I think of demons...

...for you.

That's an actual Roky Erickson lyric. I love Roky, but, really, I can't relate. But can you dislike "The Interpreter" or "Mine Mine Mind"? "Cold Night for Alligators"? "Reverberations"? Not if you're honest, you can't. He's a genius, even though sometimes it's like Tenacious D, but for real (like "Stand for the Fire Demon").

Without getting into the whole mental health part of his biography, I will say that despite his far-out cred, you're basically talking about blues-form garage jams with some unusual pentatonic solos on top. And his bridges, to be honest, are far out. So of course I loved I Have Always Been Here Before(thanks for buying it for me Rachel!).

That said, his music really fits well with stuff that came much later -- "I Have Always Been Here Before" is just steps away from Guided by Voices. (Who I just saw on Austin City Limits, and man that singer was drunk off his ass. I think I like them again.)

Everywhere's a beach...

The first little mini-track of the Magnetic Fields' Holidayis my ringtone. As an album, I think it's Merritt's best; nevertheless, I think Get Losthas a few songs that top anything on this album: "Famous" in particular. But not much better (listen to "Strange Powers" here).

What strikes me most about this album are the lyrical conventions -- especially the comparisons: "On the Ferris Wheel, looking out on Coney Island / Under more stars than there are prostitutes in Thailand [...] When we kiss it feels like a flying saucer landing." And the entire first verse of "Desert Island" is nothing but a list of comparisons.

So there's a showy lyrical effusiveness here, and I kind of like it. I'd have to agree with Bob on appreciating the lyric "I read your manifestoes and your strange religous tracts / You took me to the library and kissed me in the stacks." (Also thanks for Bob for introducing me to the Magnetic Fields in the first place.)

But the point of this effusiveness is unclear, or at least I don't get it. Maybe I could be clever and argue that there's some implicit comparison between ordinary life and "holiday" life through the album? I'd point out the Brian Wilson-inspired songs "In My Secret Place" and "In My Car" in my defence: maybe the songs, like a holiday (or a hide-away, or your car, or a desert island, ecstasy trip, etc.), take you out of the ordinary world and into a poetic, showy fantasy.

A Cannibal's Feast

Reviews of Hemingway's Moveable Feast usually focus on the deeply cruel portraits of Hemingway's emigre circle of artists -- not unfairly, especially considering the F. Scott Fitzgerald anecdotes. Papa eats his old friends and acquaintances alive in this one.

But what people don't seem to focus on is the amount to which Hem eats himself up -- he just tears through his Paris years in a wave of cynicism. And yet, despite this, there's an undercurrent of nostalgia for his simpler days, before he wised up and learned what an ass he and everybody else was. Ah, sweet memories.

I think it's unsettling that these stories are so unattached to the author's present; there's no rationale for them, just a free-floating bitterness that forces him to recast his earlier happinesses as if they were a kind of gullibility or blindness.

Don't get me wrong. The gossip's hot and vicious, and, at the end of the day, it's still Papa H: I think I'm genetically predisposed to really love his writing no matter what.

Lem!

Didn't have time to post earlier this week, but RIP Stanislaw Lem. One of my faves -- read Pirx the Pilot, the Cyberiad, and Star Diaries; enjoy; feel nerdy.