Whilst I never quite fell head over heels for Girls' appropriately titled first record Album the way that many folk did, I still found it to be good enough to care about what they did next. On November 21st, they're back with the release of a brand new EP, Broken Dreams Club. "Heartbreaker" is pretty much what you'd expect: a lovely melody married to lyrics concerning lost love, very much evidence of the post-Pains Of Being Pure At Heart world we now find ourselves living in. Download it for yourself below:
Wednesday 27 October 2010
Lupe Fiasco tackles "Float On"
Without knowing the story behind the new Lupe Fiasco song, it'll be interesting to hear how "The Show Goes On" came to be made, because (as will be immediately obvious to Modest Mouse fans about six seconds into hearing it), the song borrows heavily from "Float On." As in "there is no way that "The Show Goes On" could possibly exist were it not for Modest Mouse." Most likely, Lupe ponied up the necessary amount of money for sampling purposes, but having debuted the song without acknowledging the debt he owes to the Modest Mouse original, there's a certain amount of intrigue surrounding it. Intrigue that will most likely be rapidly quashed by a brief news item on some music website or other come tomorrow morning.
I would say that it's interesting to hear a party version of the song, but to be honest I've been to plenty of parties that have featured "Float On." That's just how I roll. Anyway, stream it for yourself below to hear the similarities for yourself:
I would say that it's interesting to hear a party version of the song, but to be honest I've been to plenty of parties that have featured "Float On." That's just how I roll. Anyway, stream it for yourself below to hear the similarities for yourself:
Tuesday 26 October 2010
How Edgar Allan Poe changed the course of American literary history, part two
Part one can be found by following this link.
As a consequence, several critics have followed the line of thought that Dupin is actually beyond human, striving to recast him as something otherworldly, in a manner that implies that he should be considered in terms of the 'superhuman,' in the tradition of the mythical Hero figure. Maurice J. Bennett believed that "for Poe, the detective story reflects a pre-existent divine order from which man is excluded by erroneous methods of investigation and inadequate habits of perception,"13 which fascinatingly positions Poe as a religious agent, sent to ensure that events pan out as intended by a higher power; 'man' may be excluded from the process, but Dupin is crucial to it. Joseph J. Moldenhauer also elevates him to a higher realm when writing that "his reason is so intense and lofty as to constitute a "creative" faculty, and the detective can "dream" a solution to the most tangled mystery without so much as stirring from his armchair. He is, then, a master artist, dictating or imagining - i.e. imaging - a coherent order for discordant experience,"14 repairing the broken fabric of humanity in a manner beyond that of the mere mortal, through the sheer force of his imagination.
Robert Shulman is also interested in the idea of imagination, noting that "this dramatizing of the superiority of the poetic power of imagination gives the Dupin stories much of their urgency, distinguishes them from the ordinary detective story, and constitutes a large part of their appeal."15 Such a statement is important because it cannot help but evoke the ideas of transcendentalism that were achieving prominence at the same time as Poe was working on his Dupin trilogy. Celebration of the potential of the imagination was one of the key tenets of the movement, and the self-reliance implied in the narrator's statement that "we existed within ourselves alone"16 has an obvious parallel with Walden, Henry David Thoreau's account of his woodland sojourn. Dupin intends to learn about himself in the same manner as Thoreau did; through a period of isolation and unique intellectual contemplation, in the pursuit of absolute autonomy. When Kinsman notes that "the detective historically remained immune to the ordinary feelings, passions and weaknesses experienced by those around him,"17 we must remember that Poe was responsible for this convention, and the circumstances under which Dupin and the narrator live certainly invite comparisons to the transcendentalists.18
At its core, though, the Dupin trilogy is undeniably simplistic in its intentions; in each case, "the solution of the mystery signals the restoration of law and order, after which the world resumes its course and the body social and politic can return to business as usual." 19 Hans Bertens and Theo D'haen most likely use the word 'business' without intending for it to have a wider significance, but it actually does takes on a greater importance when you consider Christopher Rollason's suggestion that "the social order which the detective sets out to defend is that of expanding mid-nineteenth century capitalism...[he] closes his work and is paid the rate for the job; detection has become a scarce and valuable commodity, which the owner sells dear."20 Whilst this idea is underplayed in the narratives, Dupin does not take employment purely for his own amusement; he expects financial recompense for his efforts, which is noteworthy simply because money becomes such a crucial element within the genre, in the work of those following on from Poe. It drives detectives onwards, drives clients to desperation, and drives many a character to their death. Put simply, crime fiction revolves around it, and the advent of hard-boiled fiction really drives the point home.
