Showing posts with label scott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scott. Show all posts
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Album of the Week: Alex Berkley - 28 Days of Fun 2: Sick of the Sound of My Voice


The “Buffalo Fun-A-Day” project, promoted by Sugar City, encourages artists to do something they think is “fun or interesting everyday in February,” to document that process and then share it with the community. Last year, local singer-songwriter, Alex Berkley, partook in the project, resulting in his album, 28 Days of Fun. This year, he partook in the project again, following up with a sequel, and our Album of the Week: 28 Days of Fun 2: Sick of the Sound of My Voice.

The first 28 Days of Fun record actually featured 28 separate songs, written and recorded each day of February 2013. Berkley took a slightly different approach on 28 Days of Fun 2, writing separate songs each day of the third week of February 2014 (“My Daily Diary 2/15/2014” through “My Daily Diary 2/21/2014”) and then writing seven separate pieces of music, that would eventually form a single song, during the first, second, and last weeks of February (“We Never Close,” “In His Hands,” and “We Never Open”).

The three lengthier songs provide a nice balance to the manic one-to-two-minute day trips and seem to have allowed Berkley an opportunity to open up a bit more, creatively, by focusing on a particular piece for a longer period of time. (However, given that the conceit of the project is to create a stand-alone piece of work each day of the month, the longer songs end up sounding more like suites, or variations on themes, rather than traditionally structured songs.)

Regardless, the musical accomplishment on the album, given the limitation placed on its creation, is remarkable. Berkley makes churning out catchy, thoughtful guitar-based music sound effortless, though it does leave one longing to hear what more he might be capable of without the month-long time constraint. (For an idea: see the excellent Lists and Listlessness.) The 28 Days of Fun albums, while smart and impressive in their capacity as creative experiments, make a proper full-length follow-up to Lists (hopefully with “the Atlanta Falcons” in tow) seem that much more vital.

As for the songs we do have at the moment, the “Daily Diary” section of the album will probably sound the most familiar to those who have heard Berkley’s work in the past. These are seven short, acoustic-guitar based songs, some of which feature a surprise guest-instrument (banjo on the 17th, what sounds like an accordion? on the 18th and 21st, harmonica on the 20th), and all of which feature impressively written melodies that would probably get stuck in your head if they weren’t so fleeting, (with the 16th and 20th especially strong).

The songs are exactly what they say they are: straightforward accounts of the daily activities of Alex Berkley from Saturday, February 15, 2014 through to the following Friday (though, through the power of deduction, it appears each song refers to activities that actually took place the day prior). It shouldn’t surprise anyone who listened to The Star Trek Movies EP that Berkley spends a lot of time with various forms of sci-fi geekery (Return of the Jedi, Star Trek, comic books, X-Men, Sea Quest) and the numerous Buffalo references on the album might have broken whatever record Jack Topht previously held for local name-drops in a 15-minute span of music (Elmwood, Allentown, Record Theatre, Steak and Cake, Nietzsche’s, Hardware, Casa Di Pizza - to name only a few).

Overall, Berkley seems to spend a lot of time doing what most of us are probably doing: hanging out with a significant other, a dog, various friends, commenting on the weather, eating, playing music, watching television. The most impressive part of these songs might be how willing Berkley is to truthfully set forth the relatively mundane nature of a winter’s week in Buffalo. Moving your car to the other side of the street and getting a bagel at Coffee Culture isn’t exactly glamorous stuff, but it’s happening. He gets a lot of mileage in these seven songs out of not trying too hard to make these everyday activities seem more important than they are, and letting the events speak for themselves to show how they naturally become important in the way that they accumulate to become your life.

As stated before, Berkley seems to have had a little more room to play around and experiment with the other three songs on the album, each of which were written and recorded over the space of a week.

“We Never Close” (almost certainly a reference to the infamous Bird and Elmwood convenience store, though it doesn’t actually seem to be mentioned in the song) and “We Never Open” serve as bookends for the album. “Close” and “Open” feature a more full-band, electric sound with various instruments weaving in and out of the separate sections and a welcome, spoken-word reading of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles on “Open.” Both suites contain many strong ideas that could, foreseeably, have served well as fleshed-out, stand-alone songs. (Particularly of note: the section that begins at around 2:20 of “Close” with one of the album’s best lyrics: “I’m gonna lie down dying in the place I was born, I’m a sad sorry sucker for the world I adore.”)

