The Word Modern

by Jeremy Griffin

Yeah, okay, I realize I’ve been a little lax with the music reviews lately. Apologies, etc. Some of that has to do with the massive national job hunt I’ve recently undertaken, which is pretty much it’s own damn job (mothers, don’t let your kids grow up to be academics–just sayin). But mostly it’s because there hasn’t been that much good music to write about. Sure, the past couple years have brought the infrequent glimmer of novelty and talent, but mostly it’s been a bunch of derivative pseudo-indie garbage that makes a brief bang and then fades from the collective American consciousness.

Am I bitter? Maybe. Probably. It’s that time of year. In which case, thank God for bands like The Word Modern.

A collaborative effort by Lish Starshine and The American Tragedy’s Adam Dale, the band’s debut album A View From the Basement is full of jubilant synth beats, crunchy guitar grooves, and heartfelt, melodic vocals, the culmination of which is an extraordinary collection of tunes. 

The sheer volume of unique sound texture combinations–including piano, controlled static, theramin, and strings–is enough to keep the listener tuned it all the way through, like in “Cold Water Skin,” an elegiac track that merges the sonic aspirations of tweeny mainstream rock with those of an old fashioned acoustic ballad. Or you’ve got “Is This the End?” a haunting electropop number that continually builds and diminishes in intensity in a way that compliments the alternating vocal styles of Dale and guest vocalist Chelsea Norman.

Maybe it’s cliched to point out the interesting ways in which advances in technology have affected the recording process, but it is worth mentioning that Dale and Starshine were never in the same room together during the production of the album. Instead, they communicated simply through the tracks they put down, after which they would wait to see what the other would come up with in advance. This fascinates me, though I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s because it underscores the notion of musical collaboration as a form of communication–a notion that seems to be waning in popularity within the mainstream music world.  But musicians will tell you: making music with other people is its own kind of relationship, one whose success depends upon the individuals’ ability to communicate (go watch a really solid jazz ensemble, and you’ll see what I mean). And like any relationship, the bands that excel at this are the ones that stick around. Dale and Starshine share such a remarkable musical chemistry–here’s hoping that A View From the Basement is just the beginning.

An interview with Matthew Ryan

by Jeremy Griffin

This is the second interview we’ve conducted with singer/songwriter Matthew Ryan, whose 9th studio album I Recall Standing As Though Nothing Could Fall was recently released, and I’ve gotta say: I’ve honestly never met a more approachable professional musician (nor have I met one as grammar-conscious). Ryan recently took time out of his schedule (he’s currently on tour with his band the Red Needles) to discuss the new album as well as his views on songwriting as a craft.

1. You recently moved from Nashville. Tell us a little about what led to that.

I’ve actually moved to a small town northwest of Pittsburgh. Real severe landscape and that particular architecture that expects cold weather. Lots of bridges and old stone churches. It’s a town I fell in love with over the course of the last ten years and several visits. It feels a bit like Woodstock, NY. I felt it was time for a change; if you live one place for too long you can start to live in the past that you built there. I felt change was almost overdue and I needed to reengage with the present, shake it up, look at different streets, buildings and places, hear different accents. Nashville was great to me, and I’ll miss the day to day with many of my friends. But it was time to move on.

2. So, let’s talk about the new album, I Recall Standing As Though Nothing Could Fall. You started recording in your home studio a few albums back, and you began this one last year, and from what I understand you finished it in nine months, is that correct? What was that process like? How do you think recording at home has changed your songwriting process, if at all? Is there a greater degree of freedom, an incentive to experiment?

It did take 9 months, maybe 10. It was a bear. I had no choice with this album, but these songs insisted on coming together at this particular time. It wasn’t the album I intended to make, but whatever it is that pulls these things from you should be respected. The times we’re living in are provoking action, and for me that generally manifests itself in songs. So I hunkered down with it, did all I could to honor it and tell the truth as I see it as best I could. As far as the approach, it’s a utilitarian philosophy that drives the process. I have 3 recording systems at home and options outside my home to work with others in various studios when the songs dictate. It’s really about curiosity and following what excites me.

The last couple albums have been more home projects that were followed through at the pace of what the creativity allowed along with great contributions from friends. I love working at home because there’s no acting, the songs are captured at the moment they arrive. Seems to me there’s a certain purity to that because the moment a song is finished it can be difficult to reengage with that original spark and it can often just become performance. The approach will continue to adapt to what the work requires. I feel an earthier album coming. But we’ll see, the muse has been stubborn lately.

3. I’ve done my best to keep up with interviews you’ve done, and one thing I’ve noticed that a lot of them seem to have in common is the tendency of the interviewers to comment on the perceived “grimness” of your music, which comments are usually followed by you politely pointing out that you really don’t perceive your work as “grim” at all. What is it about the way in which you craft songs that you think leads people to often view it in such a way?