One final point remains; for all his supposed infallibility, Dupin is fighting a battle that can never be won. As David Schmid points out, "even if the Great Detective manages to solve an individual murder and thus to restore the image of a benevolent and knowable world, this same image will be disrupted once more almost instantly."21 This sense of futility becomes another one of the driving forces of the crime fiction genre; ultimately, no matter how much good one man may do, it is never enough. The sub-genres that emerge in the wake of Poe's formative vision deal with the inevitability of crime as a recurrent, inevitable element in different ways, and the fictional worlds that emerge post-Poe feature detectives far less romantic than the flawless Dupin.
Footnotes:
13. Bennett, 'The Detective Fiction of Poe and Borges,' page 266
14. Joseph J. Moldenhauer, 'Murder as a Fine Art: Basic Connections between Poe's Aesthetics, Psychology, and Moral Vision,' from PMLA, Volume 83, Number 2 (May, 1968), page 290
15. Robert Shulman, 'Poe and the Powers of the Mind,' from ELH, Volume 37, Number 2 (June, 1970), page 254
16. Poe, 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' page 415
17. Kinsman, 'A Band of Sisters,' page 159
18. To argue assertively that Poe was an advocate of transcendentalism is a largely futile exercise; no literature exists to prove the link, and indeed, his 1841 short story 'Never Bet the Devil Your Head: A Tale With a Moral' is an undisguised attack on a movement that he calls a "disease," lamenting their insistence on morality in literature. Yet the parallels are there for anyone to see, and the crime fiction genre that he created is an inherently moral genre (focussed as it is on the idea of justice prevailing over the criminal elements of society).
19. Hans Bertens and Theo D'haen, Contemporary American Crime Fiction (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), page 175
20. Christopher Rollason, 'The Detective Myth in Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin Trilogy,' from American Crime Fiction: Studies in the Genre, page 12
21. Schmid, 'The Locus of Disruption: Serial Murder and Generic Conventions in Detective Fiction,' page 76
* * *
As a consequence, several critics have followed the line of thought that Dupin is actually beyond human, striving to recast him as something otherworldly, in a manner that implies that he should be considered in terms of the 'superhuman,' in the tradition of the mythical Hero figure. Maurice J. Bennett believed that "for Poe, the detective story reflects a pre-existent divine order from which man is excluded by erroneous methods of investigation and inadequate habits of perception,"13 which fascinatingly positions Poe as a religious agent, sent to ensure that events pan out as intended by a higher power; 'man' may be excluded from the process, but Dupin is crucial to it. Joseph J. Moldenhauer also elevates him to a higher realm when writing that "his reason is so intense and lofty as to constitute a "creative" faculty, and the detective can "dream" a solution to the most tangled mystery without so much as stirring from his armchair. He is, then, a master artist, dictating or imagining - i.e. imaging - a coherent order for discordant experience,"14 repairing the broken fabric of humanity in a manner beyond that of the mere mortal, through the sheer force of his imagination.
