” 1993.

A young married woman meets a smooth-talking stranger. They have a short-lived affair, and the woman eventually returns to her family. In years to come, she thinks about the stranger fondly, believing one day he will return to take her away.

Leslie Marmon Silko does not reinvent the wheel with the arch of her short story, “Yellow Woman,” published in 1993. Dating back to the 1977 novel, Ceremony, that established her as a major literary presence, Silko’s subject matters often focus on small town individuals and a set of dilemmas common to American life. What makes Silko’s works so impressive and refreshing is her infusion of her Laguna Pueblo heritage into the tales she weaves.

Here, a housewife’s extra-marital infidelity becomes a part of the mountain spirit stories she has grown up with. The stranger tells her that she is Yellow Woman, captured by him, the ka’tsina spirit, and the lines between seduction and the passing on of inherited stories become blurred. While Silko’s story includes the sensual imagery one might expect from the unfolding of an affair, the physicality shown is often either bordering on violent—with the forcefulness of the stranger—or peripheral—with Silko’s recurring and detailed attention to the young woman’s feet.

Silko’s voice lies in the intersection of Native American traditional storytelling and the complications of pragmatic language. What the woman’s grandpa would call a “mountain spirit,” would be recorded by the tribal police as a case of kidnapping and rape. The role that heritage plays for the modernizing Laguna Pueblo people calls into focus the dilemma of the generation: suspended and forced to choose between the stories of their ancestors, and a world pressing in from outside the reservation. Silko plays the byproducts of modern life and folklore off of one another in her compelling brand of magical realism. The end result of this formula in “Yellow Woman” is a step forward for Silko, as this mixture draws attention to the modern Native American experience and a culture at a crossroads.

I Live Off Blood, Yes...

Let The Right One In - (Låt den rätte komma in)
Tomas Alfredson - 2008 (Sweden, USA)


“Hit harder than you dare,” counsels the seeming-young vampire Eli to main character Oskar who is being relentlessly bullied at school. The film acts upon this advice like a vengeful road to modern relevancy. Is Let The Right One In a vampire film? Well, there are vampires. And this coming-of-age love story with fangs takes care to follow many of the rules that the genre would demand of it. These generic rules, however, manifest into an enchantingly pragmatic narrative that filmmaker Tomas Alfredson adapts, from the novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindquist, into a film that works on the levels of metaphor, but fully embraces the reality of its world.

The plot of the two young lovers Eli and Oskar is complicated and contextualized by subplots, including those of Oskar being bullied at school and a father who struggles with alcoholism, while Eli’s vampiric nature is given an added emotional weight by a codependent relationship with a father figure, and an addict-like remorse expressed in the mixture of tears and fresh blood on the necks of slain victims. The film works to spellbind and poignantly disturb throughout with its self-perpetuating violence and portrayal of human relationships always on the brink of being reduced to “predator and prey.”

Through a beautiful attention throughout the movie to snow-laden cinematography and the bloody warmth spilled out upon its exteriors, the film works through the idea of secrets buried, frozen in time in the snow and ice, and the manifestation of the character’s need for connection that so often leaves only the path of bloodshed to achieve this warmth. The film never ceases to indulge the mandated requirements of a vampire film, but the greatest feat of the film is the relevance it manages to situate itself within despite its relentless and fully embraced bloodthirsty nature.

I've Never Been Familiar With Orders

The Dø – A Mouthful
release date: 14 January 2008

The Dø is a couple of crazy French kids who can’t seem to decide what kind of music they want to make. The result of this indecision is a debut album showcasing impressive range, with songs that are wildly imaginative, beautifully absurd, borderline disturbed, and irresistibly coquettish. The disconnect between tracks and the various aesthetic and aural landscapes they inhabit—masterminded in part by the “D” in “D-ø,” Dan Levy—is bridged by the vocal stylings of Olivia Merilahti who goes from Bjork to M.I.A. at the pop of an eardrum, but maintains a vocal quality distinctly her own.

Their strongest songs are their concept pieces that unfold much like the unfolding of a well-crafted narrative: with an exposition, an onslaught of characters, and the twists and turns of an unforeseen development and ending. The tracks that employ Merilahti’s mastery of the Finnish language set themselves up in a territory of whimsy and primal instincts, and tracks like “Queen Dot Kong” and “Unissasi Laulelet” check and mate the sonic quality of the language with a bastion of inventive instrumentation.

On first listen to the album’s more mainstream songs, such as “On My Shoulders,” “The bridge is Broken” and “At Last,” it’s easy to file The Dø away into the overflowing demo-tape stack of “indie boy/girl band.” However, their ability to move past the guitars and A-B-A-B song structures, and delve into strange, unchartered musical terrains, reveals their cinematic chops (they met while scoring French films) and paradoxical frames of reference. Perhaps one of the most striking examples of this fragmentation of musical identity is the placement of the opening, anthemic track “Playground Hustle.” Chock full of alternating girls’ and boys’ juvenile shouting, with gender-bending pleas, the track is immediately followed by an authoritative response on the second track, “At Last”: “Oh please don’t be so childish.”

