There are love songs, of course. There are break-up songs. And then there are songs about relationships that don’t fit into either of those categories — the ones about love affairs that aren’t ending, even when something has gone seriously, perhaps irreparably wrong. Romantic crisis anthems, if you will. The newest of Montreal album, Paralytic Stalks, which is out this week, is all about a relationship in peril; the band’s mastermind, Kevin Barnes, recently told Spin, “The general theme of the whole record is trying to keep myself together when I’m faced with all this madness, trying to keep my relationships together.” It struck us that we don’t hear these stories told in song nearly enough — and since Valentine’s Day, with its perfectionist conception of love, is around the corner, this seemed like a good time to compile them.
We’ve been having warm and fuzzy feelings about Stephin Merritt ever since the Magnetic Fields’ ’90s revival track “Andrew in Drag” hit the internet, but turns out the oddball frontman just as keen on the future as he is on the past. In collaboration with D.I.Y. video arcade collective Babycastles, the Museum of Natural History is presenting Space Cruiser, a 200-person video game starring Merritt, available to play next Thursday only.
As The Observer explains, the planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space has been re-imagined as a spaceship, which you will be able to control (with a bunch of other music and video game nerds). Babycastles co-founder Syed Salahuddin elucidated further: “A multi-player control deck at the center of the theater will offer a small crew the chance to navigate the spacecraft together, piloting through treacherous asteroid belts. The crew is an unassigned, free-form team that works together to pilot the spaceship, with various parts of the ship spread out over the theater while being guided by a on-board computer system that is voiced by Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields.” This may be crazy, or this may be totally awesome. The only way to find out is to buy a ticket (try the discount code “BEYOND”) and let us know. [via Stereogum]
“The only girl I ever loved is Andrew in drag,” Stephin Merritt intones, in a refrain that rhymes “drag” with, well, that other “F” word. And so begins the delightful first single from the Magnetic Fields’ forthcoming album, Love at the Bottom of the Sea. “Andrew in Drag” is a bouncy, jangly, un-PC ode to dressing a dude up like a lady on lark and finding the result hopelessly attractive. After experimenting with Jesus and Mary Chain-style fuzz on 2008′s Distortion and ’60s Brit-folk on 2010′s Realism, it’s lovely to see Merritt return to the kind of offbeat odes that made 69 Love Songs a classic.
Last week, we read about Alina Simone, who published her first book, a collection of essays, this past year. However, what’s fascinating about her story is that her editor (at big-name publishing house FSG, no less) didn’t discover her in a small literary journal, in a magazine article, or pluck her from an MFA program, but instead found her music on internet radio service Pandora and approached her to suggest that she write a book.
“It seemed like he already viewed music and literature as part of one continuum,” Simone has explained. “Certainly, the best songs out there read like the best poems or short stories.” Though we think there’s some room for argument on that point, we can definitely think of quite a few lyricists who we really wish would write novels — whether we think they’ve got the life experience or imagination to write a fascinating story or just enough chops slapping words together that we want to roll around in ever sentence they assemble. Click through to check out which musicians we think should write novels — and our first imaginings of what those novels would be like — and let us know who you’d like to see transition into fiction in the comments.
Among his many talents, Daniel Handler is the master of painting the precocious youth in moments of existential peril — his alter ego is Lemony Snicket, after all, though we admit we like his lusciously written books for adults even better. In Handler’s newest novel Why We Broke Up, illustrated by the great Maira Kalman, teenagers Min and Ed have, well, just broken up. And now, “arty” girl Min is writing her basketball-playing ex a novel-length letter as to just exactly why, following the trail of their failed relationship’s trinkets and detritus — sugar bowls, ticket stubs — until she reaches the bitter end. The tale is as simple as it gets, but expertly rendered and, as far as we’re concerned completely true to the teenage experience.
We’ve all been through it, whether we’d like to admit it or not, so to ease the pain, we’ve asked Handler (who in addition to being a successful novelist just happens to be the sometime accordionist for the Magnetic Fields — who would have ever broken up with him?) to put together the ultimate playlist to help you get through any breakup, whether you’re sixteen or sixty. Click through to listen to Handler’s picks and let us know which tracks you count on to heal your own broken hearts in the comments. Read More »
The holiday season is in full swing and everywhere you go you’re admonished to roast chestnuts on an open fire, rock some jingle bells, admire the winter wonderland, and have yourself a merry little Christmas. As soon as Black Friday came around (and we’re being generous since the economic downturn dictated that this year the Christmas season needed to start immediately after Halloween) every store, public space, and street-corner Santa started blaring holiday music. What’s annoying about Christmas music is that playlists, from radio to retail, tend to be so tightly controlled that you only hear the same handful of classics over and over. As an alternative, we at Flavorpill would like to offer up some of the best overlooked Christmas songs. Read More »
A couple of months back, our own Kathleen Massara celebrated the release of Peter Nadas’s weighty novel Parallel Stories with a selection of 10 epic novels that we dared you to finish. Of course, this also got us thinking about equivalents in other art forms, whether it’s film (Charlie Kaufman’s interminable Synecdoche, New York springs to mind immediately), theater… or, inevitably, music. The history of music is full of albums that are awfully difficult to sit through in their entirety, whether it’s because they’re “difficult” or just because they’re damn long. So here are 10 albums we dare you to finish. Have you got any challenges for us? Read More »
If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennet, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: Jane Austen’s beloved heroine, Elizabeth Bennet.
If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s ink and paper representation of the quintessential American dream — with a dark side.
Strange Powers, a documentary which took directors Kerthy Fix and Gail O’Hara ten years to make, provides an intimate look at both Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields. While the focus is on Merritt’s relationship with longtime pal Claudia Gonson (Magnetic Fields manager and keyboardist), the film also chronicles his music-making process, with observations from well-known fans such as Peter Gabriel, Neil Gaiman, Carrie Brownstein, and Sarah Silverman.