Robert Shulman is also interested in the idea of imagination, noting that "this dramatizing of the superiority of the poetic power of imagination gives the Dupin stories much of their urgency, distinguishes them from the ordinary detective story, and constitutes a large part of their appeal."15 Such a statement is important because it cannot help but evoke the ideas of transcendentalism that were achieving prominence at the same time as Poe was working on his Dupin trilogy. Celebration of the potential of the imagination was one of the key tenets of the movement, and the self-reliance implied in the narrator's statement that "we existed within ourselves alone"16 has an obvious parallel with Walden, Henry David Thoreau's account of his woodland sojourn. Dupin intends to learn about himself in the same manner as Thoreau did; through a period of isolation and unique intellectual contemplation, in the pursuit of absolute autonomy. When Kinsman notes that "the detective historically remained immune to the ordinary feelings, passions and weaknesses experienced by those around him,"17 we must remember that Poe was responsible for this convention, and the circumstances under which Dupin and the narrator live certainly invite comparisons to the transcendentalists.18
At its core, though, the Dupin trilogy is undeniably simplistic in its intentions; in each case, "the solution of the mystery signals the restoration of law and order, after which the world resumes its course and the body social and politic can return to business as usual." 19 Hans Bertens and Theo D'haen most likely use the word 'business' without intending for it to have a wider significance, but it actually does takes on a greater importance when you consider Christopher Rollason's suggestion that "the social order which the detective sets out to defend is that of expanding mid-nineteenth century capitalism...[he] closes his work and is paid the rate for the job; detection has become a scarce and valuable commodity, which the owner sells dear."20 Whilst this idea is underplayed in the narratives, Dupin does not take employment purely for his own amusement; he expects financial recompense for his efforts, which is noteworthy simply because money becomes such a crucial element within the genre, in the work of those following on from Poe. It drives detectives onwards, drives clients to desperation, and drives many a character to their death. Put simply, crime fiction revolves around it, and the advent of hard-boiled fiction really drives the point home.
One final point remains; for all his supposed infallibility, Dupin is fighting a battle that can never be won. As David Schmid points out, "even if the Great Detective manages to solve an individual murder and thus to restore the image of a benevolent and knowable world, this same image will be disrupted once more almost instantly."21 This sense of futility becomes another one of the driving forces of the crime fiction genre; ultimately, no matter how much good one man may do, it is never enough. The sub-genres that emerge in the wake of Poe's formative vision deal with the inevitability of crime as a recurrent, inevitable element in different ways, and the fictional worlds that emerge post-Poe feature detectives far less romantic than the flawless Dupin.
Footnotes:
13. Bennett, 'The Detective Fiction of Poe and Borges,' page 266
14. Joseph J. Moldenhauer, 'Murder as a Fine Art: Basic Connections between Poe's Aesthetics, Psychology, and Moral Vision,' from PMLA, Volume 83, Number 2 (May, 1968), page 290
15. Robert Shulman, 'Poe and the Powers of the Mind,' from ELH, Volume 37, Number 2 (June, 1970), page 254
16. Poe, 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' page 415
17. Kinsman, 'A Band of Sisters,' page 159
18. To argue assertively that Poe was an advocate of transcendentalism is a largely futile exercise; no literature exists to prove the link, and indeed, his 1841 short story 'Never Bet the Devil Your Head: A Tale With a Moral' is an undisguised attack on a movement that he calls a "disease," lamenting their insistence on morality in literature. Yet the parallels are there for anyone to see, and the crime fiction genre that he created is an inherently moral genre (focussed as it is on the idea of justice prevailing over the criminal elements of society).
19. Hans Bertens and Theo D'haen, Contemporary American Crime Fiction (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), page 175
20. Christopher Rollason, 'The Detective Myth in Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin Trilogy,' from American Crime Fiction: Studies in the Genre, page 12
21. Schmid, 'The Locus of Disruption: Serial Murder and Generic Conventions in Detective Fiction,' page 76
Tuesday 19 October 2010
Cloud Nothings, "Turning On"
Another one of my reviews can be found at the City Lifers website, if you would be so kind as to follow the link below:
The debut release from Cloud Nothings is "a collection of great promise."
To summarise: Turning On is definitely good enough to warrant your attention. A record comprised of early singles and rarities, some of the songs are definitely forgettable, but then again, their recent double A-side "Didn't You" b/w "Even If It Worked Out" shows that they're improving all the time. And "Water Turns Back" is pretty damn special.
http://www.myspace.com/cloudnothings
The debut release from Cloud Nothings is "a collection of great promise."
