SOUNDTRACK: NEW PORNOGRAPHERS-Together (2010).
I enjoyed The New Pornographers’ debut album Mass Romantic, but I didn’t bother getting their later discs. In the ensuing years, I’ve grown appreciative of both Neko Case solo and Dan Bejar’s Destroyer. And, while I intend to get the NP’s middle discs, in the meantime, I am totally enamored of this one.
Their first disc sounded like a group of great songwriters doing their own thing. This disc (their fifth) sounds like a group of great songwriters working together. The album sounds cohesive and, frankly, wonderful. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite song, because when the disc is over I find myself singing bits and pieces from so many of them.
The songs work well together, with different vocalists coming to the fore. But there’s an overall cohesiveness to the disc. Even the Dan Bejar songs (three on this disc), which sound very distinctly Bejar, act like a change of pace but retain the album’s style, rather than sounding like Bejar solo songs.
And I like the Bejar songs quite a lot (“Silver Jenny Dollar” is always in my head), but it’s the Newman songs (those sung by Neko Case and otherwise) which rise into the pop stratosphere. The gorgeous delayed chorus of “Up in the Dark,” the beautiful cello of “Moves.” Even a song like “Valkyrie in the Roller Disco” which opens a little quietly compared to the rest of the disc, pulls out a stunning chorus.
“A Bite Out of My Bed” is weird and wonderful and, of course, those first 6 songs are amazing. “My Shepherd” is a stunning song and “Your Hands (Together)” is a catchy rocker which should have been a huge single. Just when you think that “As a Rule” couldn’t possibly get any catchier, along comes a whistle solo. Fabulous. And the album closer, “We End Up Together” has great group vocals and a nice return to those catchy strings from the opening. It’s a great release from start to finish.
[READ: January 24, 2011] Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
I loved Doctorow’s Little Brother. And when I recently said I would be going to Disney, an astute reader said I should read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (which I’d never heard of).
Knowing what I know about Doctorow (this and all of his books are published under a Creative Commons license and if you go to his site, you can download the entire book for free), I expected that this book might bash Disney (the main source for our current copyright extension laws–see The Copyright Extension Act also known as The Mickey Mouse Protection Act). The title also hinted at is as well. But in fact, this book does not bash Disney World in any way.
Rather, it embraces the Magic Kingdom as a sort of traditional refuge, something that should be immune to technological update. Of course, since it is a science fiction novel, it is also futuristic, full of bizarre technologies and lots and lots of behavior control.
The book opens in the undetermined future (although later in the book we learn that it’s probably sometime around 2069). The Prologue is full of words that won’t be defined until later in the book (if at all): “Deadhead” as a verb, “Bitchun Society,” and this whole sentence: “I took a moment to conjure a HUD with his Whuffie score on it.”
So, we know that this is not a typical story. And it stays atypical. Chapter One opens:
My girlfriend was 15 percent of my age, and I was old-fashioned enough that it bugged me. Her name was Lil, and she was second-generation Disney World, her parents being among the original ad-hocracy that took over the management of Liberty Square and Tom Sawyer Island. She was, quite literally, raised in Walt Disney World and it showed.
The story is set in Disney World. Julius, the narrator who is 100+ years old but has been rebooted several times and appears 40, is dating Lil, who was 19 or so when they met. And despite her youth and apparent airheadedness, they really hit it off.
As stated, her parents were more in less in charge of portions of Disney. So, when they decide to deadhead, it puts Lil (and by proxy Julius) in charge. Lil’s domain is the Hall of Presidents (and there’s fun insider knowledge about the Hall, and Lil is often seen with her head inside Abraham Lincoln). Julius, meanwhile, loves loves loves The Haunted Mansion (and the story of his first time(s) there is really great). And he works behind the scenes there now, constantly trying to make it better (shave a few seconds off here, make this part a little scarier, etc).
And all is great until Julius is killed.
When Julius reboots, he believes that the person who killed him is Debra. Debra is a hot shot techie out of Disneyland Beijing. Julius believes she is looking to take over Disney World. And he has some theories as to what she’s up to: she is trying to reconfigure the Hall of Presidents, removing the animatronic Presidents and “replacing the whole thing with broadband uplinks of gestalts from each of the Presidents’ lives: newspaper headlines, speeches, distilled biographies, personal papers.”
And when she and her techies do it, the upgraded Hall becomes a huge hit with unfathomable lines to get in (anyone who has visited the stodgy Hall can chuckle at the thought of a two-hour wait to get in). Julius thinks that Debra has her sites on the Haunted Mansion and he wants to defend it. The Mansion is beloved as it is. It even has a multitude of fan sites dedicated to it. And these fans do not want to see their beloved Mansion toyed with. So maybe he can use them fans to keep the Mansion free from Debra’s gestalt.
But when his whuffie starts to go down, and he can no longer go online, how is he ever to fight the power of Debra and her team?
Despite the confusion of the terms (and the fact that some are never even fully explained, you just sort of figure them out) the story was really fun and really quite thrilling. The lead up to the climax is especially exciting. Doctorow’s future is at once exciting and scary (you really never die, you just reboot to the last time you updated yourself–sound advice for computers, but a little creepy when it comes to people). His description of life in space (you live in a zero-gravity bubble) sounds super fun. And unlike many sci-fi books, there’s no dystopian government or evil empire looking to smash you down. It’s actually a fairly positive spin on the future, as long as you can keep your whuffie up.
It was a perfect book to read right after having been to Disney World because it was clear that Doctorow spent a lot of time either there or with the Imagineers learning about how the park was set up and how the rides worked. Having just been there, all of the details were still fresh in my mind.
Thanks Infinite Tasks! (His review of Doctorow’s Makers (which I haven’t read) is here)
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