The most cohesive piece here though is “In His Hands,” which, seemingly, starts out as a cover of the traditional American spiritual song, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” but gradually becomes something much more. Musically, the song moves from a cappella, to folk tune, to sludgy blues-rock, to hymnal, to something vaguely psychedelic, and back to gentle guitar picking. As it does so, the lyrics mutate from the traditional version to Berkley’s own take on what exactly it means (sometimes, literally) for “the whole world” to be in God’s hands. It’s a song that’s so obviously ripe for parody that, in retrospect, it’s kind of surprising nobody has done it yet (confirmed, on my part, by a one-minute Google search).

There are several very funny and poignant lines, that are probably better heard than read, but the real treat comes at the end of the song. After musically revving up, and increasingly calling into question God’s intentions with all of the odd things he’s carrying around, Berkley settles back down with a soft, acoustic guitar and pulls a neat trick with an homage to a very well known song that’s so surprising and touching the first time you hear it, I think it’s better not to spoil it here. It’s an honest and simple moment, exemplary of Berkley when he’s at his best, and it works like a charm.

Lucky for you, you’ll have an opportunity to see one of the strongest songwriters in Buffalo when you (surely) come see Alex Berkley (with his band, the Atlanta Falcons) live at Buffablog's 4th Birthday Party, Saturday, March 29th at Duke’s.



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Songbook Report: Real Estate's Atlas


61st verse, same as the first!

That's what I thought upon first listening to Real Estate’s new album, Atlas. I didn’t necessarily mean it negatively as I’m subjectively quite fond of the band. However, their consistency is truly remarkable. It’s as if they built a studio over the opening to a three-minute guitar-pop mineshaft and every two years they manage to dig out another ten songs and put them on an album. The most surprising thing about the third batch of Real Estate songs is how mostly unsurprising they are: another ten gems, carefully dusted off and cleaned up and just variable enough from the prior row of gems to convince you they’re originals and not knock-offs.

There’s an implacable trait to Real Estate’s songs that give them the feeling of having “always existed,” despite being convinced that you’ve never actually heard them before. It’s as if their guitar-pop mineshaft is connected to an alternate reality where they unearth songs that some other version of you has already heard. They scratch at you in a tiny, familiar way as if you had dreamed about them and then forgotten them. Part of that is probably due to Real Estate’s sonic regularity. A refusal to stray outside of the established canon of what it means to sound like a Real Estate song, giving them all a somewhat “too perfect” quality that doesn’t necessarily seem real or likely. 

In that sense, Atlas is almost a mirror image of Real Estate’s last album, Days: ten songs, the third song a snappy upbeat single, the fourth song a Matt Mondanile-penned instrumental, a late album laid-back lead vocal turn by Alex Bleeker. Whatever else Atlas may be, it also appears to be the “atlas” to making a Real Estate album. Whether you consider this to be a good thing or a bad thing probably depends on what you make of Real Estate to begin with. If you’ve previously found comfort in those tireless, shimmering guitars then it’s hard to imagine you won’t love Atlas. If you’re someone who feels Real Estate is capable of “boring you to death” and merely “our generation’s version of easy listening” (quotes attributable to my unimpressed girlfriend), then Atlas will be unlikely to change your mind.

Other than a few chords played during the intro of “Past Lives” and a droney undertone to “Primitive” it’s hard to even determine that the band has a new keyboard player. The instrumental “April’s Song” (written by Matt Mondanile, also of Ducktails), with its heavily reverbed lead guitar sounding like a mischievous rainstorm, is probably the most experimental sounding thing Real Estate has ever done. That’s saying something, as the song isn’t exactly groundbreaking, (though it’s also probably the best piece of music on the album).

However, while it’s safe to say Atlas doesn’t sound much different than Real Estate has in the past, the eight new songs sung by guitarist and lead singer, Martin Courtney, do have a certain thematic weight to them that’s been absent on prior Real Estate albums.