To summarise: Turning On is definitely good enough to warrant your attention. A record comprised of early singles and rarities, some of the songs are definitely forgettable, but then again, their recent double A-side "Didn't You" b/w "Even If It Worked Out" shows that they're improving all the time. And "Water Turns Back" is pretty damn special.
http://www.myspace.com/cloudnothings
How Edgar Allan Poe changed the course of American literary history, part one
By way of introduction, below is a link to an earlier essay I wrote:
Edgar Allan Poe's detective fiction
"We existed within ourselves alone."
Edgar Allan Poe, from 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'
Whilst in absolute terms, the origins of crime fiction cannot be decisively attributed to to an individual author, the currently accepted academic wisdom tends to credit Edgar Allan Poe as the man who defined the role of the literary detective when he created the character C. Auguste Dupin. He appears in only three outings, those being 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' 'The Mystery of Marie Roget,' and 'The Purloined Letter,' which, when taken as a whole, have dictated the course of the genre over the last one hundred and fifty years, and indeed continue to do so; every writer working in the crime fiction tradition owes a debt of gratitude to these tales. At its most basic level, "the detective story is the very paradigm of a 'rattling good story'; the reader cannot put the book down (as the saying goes) because of the sheer compulsion to find the explanation of 'whodunnit',"1 and it was Poe who established this paradigm, whilst also positioning crime fiction as "the literary form that most effectively includes both the quest for meaning and the final deciphering of uncovered symbols,"2 a crucial observation when you consider how 'quest for meaning' literature flourished during a twentieth century that was obsessed with "meaning" as an absolute concept, an obsession that embodied itself in a critical infatuation with the notion of symbols and signifiers.
David Lehman expanded upon this idea when writing that "the prophetic Poe, collaborating with his zeitgeist, arrived at the distinctive signs and symbols of a universal nightmare - and devised in the form of the detective story a means of keeping the nightmare at bay."3 In doing so, Poe's Dupin offers the reader reassurance; he represents "the search for rationality and order in a world disrupted by criminal violence,"4 and we recognise that his intellect is so obviously infallible that, though we only encounter him in three stories, we are left with the belief that no case is unsolvable as long as it is conferred to him. He routinely "explains the inexplicable, thereby demonstrating the ultimate comprehensibility of the world beyond the self,"5 and in doing so he acts as a comforting vision of a world in which crime can never prosper.
To briefly play devil's advocate, John T. Irwin undeniably had a point when he commented that "as a character, Dupin is as thin as the paper he's printed on. As for his adventures, they amount to little more than reading newspaper accounts of the crime and talking with the Prefect of police and the narrator in the privacy of his apartment."6 From a critical perspective, they are somewhat lacking, largely devoid of the tension and drama you would expect, instead spending far too much time fawning over Dupin's methodology. So much so, in fact, that Arthur Conan Doyle felt compelled to pass comment in the very first Sherlock Holmes novel, having Holmes remark that "Dupin was a very inferior fellow...he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine."7 That said, you simply cannot deny the impact the character had upon literary history. Within these three tales, Poe unknowingly crafted what was to become the model for the entire genre, as the writers who followed in his wake - Conan Doyle included - 'borrowed' his ideas so liberally that many of them would become the signifiers of crime fiction. Dupin was "perhaps not the very first detective in fiction, but undoubtedly the model for a great many later sleuths, investigators and private eyes."8
His exploits are imparted to us by a nameless narrator, who is both the chronicler of Dupin, and a loyal, trusted companion, one who remains unable to perceive that which, to the great detective, is both obvious and integral to the case. Dupin, meanwhile, is a man of the kind of analytical genius and cold logic that makes him appear somewhat detached from reality; though only an amateur sleuth, he possesses a singular brilliance that puts the combined efforts of the Parisian police force to shame. His method requires him to balance "imaginative involvement with analytical detachment...[and] involves both a meticulous examination of physical evidence (involvement in the world of men) and a dispassionate consideration of the case as a whole (withdrawal to the realm of abstract thought)."9 If the narrator acts as our gateway into the mind of Dupin, then Dupin himself is intended to be the man whom the reader both roots for and relates to. It is Lehman's opinion that "the ambiguous person of the detective is interposed between the criminal and the police, those old antagonists, and suddenly there appears to be a detached, independent point of view with which we can identify ourselves."10
