Holy cow, can she play a mean guitar!
I'd been meaning to go to a show of hers for a few years after seeing her on a bill at the Red Rooster and other joints around town. She plays blues in an Albert Collins/B.B. King vein - more or less - with forays into something more like blues-inflected rock, perhaps a bit Hendrixy.
Great stuff.
Maybe a week ago I finished reading Absolution.
The first thing I thought upon reading the final words was "I should have re-read the first three books." I think a lot of what happens here is mentioned in the original series but I have forgotten so much as it's been years since I took them in.
Absolution has 3 parts. The first section is called "Dead Town" which describes the fate of an expedition in the Forgotten Coast some 20 years prior to the formation of Area X and serves as a prelude to the horrors to come.
"Dead Town" is as chilling and uncanny as anything in the original Southern Reach books. The carnivorous rabbits made the simple act of mastication into a nightmare and were disturbing enough on their own but then they are slaughtered with ruthless efficiency via flame throwers making for a genuinely horrific scene in which I could almost smell the burning flesh and fur. Just when I thought it was safe to take a breather, we get the scene wherein the Rogue visits the biologists and it was simply disturbing and twisted - diabolical even. I could just see Jeff VanderMeer twirling his moustache and laughing as I realized that there was no going back, that I'd been beset by an uneasiness that I would not, could not shake until days after having finished the book. When that scene was done, I had to stop and think about it. Recover, in a way. I wasn't quite sure what had happened to the expedition in it but it was all bad.
The biologists had reached the white rabbits and did not care or notice that they trampled blackened corpses and living creatures both, weapons slack at their sides like a muscle memory that was amnesia, this onrushing surge toward the Rogue behind his veil of silver. Nor did the living rabbits care if they were trampled.
...
Now the Rogue kept opening his mouth wider and wider and the words came out louder and more brutal above the downpour. Those words could not be extinguished by the rain. Those words rose and permeated and cascaded outward and around the Rogue - even as the first wave of biologists surging against that "fey weaponry" crumpled, fell to their knees, slid down on gurgling mud as if they could evade the fire "that called our names"...except it kept calling and each time the desolation within became more final and complete.
The second section, "The False Daughter", concerns Old Jim, a retired(?) Central operative who is lured back into service for one last job. He is estranged from his daughter and, quite disturbingly, Central casts a younger agent to play the role of his daughter which makes for a weird plunge into Old Jim's psyche. For his part, Old Jim has been sent to the Forgotten Coast to investigate the strange happenings there which are related the expedition from "Dead Town". He is obsessed with finding the Rogue and encounters the Tyrant, an alligator that the biologists let loose nearly 20 years prior to his mission. The Tyrant has grown quite large and seems to have become sentient. The mere potential of the gator still being alive is enough to loosen the veteran agent's grip on reality.
This section ended with a Solaris (the film) vibe for me with Old Jim seeming to return to the "normal" world of the Forgotten Coast but I wasn't convinced. The camera could have pulled back and shown Old Jim at the Village as merely some twisted diorama sitting alone amid alien corn. It reiterated what "Dead Town" revealed to us: whatever alien or intelligence or force is loose in the Forgotten Coast, we humans are unable to divine its purpose or makes sense of its methods.
The book closes with "The First and the Last" which takes place a year after the border that defines Area X has descended. We witness the first expedition into Area X from the point of view of Lowry who drops hundreds, if not thousands of f-bombs. I found his dialogue to be annoying but eventually got used to it.
We know the mission failed and here we get a glimpse of madness settling in and members dying one by one as flesh melts into hazmat suits and other dreadful and bizarre happenings befall the crew.
Absolution was a great read. VanderMeer nails the cosmic horror thing perfectly as people descend into madness before an incomprehensible presence.
Last weekend my ladyfriend and I went to see The Claudettes, Chicago's premier band who does what The Claudettes do. It was the Madison release party for their new album Garage Glamour and the show was sold out. Also there was Hannah, The Leaf Queen, who shared her photos with me. She was seated right up front while I was off to the side and so her pics are better than mine.
Liz Ele is the new drummer having replaced Michael Caskey earlier this spring.
She seemed to be more of a rock drummer and she drove the songs forward with her steady push. She added a controlled manic energy to the music.
It had been a while since I'd seen the band perform and singer Rachel Williams has settled into being the frontwoman. Her performance that night had more energy and, for lack of a better way of saying it, she put on more of a show. When I last saw the band it was shortly after she had joined and she seemed to be reacting to the music onstage then but now she is part of it, as if the beat was emanating from the movement of her lithe figure, her singing tacking a course for the melodies.
