ten good things (march 2006)
ten good things is now monthly. by popular request.
10.
philip guston's painting, eating, smoking (1973) has been the image on my desktop for a few weeks now, and i can't think of a work of art i feel more in accordance with. guston's turn toward figuration has acquired such a legacy that it's a bit of an art school cliche to even dwell on it, i guess. still, there's something rather exhilarating in his declaring: "i got sick of all that purity!", particularly on the heels of the tasteful, second-tier abstract expressionist stuff he'd devoted the previous decade to.
in 2006, i can relate to the low-level terror with which he seems to view the world, and i appreciate the honesty with which he confesses his own socio-political powerlessness (and, yes, even laziness) in the face of it. but more importantly, i love the way he turns his anxieties into a landscape-- the way he spatializes his own distress, pushes his visual vocabulary to its own indexical breaking point (where cigarettes and kkk hoods always are and aren't what they imply, simultaneously). guston's images occupy an unprecedented middle-ground between commentary and intuitive invention. his topical worldly-ness compliments his strange sense of invention. never too pragmatic, never too escapist-- his work produces an affective confusion of the highest order.
9. helen thomas, in addition to being the only member of the white house press corps with a pulse (or a soul), is also-- without question-- the most interesting person you will ever see on c-span. on the rare occasions that bush actually allows her to speak, he always tries to turn it into some "traditional" act of hazing-- his chuckling, eye-rolling (patronizing) demeanor implies that she's some left-wing fossil hanging around from the kennedy years, and that he's "taking part in history" by putting up with her. but thomas knows how to utilize her novelty status-- she makes her reputation as the 85-year-old "golden girl" of american politics into a seductive photo-op tease, and proceeds to tear into the administration with unrivaled, well-overdue venom.
there are a million examples of what i'm talking about over at crooksandliars.com, should you want to spend the next hour of your life shouting "hallelujah!" at a computer screen...
8.
the alternately infuriating and fascinating armond white was in top form recently in his brilliant and illuminating account of terrence malick's film the new world. he outlines, quite convincingly, what might be gained by setting aside the knee-jerk reactions one might bring to the theatre beforehand, and applauding malick's refusal to succumb to the "superficial, modern negativity" of many a recent oscar winner. now, the new world is a movie with many problems-- and i'm not entirely opposed to jonathan rosenbaum's suggestion that the pocahontas myth itself is irrevocably troublesome-- but ultimately the integrity and audacity of the film wins out. for me, malick's masterful re-alignment of the everyday world provoked a re-vitalization of the senses convincing enough to applaud what white refers to as a "valiant optimism" within the film. it's a worthwhile leap-of-faith to make-- despite colin farrell (who is remarkably un-irritating, by the way), despite its imperial dangers, and despite q'orianka kilcher's suspiciously hairless armpits.
7. kate bush, the hounds of love.
i'm a little late in the game on this one. my eighties-a-phobia prevented me from giving bush a chance over the years, but erin_lindsay's recent suggestion that the last animal collective record might list her as an influence was a comparison just weird (and accurate) enough to make me pick something up by her. and though i could do without some of the voice modulations etc., bush's bizarro melodrama has totally won me over. the hounds of love makes a decent companion to scott walker's equally almost-bad masterpiece climate of hunter. both albums reconfigure the "totally eighties" in ways that pull apart the well-worn conventions of the era. the hounds of love is a synth pop, left-field smack in the face; it's patti smith by way of cyndi lauper.
6.
christoph ruckhaberle's exhibition at the zach feuer gallery in chelsea (NYC) was probably the most encouraging thing i saw in new york last week, painting-wise (don't get me started on the soul-sucking whitney biennial). ruckhaberle's well-composed, max beckmann-esque interiors are refreshingly free of millennial art-world cliches, and tied to a well-worn 20th century expressionist tradition in a way that isn't stuffy or presumptuous. they managed to be dynamic and ornate and erotic without any one of those qualities taking center stage. i felt like i could get wrapped up in them from a variety of angles, without feeling recourse to any loud bursts of self-importance, or to this or that art-world trend, or whatever.