That said, how much Dupin truly conforms to this ideal is open to question. He can hardly be put forward as an easily relatable character; he is, after all, essentially an unknowable figure, and his eccentricities render him even more elusive, even though they are representative of the unique gifts for which we are expected to celebrate him. Instead, these qualities invite a certain amount of sympathy. As Margaret Kinsman wrote, "the prototypically eccentric, peculiar, intellectually superior and egotistical detective has long been associated, by readers and commentators, with a deep inner loneliness."11 As the narrator of the Dupin tales observes in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' "it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris."12 Such a remark is telling; until he encountered the narrator and the two became associates (and, ultimately, friends), we are left to assume that Dupin lived an entirely solitary existence, almost completely cut off from the human society he fights so stridently to protect.
...to be continued.
Footnotes
1. Martin Swales, 'Introduction ,' from The Art of Detective Fiction, edited by Warren Chernaik, Martin Swales and Robert Vilian (Basingstoke: New York: Macmillan; St. Martin's Press, 2000), page xii
2. Maurice J. Bennett, 'The Detective Fiction of Poe and Borges,' from Comparative Literature, Volume 35, Number 3 (Summer, 1983), page 267
3. David Lehman, The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection (Ann Arboer: University of Michigan Press, 2000), page 72
4. David Schmid, 'The Locus of Disruption: Serial Murder and Generic Conventions in Detective Fiction,' from The Art of Detective Fiction, page 76
5. J. Gerald Kennedy, 'The Limits of Reason: Poe's Deluded Detectives,' from American Literature, Volume 47, Number 2 (May, 1975), page 185
6. John T. Irwin, 'Mysteries We Reread, Mysteries of Rereading: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story, from Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Postmodernism, edited by Patricia Merivale and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), page 28
7. Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, collected in Sherlock Holmes: The Original Illustrated 'Strand' (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2006), page 24
8. Brian Docherty, 'Introduction: Hard Talk and Mean Streets,' from American Crime Fiction: Studies in the Genre (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 1-3
9. Kennedy, 'The Limits of Reason: Poe's Deluded Detectives,' pp. 194-195
10. Lehman, The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection, page 142
11. Margaret Kinsman, 'A Band of Sisters,' from The Art of Detective Fiction, page 158
12. Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' from Tales of Mystery and Imagination (London: Everyman's Library, 2002), page 415
Edgar Allan Poe's detective fiction
* * *
"We existed within ourselves alone."
Edgar Allan Poe, from 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'
Whilst in absolute terms, the origins of crime fiction cannot be decisively attributed to to an individual author, the currently accepted academic wisdom tends to credit Edgar Allan Poe as the man who defined the role of the literary detective when he created the character C. Auguste Dupin. He appears in only three outings, those being 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' 'The Mystery of Marie Roget,' and 'The Purloined Letter,' which, when taken as a whole, have dictated the course of the genre over the last one hundred and fifty years, and indeed continue to do so; every writer working in the crime fiction tradition owes a debt of gratitude to these tales. At its most basic level, "the detective story is the very paradigm of a 'rattling good story'; the reader cannot put the book down (as the saying goes) because of the sheer compulsion to find the explanation of 'whodunnit',"1 and it was Poe who established this paradigm, whilst also positioning crime fiction as "the literary form that most effectively includes both the quest for meaning and the final deciphering of uncovered symbols,"2 a crucial observation when you consider how 'quest for meaning' literature flourished during a twentieth century that was obsessed with "meaning" as an absolute concept, an obsession that embodied itself in a critical infatuation with the notion of symbols and signifiers.