The new album really puts her range on full display. There's the pleading of "(You Are My) Whole World", the sultry seduction of "Touch You Back", and my favorite at the moment, the Zack de la Rocha-like delivery on "Don't Give It Up to the Thieves".
Johnny Iguana's piano was as bracing and melodic as ever while Zach Verdoorn effortlessly alternated between bass and electric guitar. Plus I think he sang more that night as well.
A great show.
Also thanks to Rachel for helping me clean up a spilled beer.
I have visited the planetarium a couple times recently. The first was for a screening of Beyond Our Senses: Bank Swallows.
Directed by Wisconsinite David Andrew Busse, it portrays colonies of bank swallows who migrate to the shores of Lake Michigan just south of Milwaukee. We witness males on the prowl for mates, the youngins hatching and growing quickly to become fledglings.
Busse was on hand for the screening and he talked about how the idea for the movie developed from observing the birds on walks and wanting to know more and to document what he was witnessing.
Not only was this a fascinating look at an animal that I knew nothing of until watching this, it was really neat to see the birds in action on the full dome of the planetarium. There's much more happening there than just stars in the night sky. (Which are really hoopy, don't get me wrong.)
More recently I was at the planetarium to take in a screening of Sounds of the Oceans.
It's not really a documentary and is more of an immersive experience. We are shown footage of orcas and whales and dolphins as they glide through the ocean waters. Their calls are mixed with music and the combination makes for a relaxing journey beneath the waves.
While there was definitely a New Age vibe to be had, I found it an interesting impressionistic ride. What were the animals' calls about? Were they having a chat or trading insults about the diver with the camera?
The movie ended with suggestions for how to be kinder to the oceans and their inhabitants. Is chilling out your audience to the graceful movements of some ocean life the best way to build empathy for them and to lead folks to action? I don't know. Nonetheless Sounds of the Oceans is a serene getaway from the workaday world that invites viewers to seek kinship with the life beneath the waves.
My ladyfriend and I went to see Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Comic Mystery last weekend down at the Bartell.
It was great fun and, truth be told, I was surprised at how old fashioned its comedic attitude was. I know nothing about the history of this play but it felt very old school to me. Its humor was for all ages and there was lots of Watson making faces at the audience and faux mistakes that let the audience know the characters knew they were in a play.
Fun was the watchword instead of grand themes.
Last weekend a friend and I went to the Gamma Ray to see Souled American, a pioneering alt-country band from Chicago. I heard about them briefly on Sound Opinions shortly before seeing that they'd be stopping here in Madison and figured we had to go.
Joe Adducci and Chris Grigoroff were joined by an unknown (to me) guitarist and they proceeded to play some stripped down, country-inflected balladry.
I thought the tunes had strong Townes van Zandt vibes. (It's snowing on Elston. Ha!) They seemed to have a fatalism to them. The music may have been sparsely arranged but the bare bones aesthetic combined with gritty performances for an achingly genuine experience.
I watched Errol Morris' latest documentary, CHAOS: The Manson Murders. It was really neat for me as I knew only the barest of details of the Manson Family and their deadly exploits.
In classic Morris style, the truth behind the Manson madness and the hideous murders is called into question. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi (who was a resident of Hibbing, MN at the same time as Bob Zimmerman) put forth the idea that Manson wanted to start a race war in his book Helter Skelter: The True Story of The Manson Murders. Here Tom O'Neill's book, which gave the movie its title, calls that into question and throws in CIA involvement along with a mind control conspiracy.
Bugliosi's hypothesis is further brought into question by former Manson follower Bobby Beausoleil who paints a more mundane picture of Manson. It's one of a scorned wanna be musician turned maniac and not a fiend bent on bringing to fruition some crazed apocalyptic vision of interracial strife.
The movie does a good job of giving the details of Manson's life and the sordid, murderous affairs he was involved in. Plus it ponders just how a crazy man who lived on the fringes of society when he wasn't in jail could command a commune and convince his followers to commit those sadistic murders in the summer of 1969.
I also appreciated the use of Manson's music. It fits into the narrative, yes, but it had been a long time coming for me. Guns N' Roses covered one of his songs on their album "The Spaghetti Incident?" and I recall well the uproar that caused. And so it was just interesting for me to finally hear Manson performing his songs at long last.