Atlas was the Titan who was punished by being forced to bear the weight of the heavens on his shoulders and that’s certainly a reference that might be in play for the frequently anxious narrator of the album. However, the more apparent reference seems to be to the everyday atlas, the collection of maps, presumably, meant to guide someone toward a particular destination. The album’s narrator is certainly concerned with “finding” something (clarity, peace of mind, “you”) and Courtney uses the idea of physically traveling with an atlas as a parallel for the way we might use feelings and memories as guidance on an emotional journey. The most often referenced destination on Atlas seems to be an unnamed third party and the driving force behind arriving at that destination seems to be, as Courtney says in “Crime,” not wanting to “die, lonely and uptight.”

On opening song, “Had to Hear,” the narrator is “out again on his own” and calling “you” because he “had to hear you just to feel near you.” There’s’ separation, there’s isolation, and there’s a “horizon,” which is interesting imagery for someone trying to get somewhere as a horizon is a place that you can see but never actually reach. In “Past Lives,” the narrator’s atlas brings him back to his hometown where he marvels at much nostalgia and does everything but explicitly say, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” The focus remains on reuniting with another individual, however, as Courtney sings, “I see past lives, but somehow, you’re still here.” 


Beyond merely finding “you,” Courtney is also concerned with communicating clearly with “you.” On “Talking Backwards,” the narrator seems to be speaking with that same unnamed, distant person he called up on “Had to Hear” when he says “we’re not getting any closer, you’re too many miles away” and regrets that he “might as well be talking backwards,” apparently signaling a standard-issue failure to communicate. He echoes this sentiment on “The Bend” with the first line, “Have I not been clear? Or do I sound insincere? I’m just trying to make some sense of this, before I lose another year.” The helplessness of not being understood then seems to be amplified by a feeling of not actually being in control of one’s journey when Courtney sings: “like I’m behind the wheel, but it won’t steer,” giving us some indication that having the “atlas” is only half of the solution and the unspoken other half is actually having the control to set yourself on the correct path.

The “horizon” from the first track comes up again on second-to-last track, “Horizon,” when Courtney sings: “just over the horizon, that’s where I’ll always think you’ll be, it’s always so surprising, to find you right there next to me.” (See this echoed also on “Primitive” – “don’t know where I want to be, but I’m glad that you’re with me.”) The revelation here seems to be that all of this wandering (be it physical or emotional) has been a bit pointless. The fact that he’s been looking so hard for something that’s already there seems to call into question the sincerity with which he actually wants what he claims he’s been searching for.

To close out the album, a “Navigator” is, of course, someone who might use an “atlas” and lines about meeting where the “pavement ends” and “waiting for the hands on the clock to stop” definitely let us know we’ve reached the end of the trip. “Navigator” is a bit of a let down compared to the final songs on Real Estate’s last two albums (“Snow Days” and “All the Same,” both of which ended with dramatic instrumental send-offs) but here, it might be appropriately so. At the end of the song the band opts for anti-climax as Courtney sighs: “I have no idea where the day’s been,” and the album ends almost immediately thereafter.

There’s an unsettling gravity to this final, unexpected declaration. That the navigator who seemed to be so earnestly trying to employ his atlas to bridge the distance between himself and another suddenly admits he was really just unnecessarily screwing around and finds himself unable to even account for all of his wasted time. Real Estate might sound as light as they ever have, but they’ve certainly never felt this heavy.



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Tonight: Dr. Dog


Dr. Dog is playing music at Town Ballroom tonight. The doors will open at 7 pm and you can still buy a ticket for $20. New Jersey band, Saint Rich, will play music first and then Dr. Dog will play music after them.

If you do not know, Dr. Dog is a band. Dr. Dog plays melodic rock music that is sometimes a little psychedelic and sometimes a little soulful and is often compared to music from the 1960’s and 1970’s. Dr. Dog has two lead singers. One sounds like a more wide-eyed, less acerbic version of Wayne Coyne (Scott McMicken) and one sounds like a slightly distraught amalgamation of the various lead vocalists of The Band (Toby Leaman).