David Lehman expanded upon this idea when writing that "the prophetic Poe, collaborating with his zeitgeist, arrived at the distinctive signs and symbols of a universal nightmare - and devised in the form of the detective story a means of keeping the nightmare at bay."3 In doing so, Poe's Dupin offers the reader reassurance; he represents "the search for rationality and order in a world disrupted by criminal violence,"4 and we recognise that his intellect is so obviously infallible that, though we only encounter him in three stories, we are left with the belief that no case is unsolvable as long as it is conferred to him. He routinely "explains the inexplicable, thereby demonstrating the ultimate comprehensibility of the world beyond the self,"5 and in doing so he acts as a comforting vision of a world in which crime can never prosper.
To briefly play devil's advocate, John T. Irwin undeniably had a point when he commented that "as a character, Dupin is as thin as the paper he's printed on. As for his adventures, they amount to little more than reading newspaper accounts of the crime and talking with the Prefect of police and the narrator in the privacy of his apartment."6 From a critical perspective, they are somewhat lacking, largely devoid of the tension and drama you would expect, instead spending far too much time fawning over Dupin's methodology. So much so, in fact, that Arthur Conan Doyle felt compelled to pass comment in the very first Sherlock Holmes novel, having Holmes remark that "Dupin was a very inferior fellow...he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine."7 That said, you simply cannot deny the impact the character had upon literary history. Within these three tales, Poe unknowingly crafted what was to become the model for the entire genre, as the writers who followed in his wake - Conan Doyle included - 'borrowed' his ideas so liberally that many of them would become the signifiers of crime fiction. Dupin was "perhaps not the very first detective in fiction, but undoubtedly the model for a great many later sleuths, investigators and private eyes."8
His exploits are imparted to us by a nameless narrator, who is both the chronicler of Dupin, and a loyal, trusted companion, one who remains unable to perceive that which, to the great detective, is both obvious and integral to the case. Dupin, meanwhile, is a man of the kind of analytical genius and cold logic that makes him appear somewhat detached from reality; though only an amateur sleuth, he possesses a singular brilliance that puts the combined efforts of the Parisian police force to shame. His method requires him to balance "imaginative involvement with analytical detachment...[and] involves both a meticulous examination of physical evidence (involvement in the world of men) and a dispassionate consideration of the case as a whole (withdrawal to the realm of abstract thought)."9 If the narrator acts as our gateway into the mind of Dupin, then Dupin himself is intended to be the man whom the reader both roots for and relates to. It is Lehman's opinion that "the ambiguous person of the detective is interposed between the criminal and the police, those old antagonists, and suddenly there appears to be a detached, independent point of view with which we can identify ourselves."10
That said, how much Dupin truly conforms to this ideal is open to question. He can hardly be put forward as an easily relatable character; he is, after all, essentially an unknowable figure, and his eccentricities render him even more elusive, even though they are representative of the unique gifts for which we are expected to celebrate him. Instead, these qualities invite a certain amount of sympathy. As Margaret Kinsman wrote, "the prototypically eccentric, peculiar, intellectually superior and egotistical detective has long been associated, by readers and commentators, with a deep inner loneliness."11 As the narrator of the Dupin tales observes in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' "it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris."12 Such a remark is telling; until he encountered the narrator and the two became associates (and, ultimately, friends), we are left to assume that Dupin lived an entirely solitary existence, almost completely cut off from the human society he fights so stridently to protect.
...to be continued.
