wow, thanks for all those cat name suggestions, gentle blog readers.
I'm being sarcastic. As usual I can only count on Asa for things I ask for on the Internet.
You want to know what i decided to name him? I'll tell you on Friday so you keep reading. HA.
ok. so now i shall commence with the album recommendation project previously scheduled for last week.
***
The first album of this quintet of recommendations is
John Vanderslice's Cellar Door.
As a *vague airquotes* "film scholar* (and, let me qualify that: by scholar, I mean, master's degree, current PhD student, once had prestigious fellowship to go overseas and do something with film, forthcoming non-blog publications, the kind that smell gloriously of bookbinding glue, the kind you only put on your CV, cuz you sure don't get paid, please, oh please for a moment avert your eyes to the TipJar; by vague I mean: well who cares), I guess I just have an affinity for narrative, cinematic music.
AND SO BUT ANYWAY AHEM.
I bought this album after seeing JV open for the Mountain Goats in Florida in 2004. At the time, I was heavily involved in reading apocalyptic things about peak oil, Katherine Harris was my representative, and I watched my country re-elect George W. Bush (Dear America: Why?). The song "Pale Horse" spoke to me in a way that nothing else really had before, and when I voted for the first time, I wrote in John Darnielle and John Vanderslice as president & vice president, respectively; I held my breath and waited for the apocalypse. I moved to Europe a few months later.
I still don't trust Diebold.
Anyway anyway:
What I liked about it (Cellar Door, I mean, wasn't that the subject of this post?) was that it was more than a soundtrack and more than fan fiction. The tracks on "Cellar Door" are translations, transliterations, interpretations and workings-with of filmic texts ("and much, much more!"). Although the best thing about it is that it's elliptical and open-ended, Cellar Door features songs that are loosely about Wild Strawberries, Mulholland Drive, Requiem for a Dream (the book or the movie? I do not know, but I hope it's the movie; I really hated that book), Percy Bysshe Shelley's "The Mask of Anarchy" and others I'm probably too much of a philistine to know. Or others that are more subtle and can refer to any one of several texts.
The result is a hypertextual, nodal album that situates itself within and between all of these texts.
The entire album, as I interpret it, is about the act of translating and working with one text to produce another. As I see it, this is the paradox of creation in the Modern and postmodern ages (I don't know why I capitalize Modern but not postmodern, either). Have we reached a critical mass of creation? Is there nothing left to create but creations about creation (oh god, does that explain fanfiction) ? Is that what all creation is anyway? A spinning off of inspiration, but now we are only inspired by an ever-growing array of other texts?
Anyway. Cellar freaking Door, guys. John Vanderslice really is the friendliest guy in the music industry, not that I know that many guys in the music industry.
Cellar Door!
Plus, it just has some fucking good beats. I Recommend it to you!
1 day ago
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ooh, good one. i completely agree with you on this album; i first discovered jv on that very same tour, and cellar door was my first jv album, purchased from the merch table that evening, along with time travel is lonely.
ReplyDeletei have to say that i agree completely with your assessment of the album. in fact, i had once endeavored to figure out what exactly each song was alluding to, beyond the ones that you already listed (i had/have a vague idea that the entire thing is an homage to films, and that even pale horse may have a cinema analog beyond the shelley poem. and yes, that would mean that when it hits my blood is an adaptation of aronofsky's film and not selby's novel). i had some ideas on some of them, but i've since forgotten.
anyway, well done!