I really don’t know, Jeremy. I don’t know what lives those that say those things are living. Everyone I know is suffering some sort of weight, some sort of heartache. And through happiness, beauty and great events in our lives there are other plots. My songs engage with all of it and above all want you to persevere. There’s so much we don’t know, the world we’re sharing is beautiful and hard. There’s great wealth and great despair. And I guess there’s a part of me that feels it’s wrong to whistle past the graveyard, so to speak. And some may view that as a bummer, and maybe that’s what they’re really saying. I understand the need for escapism and preoccupation. There’s plenty of music for that, but that’s not my lot. I’ve always felt stronger and ultimately comforted by confronting what daunts or troubles me. I guess that’s what my work hopes to offer: a certain beauty or resilient poetry to the harder things in living. Life is beautiful and worth every aching moment, and life is better if we suss it all out.

4. Following from this, you said in our last interview that you were definitely more of a writer than a talker, and I’ve noticed in interviews the difficulty that often arises when trying to explain in words what you try to get across with your music. Without a doubt, you’re not alone in this regard; most musicians I’ve spoken to seem to feel that talking is inadequate for conveying their musical goals. What do you think is the hardest part about discussing your music, how you write, and what you hope to accomplish?

I never want to understand how I write. I admire craft, but I prefer that sensation of discovery that the way I work offers. I open myself up to it, and allow it to arrive. The less I think while writing, the better the song is. It’s difficult to discuss because with all the punk rock and bravado and all the reasons someone does what I do, I above all have very earnest hopes for what my work accomplishes with listeners.

5. This album comes an interesting time in regard to the sociopolitical climate in America, and it’s clear from songs like “I Don’t Want a Third World War” that you remain a very socially engaged artist. How do you think the current political, economic, and social discourses in America influenced this album (if at all)?

We’re at a very delicate intersection in our country and the world, Jeremy. This album is informed completely and thoroughly by this current friction. “I Want Peace,” “Hey Kid,” “Third World War,” “My Darker Side,” “Here Comes The Snow,” “Kings Of Trash” and above all “I Still Believe In You” all speak directly to my feelings on the situation and where I believe the solutions are.

6. You’ve rejected the notion that your work is a kind of complex diary-writing, although you have also claimed music to be a kind of meditation for you. When you write, how much of it is done with the fans in mind? Do you write exclusively for your own peace of mind, or is there an awareness of how your fans might react?

I rarely have written with listeners in mind. That’s not because I don’t care, but because my process doesn’t flourish that way. And the truth is, whenever I did let notions of what listeners might want or think or feel for a song, well, let’s just say things got messy. I’ve buried every song I ever happened to finish in that fashion. Something just rings untrue about them. My voice requires a certain timbre in intent, language, rhythm and melody. I write because I feel compelled to; it’s a beautiful thing that’s indescribable. Meditation is a clumsy word for it, but on some level it works because it feels like I’m communing with something greater than myself when I achieve a certain resonance. I only have an awareness of how a listener will react weeks, months and sometimes even years after a song is done. However, there are times I get excited about a song immediately when it feels as though I tapped a particularly rich vein.

7. You very recently performed at the Replacements Tribute at Bowery Electric. What is your favorite Replacements tune? (If your answer is anything other than “Alex Chilton,” “Left of the Dial,” or “Can’t Hardly Wait,” then you are wrong and I pity you.)

Ha! “Can’t Hardly Wait” is on my list, so I guess I’ve escaped your pity. I also love “Skyway,” “Here Comes A Regular,” “The Ledge,” “Achin’ To Be,” “Bastards Of Young,” “A Little Mascara” and “I’ll Be You” is a great rock n roll song regardless of all the slack Don’t Tell A Soul gets. There’s too many to list to be absolutely honest.*

Well played, sir. You can check out the new album, tour dates, interviews, and Matthew Ryan’s discography here.

An Interview with Paul Maliszewski

by Weston Cutter

It’s been awhile since we’ve had the chance to run an interview this fun and in-depth in awhile, which makes this all the more satisfying: a long, interesting-as-hell interview with Paul Maliszewski, he of Prayer and Parable and Fakers, both of which I thought were excellent (reviews here and here). I’m not sure there’s all that much critical info one needs to get into this, aside from this: this could’ve been much, much longer. Maybe this’ll be some on-going thing, a Checking In With Paul feature on Corduroy. Regardless: enjoy the interview, but, obviously, more critically: go purchase the man’s books and read them and pass them along. A formatting note: no, I don’t know why the footnotes don’t automatically jump you to the page’s bottom, nor how to make them do so. 

Do you feel like there’s anyone writing at present who’s writing with any sort of similar aesthetic goals as you?

You’re supposing I can know other people’s aesthetic goals, when I can’t reliably explain my own. But let me say this: two recent books that gave me strong feelings of recognition were Adam Gilders’s Another Ventriloquist, a collection of stories, and Deb Unferth’s novel Vacation. Our sentences aren’t outwardly similar. Unferth’s are more arresting, the syntax torqued, where mine are plainer on the surface, to the point of seeming flat. This business of recognition is tricky, though. It’s a little like hearing a song on the radio and thinking, That sounds so much like my life! She must be singing for/about/to me! There’s guesswork involved, and one finally has to make a great interpretive leap. Both Gilders and Unferth pay particular attention to the thoughts of their characters, and they do so in not-typical ways, i.e. not just saying, so-and-so thought, quote-unquote, I’m not happy at my job. I appreciate when characters are allowed to think, and at some length. I like when they’re given access to sophisticated language, too, even literary language. I’m not a fan of the terse, uncommunicative school of character, where the author gets to be occasionally lyrical and the characters are all like, Hey, what’s up? Not much. You? There’s also some attempt in these books to capture the grammar of consciousness. This is not to say Unferth and Gilders are writing stream of consciousness. It’s more an interest in people’s logic, how people try to explain who they are and what they’re about, and how they deceive themselves with their accounts, which can seem carefully constructed but are rarely complete.