(i didn't like his monkey portraits nearly as much though.)
5. lula cortes e ze ramalho, paebiru.
i've been on a real tear lately with tracking down obscure, international psych-rock records, and this one is a pretty special find. it's brazilian psychedelia record of a different nature than, say, the heavyweights of the tropicalia movement-- the songs are more expansive, the structures are more abstract, the drugginess is a little, um, druggier (though not as druggy as lula cortes' other band satwa). in addition, it boasts a truly mind-boggling array of influences-- channeling everything from bachelor pad pop to ravi shankar to german krautrock. it results in one of the most expansive and challenging albums i've had the fortune of coming across in recent memory. here's a taste:
lula cortes e ze ramalho, "nas paredes da pedra encantada, os segredos", mp3
4. making a game out of watching the oscars. i think you should either not watch the oscars at all or be creative about watching them. either choice is better than having a grand opinion about them. in that fine spirit, me, laura and sheri combined the oscar-viewing-experience with two of our favorite things: booze and quizzes. drinks in hand, we competed to see who could correctly guess the highest number of awards. the winner was sheri. and none of us guessed crash for best picture.
meanwhile, over at artofvision, calevert rallied up the film nerds and had us make up our own, village-voice-style, "best of 2005" lists. the results were then combined and tallied into a final collaborative list.
here's the ballots (scroll through the comments to read them, etc.) and here was the final score.
3. last weekend i finally got to see the deep space posse (yeah, i know, awful name), after hearing about how great they are for years. they lived up to their hype. the band is the brainchild of tyrone hill, trombonist for the sun ra arkestra. it also features marshall allen, the bandleader of the current sun ra arkestra (following the deaths of ra and john gilmore). i'd link to the deep space posse website, but there isn't one. which might cue you in to what it was like to see these guys packed like sardines on the tiny, smoky stage of tiny, smoky tritone. the music was rejuvenating, as was the reminder that there are lots of cool, underappreciated things about philly, and i ought to be better about finding them.
2. will ferrell as robert goulet.
man, i was gonna post a link to a you tube clip of this, but it's not up anymore. anyway, in the years following ferrell's stint on SNL, i've somehow started really liking him, and his impersonation of robert goulet perfectly personifies what won me over (i have a theory that any time will ferrell has a fake moustache on, he is instantly funny). it's something about the delivery-- which is always poker-faced and improvisational-- combined with that strange sense of how specifically the seventies were weird. ferrell's goulet is a reminder of how much different mainstream masculinity is thirty years later, and how goofy the distance i feel from it can be.
oh, and when they wheel out that stuffed ram at the end of those skits... that shit kills me...
1.
i love destroyer. i love his melodrama, and the bombast of his arrangements. i love his mind-bending, hyper-literary approach to his lyrics, and his almost-corny vocal aesthetic. i love the way his songs stretch in all the wrong directions; the way one album never sounds like the last. i love how much smarter he is than bright eyes or the decembrists (to name two over-rated-"lyricist"-bands), and rocks harder than, yes, his comparatively tame new pornographers. i love the way he manages-- in 2006-- to make the "F" word sound like the fucking "F" word-- and to do so with effeminacy. i like the fact that he's not afraid to alienate his audience, or to be annoying when annoyance is needed. i love the way he becomes passionate and evasive at the same time, and how his words need to be sung to be understood. i love how faulty all the inevitable comparisons people make between him and david bowie are. and i love that despite being a bookish thirtysomething fond of phrases like "wilhelm's reich goes bulimic at the feast", he still manages to rock, somehow.
destroyer's rubies is a fantastic album. it's full and complete and "classic" in a way that destroyer hasn't been since streethawk: a seduction (which is still my all time fave). i love it in the same way i loved and justice for all when i was 13 years old. and years from now, i'll associate it with a time and a place and a mentality in the same way that justice evokes that heinous suburban hurricane i once called puberty. i'm glad that-- five months from my thirtieth birthday-- i'm still finding new music that makes me feel this good.