Footnotes
1. Martin Swales, 'Introduction ,' from The Art of Detective Fiction, edited by Warren Chernaik, Martin Swales and Robert Vilian (Basingstoke: New York: Macmillan; St. Martin's Press, 2000), page xii
2. Maurice J. Bennett, 'The Detective Fiction of Poe and Borges,' from Comparative Literature, Volume 35, Number 3 (Summer, 1983), page 267
3. David Lehman, The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection (Ann Arboer: University of Michigan Press, 2000), page 72
4. David Schmid, 'The Locus of Disruption: Serial Murder and Generic Conventions in Detective Fiction,' from The Art of Detective Fiction, page 76
5. J. Gerald Kennedy, 'The Limits of Reason: Poe's Deluded Detectives,' from American Literature, Volume 47, Number 2 (May, 1975), page 185
6. John T. Irwin, 'Mysteries We Reread, Mysteries of Rereading: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story, from Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Postmodernism, edited by Patricia Merivale and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), page 28
7. Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, collected in Sherlock Holmes: The Original Illustrated 'Strand' (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2006), page 24
8. Brian Docherty, 'Introduction: Hard Talk and Mean Streets,' from American Crime Fiction: Studies in the Genre (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 1-3
9. Kennedy, 'The Limits of Reason: Poe's Deluded Detectives,' pp. 194-195
10. Lehman, The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection, page 142
11. Margaret Kinsman, 'A Band of Sisters,' from The Art of Detective Fiction, page 158
12. Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' from Tales of Mystery and Imagination (London: Everyman's Library, 2002), page 415
Ones to watch: Dominant Legs
The songs on their debut EP Young At Love And Life are understated gems that miss out on 'effortless cool' plaudits simply because band leader Ryan Lynch sounds so earnest, without ever straying into the dreaded heart-on-sleeve territory. There is a glorious conflict lying at the heart of this release, as the band marry lyrics that document the loss of innocence to a melodic musical spirit that is another example of the resurgent pop aesthetic currently pervading the American independent scene. Whilst this creative schism is nothing new, Dominant Legs pull it off far more effectively than most.
"Young at Love and Life" is a perfect example of this dynamic, an undisguised portrait of maturation that has yet to happen, with the protagonists of the tale still having plenty of lessons to learn as their plight is documented over a catchy arrangement that features some first rate synth work.
The dreamy backing vocals of "About My Girls" are the perfect accompaniment to a song that expresses how difficult it is to forget love interests of the past when there are no new romances on the horizon. And "Run Like Hell For Leather" closes proceedings in an almost resigned manner, a restrained effort that puts a definitive full-stop on the narrative that runs through the EP.
Rewarding multiple listens, Young At Love And Life is a strong first release. The melancholy air of each track creates a distinctly post-Summer feel that is perfect for these October days, but the standard of songwriting is high enough to ensure that Dominant Legs have a shelf life that will run far beyond the next change of season.
http://www.myspace.com/dominantlegsmusic
Tuesday 12 October 2010
...slowly but surely
I'm still building my way up towards operating this blog on the permanent basis that you, the reader, were used to before I hastily departed for Berlin. Alas, much of my time at the moment is taken up by a) frantically applying for every vaguely suitable job available in Manchester; and b) freelance work, which definitely takes priority at this moment in time. On that note, below is a link to a feature I wrote about a band called Givers.
Ones to watch: Givers
As I mention in the feature, they seem to have taken Paul Simon's Graceland as their starting point, and ran it through a contemporary filter. The result, however you want to describe it, is undoubtedly quite impressive. I'd definitely recommend checking them out.
http://www.myspace.com/giversmusic
Ones to watch: Givers
As I mention in the feature, they seem to have taken Paul Simon's Graceland as their starting point, and ran it through a contemporary filter. The result, however you want to describe it, is undoubtedly quite impressive. I'd definitely recommend checking them out.
http://www.myspace.com/giversmusic
Friday 1 October 2010
The low key return of Breathe On Deep...
...although really, this is just a post to point you in the direction of a couple of pieces I wrote for upstart website Music Vita:
The new No Age album is another fine effort
and:
Lately, I've very much fallen in love with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
Expect something of greater substance over the weekend, as I attempt to climb back aboard the blogging horse. Until then, welcome back!
Kristian
The new No Age album is another fine effort
and:
Lately, I've very much fallen in love with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
Expect something of greater substance over the weekend, as I attempt to climb back aboard the blogging horse. Until then, welcome back!
Kristian
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)