Anti-Climacus

A LITTLE MUSIC STUFF:

I went out last Saturday and saw the Femmetet, which includes singer/songwriter Kristy Hanson. As someone who has not been to a good show since Yo La Tengo four years ago, I was very impressed by what I heard. I bought Kristy's cd, and, well, have listened to pretty much nothing else since. I'm a little surprised by this, as I don't, as a general rule, dig the female singer-songwriter thing, but, well, she's amazingly good. Buy cd. Listen. See her live. Amazing!

Also, I've been listening quite a bit lately to a 9th Grade favorite of mine, Manic Street Preachers' Everything Must Go. It's not simply a good album from the height of 90s British Rock (it came out right after Pulp's Different Class and Oasis' What's the Story Morning Glory?, and before OK Computer and Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space), it might very well be the best of them. I was struck when listening to "Removables," probably the least good song from the album, how much better it was anything else that had come up on 'random' so far that day.

For those unfamiliar with the Manics, they were a derivitive-punk British band centered around the political ventings of Richey James. Their politics were not so much left- or right-leaning as anti-everything (thus: "Somebody told me to vote Conservative/ tragedy is not known under the dimmest of lights..." and "White liberal hates slavery/ needs Thai labor to clean his home..."). After a very rocky debut (the now unfortunately named Generation Terrorists), they released two mini-masterpieces, Gold Against the Soul and The Holy Bible, which produced, for example, the best song ever about World War I ("La Tristessa Durera"), the best song ever about anorexia ("4 st. 7 lb."), the best put-downs of Communist sympathy and P.C.-think ("Revol" and "P.C.P."), and pretty much the most terrifying song ever ("The Intense Humming of Evil," which opens with a snippet from the first speech at the Nuremberg Trials).

Then Richey James mysteriously disappeared. His car was found at a notorious suicide spot, but no trace of him was ever found. Thus came Everything Must Go: it's about some stuff, but it's really about the three remaining band members working through what can only be imagined as their intense anguish about the loss of their friend. The best description I ever heard of it was "Give 'Em Enough Rope as produced by Phil Spector." It moves in broad brushstrokes, it takes the Big Chord concept of early U2 to it's apotheosis. It is simply marevlous listening, and everyone should give it a try.