Not Entirely Asleep: One Big Complaint, 3 Microreviews

by Weston Cutter

I promise things will pick back up shortly here–October’s been travel-filled and otherwise engaging. Here: here’s some elsewhere for the moment:

An interview with good old yrs truly at the Kenyon Review, and here you can read the two poems I’ve got in the latest issue

My review of The Marriage Plot over at the Star Tribune. Please know that I was 1/10th as hard on the book as I’d be in conversation–because, obviously, I was writing for a newspaper, and one cannot just be a wild-eyed maniac in a newspaper. Regardless: it was scary to see the book get starred reviews in Kirkus and PW, but it’s been nice since to see it get lots more cautious, critical reviews since.

I don’t want to get too much into this, but the Eugenides book seems, to me, part of a pretty shitty batch of anticipated fall fiction. First, this guy needs his f-ing head checked, and B+N reviews should now never be trusted (also: could there be a more say nothing review than this?), and I want someone to honestly tell me that Whitehead’s Zone One is even remotely worth reading. I forced myself to read the thing and feel used and betrayed because of it. Whitehead’s a phenomenal writer—any single paragraph in Zone One is interesting and full of vim and vigor and pep—but paragraph after paragraph with multiple sentences given over to cleveristic fireworkery about hallways and cool cultural asides…come the fuck on. Also: time does not work in this novel. The first 80 pages take place in a single afternoon–there’s flashback, but it’s shit. Time doesn’t work, and the paragraphs are festooned with so many larded, overly clever/cool shit that a reader—this reader—has to just walk away. It’s a terrible, terrible book.

As is, for the record, Drew Magary’s The Postmortal. I love Magary, and have jumped up and down about how great he is before, and I actually hope he’ll answer the interview questions I sent him through his publicist and, in doing so, maybe help me understand why I’m wrong about his novel, but lord almighty is The Postmortal a falling apart shitfest. Here’s the thing: it’s a dystopian book about what happens when aging is cured. Fine. The book’s presented in brief snippets—Magary’s a blogger, after all—and features characters who make stick figures seem fully developed and fleshed out, and the book ends up feeling like the cheapest, easiest possible book Magary could’ve written—a failure at character level, a failure at idea level, all of it (and how in the fuck it got a B+ is just beyond me—I’m guessing it says more about the fact that Magary’s got active, online fans than it says about the book). Look, I don’t love dumping on books, but this fall’s been a batch of shit, and it’s been miserably frustrating to feel just nut-kicked by (count em) THREE books.

Now that this has become a review, let me point out three books that are good—not amazing, not knock you sideways, but very very good.

1. Karaoke Culture by Dubravka Ugresic. No, I don’t know how to pronounce the name either, and no, I’m not necessarily crazy about this book just because of the essay on the minibar that’s been floating around for quite awhile, but this book of essays by Ugresic’s just vinegar and caustic enough to be fun without feeling cutting. She writes, basically, on pop culture, and the former Yugoslavia, and she’s entertaining and weird, if sometimes a little predictable (it seems a pretty facile thing for a smartish book person to think about Big Brother, for instance: no matter how much shitty television tells us about ourselves, we don’t need every smart person to note the same things shitty television tells us about ourselves). Still: mostly fun.

2. Cerulean Blues by Katie Fallon. This is, full disclosure, by a friend, and it’s I believe the debut book from Ruka Press in DC, and I personally love this book—I’m massively interested in Cerulean Warblers, how their habitat’s being destroyed (both in WVirginia and Central America), why anyone should bother saving a bird smaller than the palm of a 12 year old. It is, however, a book which mimics the form (and therefore causes some of the same frustrations) of food writing that I got bent out of shape about here at KR. Regardless: it’s a good book, and once you read it you can be the dick at the party who tells folks when they talk about Freedom that there’s actually a book about Cerulean Warblers far better than the one Franzen wrote.

3. Groove Interrupted by Keith Spera. The book’s subtitle’s Loss, Renewal, and the Music of New Orleans, and if you care about American music you’re gonna want to read this. Good companion book: It Came from Memphis. This book’s worth reading exclusively for chapter on Alex Chilton, but then there’s one on Toussaint and Anselmo and Davenport and all this other great stuff and you’re deep in, the night half over and you with all this great noise in your head.

Apologies for the nasty frustration—it’s been a hard fall for reading. Maybe I should be blaming Harbach’s Art of Fielding for being so satisfying, so early on, and therefore leaving everything else seeming damn paltry. Anyway: more in a bit, back to regularly scheduled programming.