10.
philip guston's painting, eating, smoking (1973) has been the image on my desktop for a few weeks now, and i can't think of a work of art i feel more in accordance with. guston's turn toward figuration has acquired such a legacy that it's a bit of an art school cliche to even dwell on it, i guess. still, there's something rather exhilarating in his declaring: "i got sick of all that purity!", particularly on the heels of the tasteful, second-tier abstract expressionist stuff he'd devoted the previous decade to.
in 2006, i can relate to the low-level terror with which he seems to view the world, and i appreciate the honesty with which he confesses his own socio-political powerlessness (and, yes, even laziness) in the face of it. but more importantly, i love the way he turns his anxieties into a landscape-- the way he spatializes his own distress, pushes his visual vocabulary to its own indexical breaking point (where cigarettes and kkk hoods always are and aren't what they imply, simultaneously). guston's images occupy an unprecedented middle-ground between commentary and intuitive invention. his topical worldly-ness compliments his strange sense of invention. never too pragmatic, never too escapist-- his work produces an affective confusion of the highest order.
9. helen thomas, in addition to being the only member of the white house press corps with a pulse (or a soul), is also-- without question-- the most interesting person you will ever see on c-span. on the rare occasions that bush actually allows her to speak, he always tries to turn it into some "traditional" act of hazing-- his chuckling, eye-rolling (patronizing) demeanor implies that she's some left-wing fossil hanging around from the kennedy years, and that he's "taking part in history" by putting up with her. but thomas knows how to utilize her novelty status-- she makes her reputation as the 85-year-old "golden girl" of american politics into a seductive photo-op tease, and proceeds to tear into the administration with unrivaled, well-overdue venom.
there are a million examples of what i'm talking about over at crooksandliars.com, should you want to spend the next hour of your life shouting "hallelujah!" at a computer screen...
8.
the alternately infuriating and fascinating armond white was in top form recently in his brilliant and illuminating account of terrence malick's film the new world. he outlines, quite convincingly, what might be gained by setting aside the knee-jerk reactions one might bring to the theatre beforehand, and applauding malick's refusal to succumb to the "superficial, modern negativity" of many a recent oscar winner. now, the new world is a movie with many problems-- and i'm not entirely opposed to jonathan rosenbaum's suggestion that the pocahontas myth itself is irrevocably troublesome-- but ultimately the integrity and audacity of the film wins out. for me, malick's masterful re-alignment of the everyday world provoked a re-vitalization of the senses convincing enough to applaud what white refers to as a "valiant optimism" within the film. it's a worthwhile leap-of-faith to make-- despite colin farrell (who is remarkably un-irritating, by the way), despite its imperial dangers, and despite q'orianka kilcher's suspiciously hairless armpits.
7. kate bush, the hounds of love.
i'm a little late in the game on this one. my eighties-a-phobia prevented me from giving bush a chance over the years, but erin_lindsay's recent suggestion that the last animal collective record might list her as an influence was a comparison just weird (and accurate) enough to make me pick something up by her. and though i could do without some of the voice modulations etc., bush's bizarro melodrama has totally won me over. the hounds of love makes a decent companion to scott walker's equally almost-bad masterpiece climate of hunter. both albums reconfigure the "totally eighties" in ways that pull apart the well-worn conventions of the era. the hounds of love is a synth pop, left-field smack in the face; it's patti smith by way of cyndi lauper.
6.
christoph ruckhaberle's exhibition at the zach feuer gallery in chelsea (NYC) was probably the most encouraging thing i saw in new york last week, painting-wise (don't get me started on the soul-sucking whitney biennial). ruckhaberle's well-composed, max beckmann-esque interiors are refreshingly free of millennial art-world cliches, and tied to a well-worn 20th century expressionist tradition in a way that isn't stuffy or presumptuous. they managed to be dynamic and ornate and erotic without any one of those qualities taking center stage. i felt like i could get wrapped up in them from a variety of angles, without feeling recourse to any loud bursts of self-importance, or to this or that art-world trend, or whatever.