I first saw Dr. Dog play live in 2009 at Mohawk Place. They had released Fate the previous summer and had a good amount of material to work with off of their early albums. They put on a highly energetic performance to a highly intoxicated audience and then, toward the end of the show, after a fairly lengthy set, told the crowd that they would continue playing songs until everyone got to hear all of the songs they wanted to hear that night. This seemed like it might be a joke at first until someone yelled out a song, and they played it. And then when that song was over, someone yelled out another song, and they played it. This went on until everyone got to hear all of the songs they wanted to hear that night.

I’ve seen Dr. Dog play live another three times since then and that first show is exemplary of my reasoning for doing so. While they haven’t gone so far as to endlessly “take requests” again, they always come across as incredibly humble and aware of their relationship to their audience in a way that tends to earn musicians descriptions such as “hard working” and “a great band to see live,” the first of which I suspect is true of Dr. Dog, and the second of which I know is true of Dr. Dog and expect will continue to be true if you go see them tonight.

Dr. Dog's latest album is 2013's B-Room. Check out songs from that album as well as from the rest of their back catalogue in the Spotify playlist below, compiled by my girlfriend Julie whom, rest assured, is well qualified to put together the "Dr. Dog Starter Kit."




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buffaBLOG's Best of 2013: Staff Picks - Favorite Songs Part 2


Travis Kowalski

 Lorde - "Team"
Even if you overlook the worldwide hype and praise New Zealand teenager Ella Yelich-O’Connor aka Lorde has received this year, it’s easy to see why her music has made it into countless international playlists. Her first single “Royals” introduced everyone to an amazing vocal ability and perceptive writing style that was inherently missing in the pop landscape, but it was her second single, “Team,” that instantly became my favorite song this year. Within the first few seconds of the song, Lorde demands your attention with a soft whisper of “Wait ‘til you’re announced. We’ve not yet lost all our graces.” Swirling synths and polished vocal work only add another dimension to Lorde’s limitless musical capabilities, which really aim to prove how she’s looking to not only inch her way into pop music, but instead swiftly move all the way to the top. Amidst newfangled pop classics like “Team” that goal seems very possible. 

Ailsa Forlenza

 Beats Antique - "You The Starry Eyed" (ft. Lynx & Sorne)
On their album A Thousand Faces Act I, Beats Antique musically explores the hero's journey, from the initial call to crossing the threshold into the underworld. "You The Starry Eyed" is a beacon of hope, urging the hero to plod forward. Lynx's angelic wavers glide over a sonorous synth landscape in a gentle duet with Sorne. It's inspiring, with lyrics like "Push on through the night/ like the ones who came before you," and an epic dance groove, verging on the edges of electro-glitch. 



Michael Torsell

Vampire Weekend - "Ya Hey"
Winnowing down a year’s worth of albums is difficult enough but winnowing everything down to one standout track is even worse, especially in a year filled with stand out tracks. That said, I am going to say that my top track remains Vampire Weekend’s “Ya Hey,” off of their seminal third album, Modern Vampires of the City. The song’s sweep works well as both a single and within the larger record, with a dramatic bounce and scope that raises hearing someone artfully transition songs at a rooftop party to a biblical level. “Ya Hey” (itself an inversion of 2003’s song of the year “Hey Ya,” which I just noticed was 10 years ago…weird) remained on top throughout the summer and fall and it sits comfortably as my song of the year for 2013.



Jessica Brant

The Neighbourhood - "Sweater Weather"
There are only a few songs I can name that I've broke out in dance to in my room. "Sweater Weather" is one of them. It's just a super sexy song, the perfect indie rock gem with a hip hop twist. The guitar narrates the story, the drums keep it treading. Elegantly written and beautifully arranged. 



Mac McGuire

Duckails - "Letter of Intent"
One of my favorite developments of 2013 was Ducktails front man (and Real Estate guitarist) Matthew Mondanile's move out of the bedroom and into a full fledged band. The Flower Lane tapped into some of the 80s soft rock sounds that Destroyer used on Kaputt and paired them perfectly with Mondanile's signature, laid back guitar work, and no song captured that fleshed out sound better than "Letter of Intent." It's funny that the moment Ducktails ceased to become a bedroom recording project that Mondanile released his most bedroom appropriate song yet. Led by the dreamy vocals of Jessa Farkus and Ian Drennan, "Letter of Intent" is a coy, yet seductive number, practically begging you to get lost in its smooth, jangle of guitars and wispy horns. It's absolutely perfect. While I listened to no song more this year than "Letter of Intent," I couldn't end this post without giving some credit to Washed Out's "Don't Give Up," Okkervil River's "Down Down The Deep River," and that glorious coda on Vampire Weekend's "Hannah Hunt."



