SOUNDTRACK: STARS-No One is Lost Tour EP (2014).
Stars are back with a new album and this downloadable 5 song EP. There’s something about Stars’ aggressive pop sensibilities that I just love. It’s the dual vocals, the big choruses and I’m sure to a certain degree it’s the darkness in the lyrics that compliment the poppy music so much.
The EP has five songs, “No One is Lost” and “From The Night” are from their new album. “Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Give It” is from their previous album The North. There’s also two exclusive tracks: “Blue Is The Colour” and “From The Night” (A Tribe Called Red Remix).
“From the Night” has simple, keyboard note-driven verses which are obliterated by the dancey and even discoey chorus. Surprisingly at the 4 minute point, it adds a third fast part which segues back into the catchy chorus. “No One is Lost” opens with Amy Milan speaking French before the keyboards wash in. It has a slightly faster pace than their usual fare. But despite the bouncy music in the chorus, we get the twisted lyric: “put your hands up coz everybody dies” (that’s Stars in a nutshell).
“Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Give It” is less dancey (perhaps less discoey sounding is more accurate). It’s got a real Stars feel to it (when Milan comes in at the chorus it is really angelic), and showcases Stars’ previous album very well.
The two new songs include the Tribe Called Red remix of “From the Night.” I’m not that big a fan of remixes, but this one is pretty good. I like the way they stripped the big chorus of the music and left it spare–which makes their catchy vocals seem kind of sinister. I actually expected a bit more of Tribe’s signature sound put into the song, but that’s not really what remixes are all about, so I guess it’s no real surprise they didn’t.
“Blue is the Colour” is a dark sounding song as well, until the chorus comes in with some poppy keyboards and slinky guitars. It’s very electronic sounding which I love in contrast to Torquil’s mellow vocals. But at 6 minutes long, this song has many sections up its sleeve, and the twist at 4 minutes really turns the song into something else, with an almost epic feel.
It’s a great sample of Stars more recent work. This link takes you to WXPN from which you can download the EP from NoiseTrade.
[READ: November 5, 2014] Mr. Gwyn
I loved this book. It has been one of my absolute favorite books in years.
The premise is fairly simple. A successful writer (Mr. Gwyn) has had three books published to much acclaim and financial success. But one day he wakes up and decides that he is done writing. He crafts a list of 50 things he will never do again, and one of them is write a book which he publishes in the newspaper. His agent thinks it is a great marketing scheme, but Gwyn is quite serious.
Gwyn then disappears from society for a while. Only his agent is able to fin him (Gwyn and the agent are very close).
After a series of small incidents, Gwyn’s agent tracks him down at the laundromat. He has sent his new employee, a young woman named Rebecca, to give him a phone through which they can talk. Rebecca is respectful and Gwyn is fascinated by her. Over the next few months, he and his agent only communicate via Rebecca.
One day, in order to avoid a rain storm, Gwyn ducks into an art gallery. He has never really understood art. But he becomes fascinated with the portraits there. And he decides that his new “job” is that he is going to create portraits with words. He calls his new occupation, “copyist.” Obviously his agent freaks out about his–no one even knows what “copyist” means. But Gwyn is determined.
He spends the next few months getting ready–he rents a studio, buys furniture and specially ordered light bulbs. And then he is ready to work. But who will he his first portrait be? He finally settles on Rebecca–someone he knows a little and feels comfortable enough to ask to pose for him. And this is where the story became fantastic.
The story could have gone in very bad directions here. Gwyn decides that he is going to have people sit for him for 30 days four hours a day. He says they must be nude. Over the course of the month, he is just going to observe them (with minimal interaction) and then write the portrait. Mr Gwyn asks Rebecca to pose for him. The terms are simple. She will show up, remove her clothes and ignore him for four hours a day every day for a month. For this he will give her $5,000 (and let her keep her job with his editor). Rebecca (whose boyfriend is known only as “the shit boyfriend,”) doesn’t have a lot of satisfaction in her life. She trusts Mr Gwyn and decides what the hell.
For the next several chapters we see how this interaction benefits both of them (in ways that I won’t spoil). There is no sex, nothing untoward, just introspection. And I found it incredibly beautiful. Best of all, we never actually see what he writes (nothing could live up to what we’ve been through).
The book is short, and I kind of expected it to end there. And yet it doesn’t. Rebecca believes that the portrait is so successful that he should certainly begin with other people. And so they put in a very simple ad, and he begins working with others. And I grew concerned when he started about how the story would go–especially when a young woman (sent by her father) disagrees with Gwyn and causes all kinds of trouble for him.
I didn’t want this to happen in this wonderfully introspective story, it was like adding new people to the story broke the spell. But then an entirely new angle develops out of the story. A small aspect that was introduced earlier in the story proves to be a clue to a wonderful mystery that we didn’t even know was a mystery.
The fact that Baricco created this quiet little book and then broke out of it and created a fascinating and engaging mystery on top of it was simply fantastic. I immediately put his other books on hold at the library because I knew I had to read more from him.
The book is coupled with Three Times at Dawn.
Three Times at Dawn is a book that is mentioned in Mr Gwyn, so it’s neat to see it fleshed out here.
There are three short stories in this book. The first one is set in a hotel. A woman (drunk, we assume) comes into the lobby where she runs into a man. The man is waiting for it to get a little later because he has an early business meeting to go to. The woman sits with him briefly and then asks to go up to his room (she says she can’t find her key and needs to lay down). The man is very concerned about his meeting and doesn’t want to get mired up with her. But he relents. She gets to his room, takes a beer out of the mini fridge, takes off her clothes and gets in his bed.
When there’s a knock at his door, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do about the woman. The ending was an unexpected thrill.
The second story is also set in a hotel. In this one two young kids come in. The night porter thinks that there is something special about the young woman but finds the man to be a despicable creature. When she comes down a few minutes later for towels, he tells her that she should get away from that guy.
She is, of course skeptical, and demands to know what he is talking about. He tells her his opinion and after some back and forth, she admits that she’s a bit afraid of him. And before they know it, the two are fleeing into the night with the boyfriend in pursuit. Once again the ending is a surprise, although not as big of one.
The final story is about a female detective who has a young boy in her charge. She feels that he is not safe where she is currently watching him and she decides to bring him to a house far away. They spend the pre-dawn hours driving to the house of a guy she dated briefly. In that hazy dawn the two talk a bit about what their lives were like before they met–and we learn why the boy is in her custody. The biggest surprise comes when we see a connection to the first story.
While I enjoyed these three stories, they were very hard pressed to be as good as Mr Gwyn. Nevertheless, they do flesh out some interesting aspects of Baricco’s writings. And I’m super excited to read what else I can get from him.
This book (like Emmaus) was translated by Ann Goldstein. I love her translation style–it’s very fluid and readable. I’m slightly concerned that she didn’t translate his earlier books, but then again, Silk was a huge best seller (and even made into a film) so it can’t be that bad, right.
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