In Your Eyes This Is Relevant Behavior

Peter Gabriel’s recent recording of Vampire Weekend’s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” has reasserted his artistic relevance in a year that has merited him attention across the spectrum of the public eye. Gabriel was set to perform “Down to Earth” from this year’s nominee Wall-E at the Academy Awards, but his withdrawal due to a 65-second time allotment has sparked a national conversation regarding air-time apportionment during the ceremonies. While songwriters ought to be given more respect than a giant clusterfuck of Best Song nods, Gabriel’s withdrawal takes away from the spirit of the games, and robs us of 65 seconds of true talent in a limelit landscape of Jonas Brothers’ medleys. For any further questions, please direct your attention to the photo above.

Kaki King at Ashkenaz!

(Berkeley, CA: January 29, 2009)

Walking into Ashkenaz for the first time last night I suddenly felt like I was about to watch a niece or nephew in a Grammar School Play with a stage in miniature and its dusty curtain facing the crowd at the front of a medium-sized room. The assortment of Christmas lights, Tiffany lamps and paper lanterns, were reflected and augmented by the large mirrors running along the wall, used on alternate nights for dance classes. Upon closer inspection, the mass array of colorful posters and knick-knacks adorning nearly every surface revealed picketing signs from the Free Speech Movement along the walls. You could feel the eccentric kindness of the establishment. It welcomed you in, reminded you of the struggles and injustices of the past, but offered a peaceful solution in the present: Kaki King.

Doors opened at 8pm, and Kaki came on just after 9pm with no warm-up. She was humbled by the crowd, made up 50/50 by college students and Berkeley families with kids sitting on laps. Her banter style was very upfront and comfortable, she spoke of wanting to do a few small shows in California, and apologized later on for the ticket prices ($20 a head). Ashkenaz was absolutely packed, all of the chairs were gone about 15 minutes after doors opened, and looking back around 8:45, people were standing 10+ deep in the back of the house. Kaki started off the show with her tuning ritual that begins nearly every piece, as she chooses one of her many alternate tunings that corresponds with the following song. Sharper-flatter-sharper quickly turned to a ravishing piece of guitar work that seemed to start as an improvisation, but was of course off of one of her recent albums. Her two hands, one outfitted with acrylic nails for finger-picking purposes and the other its unadorned counter-part, seemed to collaborate like The White Stripes in miniature. The brother and sister took on the burden of the complexity of the pieces, one in charge of the bass lines and whacks of the guitar body showcased on songs like “Playing with Pink Noise” and “Carmine St.” and the other keeping up the corresponding melodies and percussion.

By the time 10pm rolled around children were falling asleep in laps all around us, while the rest of us remained enthralled by our petite musician’s prowess. She was at times a bit rusty and strings buzzed in places they shouldn’t have. She sheepishly admitted to the fact saying that before going out on a solo guitar tour, “Practice before you get to Berkeley.” Despite the musical breadth and experimentation of her past albums …Until We Felt Red and Dreaming of Revenge, the show consisted entirely of Kaki and her two guitars, with 12 instrumental songs including the two encores, “Lolita for Animals” and “How Many Landslides Birds Have Seen Since the Beginning of the World.” She spoke of wanting to return to a simpler format, saying that this was her “No Lapsteel, no Loops, no Singing, and no other BS Tour.”

In addition to the musical highlights of the show were moments like when she started playing in time with a backing up truck right outside the building, or her frequent and outrageous banter always preceded or followed by apologies to the children in the audience and a wry grin. She encouraged all of the guitar players in the audience to raise their hands at one point during the show (“Oh my god how embarrassing, okay fine…”), and encouraged them to come up after the show with any questions regarding alternate tunings or strings. The overwhelmingly guitar-centered aspect of the show was actually pulled off rather effortlessly, despite the few songs it took for her hands to shake off nerves and remember their own talent. While myself and others had been looking forward to hearing some of the vocal accompaniment that has been such a nice surprise on her last two albums, we were reminded just how talented Kaki is. The 80-minute show was a successful return to the basics that stripped away in order to all the better showcase one of the most noted guitar players of her generation.

Flown Back In

When Andrew Bird’s new single, “Oh No,” first hit the blogosphere back in October, the immediate likeability of the single recalled those nervous tics and scientific twists of the tongue that verge on pop alchemy. Noble Beast features another decoupage of violins and whistles, with a more prominent guitar presence than on earlier albums, and an aesthetic that at times borders on the absurd. At his best Bird presents a restrained version of himself that attracts by means of clever mumbles. When he plays the troubled troubadour with a wry smile he is in full control of his strange gift.