(i didn't like his monkey portraits nearly as much though.)
5. lula cortes e ze ramalho, paebiru.
i've been on a real tear lately with tracking down obscure, international psych-rock records, and this one is a pretty special find. it's brazilian psychedelia record of a different nature than, say, the heavyweights of the tropicalia movement-- the songs are more expansive, the structures are more abstract, the drugginess is a little, um, druggier (though not as druggy as lula cortes' other band satwa). in addition, it boasts a truly mind-boggling array of influences-- channeling everything from bachelor pad pop to ravi shankar to german krautrock. it results in one of the most expansive and challenging albums i've had the fortune of coming across in recent memory. here's a taste:
lula cortes e ze ramalho, "nas paredes da pedra encantada, os segredos", mp3
4. making a game out of watching the oscars. i think you should either not watch the oscars at all or be creative about watching them. either choice is better than having a grand opinion about them. in that fine spirit, me, laura and sheri combined the oscar-viewing-experience with two of our favorite things: booze and quizzes. drinks in hand, we competed to see who could correctly guess the highest number of awards. the winner was sheri. and none of us guessed crash for best picture.
meanwhile, over at artofvision, calevert rallied up the film nerds and had us make up our own, village-voice-style, "best of 2005" lists. the results were then combined and tallied into a final collaborative list.
here's the ballots (scroll through the comments to read them, etc.) and here was the final score.
3. last weekend i finally got to see the deep space posse (yeah, i know, awful name), after hearing about how great they are for years. they lived up to their hype. the band is the brainchild of tyrone hill, trombonist for the sun ra arkestra. it also features marshall allen, the bandleader of the current sun ra arkestra (following the deaths of ra and john gilmore). i'd link to the deep space posse website, but there isn't one. which might cue you in to what it was like to see these guys packed like sardines on the tiny, smoky stage of tiny, smoky tritone. the music was rejuvenating, as was the reminder that there are lots of cool, underappreciated things about philly, and i ought to be better about finding them.
2. will ferrell as robert goulet.
man, i was gonna post a link to a you tube clip of this, but it's not up anymore. anyway, in the years following ferrell's stint on SNL, i've somehow started really liking him, and his impersonation of robert goulet perfectly personifies what won me over (i have a theory that any time will ferrell has a fake moustache on, he is instantly funny). it's something about the delivery-- which is always poker-faced and improvisational-- combined with that strange sense of how specifically the seventies were weird. ferrell's goulet is a reminder of how much different mainstream masculinity is thirty years later, and how goofy the distance i feel from it can be.
oh, and when they wheel out that stuffed ram at the end of those skits... that shit kills me...
1.
i love destroyer. i love his melodrama, and the bombast of his arrangements. i love his mind-bending, hyper-literary approach to his lyrics, and his almost-corny vocal aesthetic. i love the way his songs stretch in all the wrong directions; the way one album never sounds like the last. i love how much smarter he is than bright eyes or the decembrists (to name two over-rated-"lyricist"-bands), and rocks harder than, yes, his comparatively tame new pornographers. i love the way he manages-- in 2006-- to make the "F" word sound like the fucking "F" word-- and to do so with effeminacy. i like the fact that he's not afraid to alienate his audience, or to be annoying when annoyance is needed. i love the way he becomes passionate and evasive at the same time, and how his words need to be sung to be understood. i love how faulty all the inevitable comparisons people make between him and david bowie are. and i love that despite being a bookish thirtysomething fond of phrases like "wilhelm's reich goes bulimic at the feast", he still manages to rock, somehow.
destroyer's rubies is a fantastic album. it's full and complete and "classic" in a way that destroyer hasn't been since streethawk: a seduction (which is still my all time fave). i love it in the same way i loved and justice for all when i was 13 years old. and years from now, i'll associate it with a time and a place and a mentality in the same way that justice evokes that heinous suburban hurricane i once called puberty. i'm glad that-- five months from my thirtieth birthday-- i'm still finding new music that makes me feel this good.