Tom Etu 

Well Worn Boot - "Ballad of Billy Klubb"
"Ballad of Billy Klubb" is a good appetizer for those uninitiated into the world of Well Worn Boot. Become enthralled with the tale of the animal they call Billy Klubb, and rediscover the flute as an important instrument in heavy music. If you can sit still while listening to this, you’re probably a tree. These wild men don’t fuck around. Do not listen to this song while driving a car unless you are prepared to run red lights. 



Scott Mancuso

 The National - "Pink Rabbits"
This is my favorite song of the year. I think it gets everything right in order to be a good song. It has a well-written melody, it’s well-sung, the instrumentation is varied and interesting to listen to, the music builds on itself in a way that sounds natural and not-at-all forced and expands and contracts in proportion to the emotional tenor of the song’s narrative, and the lyrics are extremely clever and poetically repetitive and subtly tell a story that is painfully sad in a way that is not maudlin or dramatic or self-pitying but that is humble and honest and feels exactly like the hollow, insignificant ache of being a “white girl in a crowd of white girls in the park.” It gets exactly right the ways that physical and emotional distance can play tricks on each other and make the person in your head "sitting in a fainting chair drinking pink rabbits" feel like they're stabbing you with a voodoo doll while the person you're dancing with (the same person, whom you're now holding "way too high off the ground") feels like they're a million miles away as you listen to Bona Drag on repeat, take another swallow of whiskey, and listen to the sound kick out.



If you missed Part 1, you may read it here.
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buffaBLOG's Best of 2013: Staff Picks - Favorite Shows Part 2


Editor's Note: As part of our best of 2013 coverage, we asked our writers to break down their favorite live shows of 2013. Shows did not have to take place in Buffalo to be included on this list. Part 1 of this list can be found here.

Joe Speranza
Grace Potter & The Nocturnals @ Town Ballroom in Buffalo, NY, September 11th

Circumstances, execution and expectations. Those are key aspects of a show; I won't say they are the key aspects of a show, but if circumstances are favorable, execution is solid and expectations are exceeded, the result is a fucking blast. Take the first Tragically Hip concert this summer: my expectations were outrageously high, the circumstances (summer, water, friends, beer tents) were just about perfect, and everything was going well until that deluge of rain almost washed us all into Lake Erie. The execution – while nobody's fault – really sucked; what could have been Woodstock '13 turned out to be a long, wet walk to our cars. But during that failed show, a new set of expectations arrived as they announced an upcoming show: Grace Potter & The Nocturnals at Town Ballroom.

I've attended some gems this year. The Black Keys. Limp Bizkit (I know). Sleigh Bells. But Grace Potter at Town Ballroom could not have been improved upon. I was with some of my favorite people in the world. They played awesome music for almost two and a half hours. They exceeded my soaring expectations. It's a great feeling to blindly attend a show and walk away amazed (I see you, Portugal. The Man), but when you want so badly for a show to be great and then it goes and becomes legendary, well, that's what keeps us coming back. We all like going to see shows. But we go for more than the music; we go to feel a connection. Sometimes, it happens.


Michael Torsell
My Bloody Valentine @ Kool Haus in Toronto, ON, November 5th

Buffalo saw a lot of great shows this year and winnowing it down have proven to be a difficult task. The Mallwalkers' album release party at the Polish Library was epic and a real reminder, along with The Vault’s final night, of the awesome community we have in Western New York. In terms of national acts, getting to see DIIV, Wild Nothing, Beach Fossils, and Melt Banana was great and a nice reminder that one can see great live music in Buffalo throughout the year. 