Finding low points on Noble Beast becomes a search for things that sound like crowd-pleasers, and “Fitz and Dizzyspells” seems to exist for just that reason. With all of the “Bird” elements intact it does not really surprise its listeners, and seems to function as a filler piece between more notable tracks. His little half-minute gestures sprinkled throughout also suggest an inner distraction of Bird’s, perhaps even an alternate career fashioning sound effects albums or music libraries. These weaknesses however, are seemingly self-addressed in one of the strongest tracks on the record, “Anononimal” where he chants: “Hold on just a second don’t tell me this one I know I know this one I know this song I know this one I love this song.” Bird seems to be stuck between falling back upon the successful formulas he’s employed in the past and reaching forward and producing tracks as imaginative and progressive as “Not a Robot, But a Ghost.”

The album seems to take on a more Nashville sound than previous albums at times, thanks in part to Bird’s veteran engineer Mark Nevers (Alan Jackson, Calexico, Bonnie “Prince” Billy). However the album reaches also northeasterly to a Scandinavian acoustic approach on tracks such as ”Masterswarm” and “Tenuousness.” Bird explores a simplified rhetoric on Noble Beast in contrast to a more boundlessly creative “nomenclature” of the past. With reverent sincerity in “Effigy” he speaks of himself as “a man who spent a little too much time alone.” Bird’s self-awareness is perhaps most poetic in the last full song on the album, “Souverian,” and his return to timeless themes as displayed throughout Noble Beast is also epitomized on this track when he pines, “Still my lover won’t return to me.” Far from being an overwhelming truth that the album attempts to communicate, a quiet detachment is expressed beneath the album’s multiple and at times countless layers.

Bird’s niche has welcomed comparisons to other bowing acts such as Patrick Wolf and Owen Pallett’s Final Fantasy. Perhaps this has led to a push for self-development that has him reaching in various directions on this album, without ever attaining a fully realized cohesion among the fourteen tracks on his latest endeavor. For Bird fans, the highlights of the album promise to fill that void fans have been feeling in anticipation. For those who can count their favorite Bird songs on one hand, the album replete with its myopic vocabulary obsessions and instrumental goose trails might be too much Bird in one sitting.

Give Me Back My Heart Attack

Land of Talk, "Some Are Lakes"

release date: 10/7/08

Land of Talk’s Some Are Lakes, released last October, tracks a journey that moves from garage-like intensity to the pace and amenities of a recording studio. Starting out with newly fleshed-out instrumentation, yet shaded with familiar doubled vocals, the first track off the new album, “Yuppy Flu” takes me back to the Summer of 2006 when I was logging five listens a day with the Applause Cheer Boo Hiss EP. The purity and surprise of their debut was perhaps most alarming in the fact that we were only given seven songs. The anticipation of their sophomore release, and first full album, placed a burden of expectation squarely on the shoulders of bandleader and songstress Lizzie Powell. The Montreal band once again relies heavily on Powell’s unique songcraft and vocal quality, recalling at times comparisons to Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The locality of the band also adds to its intrigue and allies, with Broken Social Scene enlisting Land of Talk for shows this last fall, and Powell joining the ranks of Montreal BSS chanteuses including Leslie Feist and Emily Haines.

In listening to the new album, the maturity and darkness that one expects on sophomoric releases peaks its head on occasion, but the most notable difference is the ever-shifting vocal presence that occurs in an interesting progression throughout the course of the record. Those doubled vocals sparkling with an Elliott Smith-like sheen, take a backseat after the first few songs to more intimate and vulnerable vocal performances that Powell produces on tracks as perfect as “It’s Okay,” and even on her anthemic single, “Some Are Lakes.” The seven punches to the face that was the Applause EP realizes an inner strength on Some Are Lakes that allows for breaks in momentum and leaves room for a string of truly beautiful and poignant songs. With a span of ten tracks, however, the songwriting begins to sound strained and forced on those numbers that help to give the album its length. “Got a Call” seems to be taken from the back pages of an old journal with lyrics so literal they sting upon listening. Further, “Yuppy Flu” despite its better attributes is awkward in its role of cold open, and the lackadaisical and rather drawn out construction of the track is almost unrelenting. The song doesn’t seem to want to end despite its better judgment, as evidenced in an outro of fingers aimlessly pulling off strings. In fact the whole album seems to take its time getting off the ground in contrast to Applause’s irresistible hit-the-ground-running appeal.

What Some Are Lakes does bring to the table, however, is a new side of Powell that culminates into the beauty that is the closing track of the album, “Troubled.” With a voice stripped of effects, double-filters, and tin cans, an almost Sarah MacLachlan-like quality becomes apparent in the cracks and subtleties of Land of Talk’s only acoustic number on the album. “The Man Who Breaks Things (Dark Shuffle)” is a gesture to the efficacy of two-minute songs, fighting its way through a storm cloud, guitars and voices echoing out like confused rumblings of thunder. Overall, the band’s ability to take the scratchy sleepiness of their rock numbers, and translate them into a poignant weariness when they slow it down is a welcome talent in the ever-changing musical landscape they find themselves in. Their ability to pull off both acts with street smarts and creativity is what keeps them on the beneficent side of the land of talk awaiting them outside of the recording studio.

A Hardened Whimsy Cracked