Personally however, my favorite show was My Bloody Valentine in Toronto. This was a band I never expected to see live, but then again, I never expected a follow up to Loveless to be released this year, and I certainly would have never thought it would have been so good. Loveless has been constant presence on stereo for the last 12 years, so the opportunity to see them felt almost sacred. The group did not disappoint, quickly establishing that they were tighter than ever and my hair stood on end for most of the show, even during the seemingly eternal barrage of noise at the end. It was a great reminder that noise and feedback can become beautiful in the right hands and it brought me to all of the private moments I had enjoying their music. I really cannot ask for much more from a live performance.


Jon Krol
FLAG @ Town Ballroom in Buffalo, NY, June 13th

I grew up listening to Black Flag and my favorite incarnation by far was the pre-Rollins, pre-Reyes, pre-Cadena (on vocals) era; the Keith Morris era. Morris, before leaving to form the Circle Jerks, was angry, passionate, and arguably their best singer, although I’m sure many will disagree with that statement. Tracks like “Fix Me” and “Nervous Breakdown” are as much a part of my youth as any other band. Hell, my favorite skateboard section of all time is Jim Greco’s part in Misled Youth and he skated to “Fix Me.”

Until a few years ago, the idea of a Black Flag reunion was preposterous, let alone that the band would re-form as two separate entities; the Ginn-Reyes collaboration which took on the Black Flag name and the FLAG collaborative featuring Keith Morris, Dez Cadena and Chuck Dukowski. While I did not get to see Black Flag, I was able to see FLAG, in all their primordial glory.

My expectations were high and I kind of approached the show with nervous trepidation. I didn’t really expect them to deliver to be honest. What I got was more than I could have ever asked for. Morris was fierce and played with his heart on fire, as did the other members of the band. Their energy and excitement was palpable and spread like a wild, contagious fire. They didn’t play the tracks of yesteryear. They blitzed them. They destroyed them. They HURT those songs.

And Dez even got to sing! And they even played some of the Rollins and Reyes tracks! And it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen! Simply put, it was a special night to be a fan of punk rock and a special night for those of us who finally got to see a band that defined our youth and inspired us all. They secured their place in the punk pantheon of greats. They lived up to the hype.
Mac McGuire
Mohawk Place's Last Waltz: Night 2 @ Mohawk Place in Buffalo, NY, January 12th

Any other year, seeing Spiritualized, a bucket list band of mine every since hearing "Ladies and Getlemen...," would have topped my list. They were devastatingly good at the Waiting Room. But Mohawk Place doesn't close every year. I won't rehash my memories of the place (its been done enough), but the venue's final night was a special experience like nothing I will ever be a part of again. All of my Buffalo music heroes were in one room, drinking every last drop of booze that old bar had, shedding tears that I didn't know were in a few of them, and recalling years of memories that could never be replicated. 

And the music just never ended. I stepped foot in Mohawk around 7pm to the sounds of disbanded Buffalo greats the Thermidors and left just after 5am with my ears ringing from the Mark Norris led power pop heroes Girlpope. Between an Old Sweethearts reunion I never thought I would get, my first experience with Semi-Tough(!), and sets from Chylde, Failures' Union and other relics of Mohawk's past, the night was as close to perfect as you can get in Buffalo. 
Tom Dennis
Captured Tracks Showcase @ The Parish(SXSW) in Austin, TX, March 16th

 On the last night of SXSW, I saw a tour de force showcase put on by Captured Tracks at The Parish in Austin. With sets from Naomi Punk, The Soft Moon, Chris Cohen, Mac DeMarco, Widowspeak, DIIV, and Beach Fossils, the show was the ideal finale to an exhausting week of music. Chris Cohen brought each track from Overgrown Path into its cool blue light, Mac DeMarco was slightly less of a knucklehead than I’d imaged he would be live, and Beach Fossils sparked a hiccuping dance-pit, which they kept stoked ’til 2am. Extracted from the rock club, I hummed "Home" by DIIV in an attempt to drown out the waning madness of Sixth Street as I navigated my way to the nearest bus stop. 
Scott Mancuso
Okkervil River @ The Haunt in Ithaca, NY, September 27th We rode our bikes from the motel on the edge of town to the middle of Ithaca. There were no "sharrows." We went to a bar and ordered beers and then we went to another bar and ordered more beers. It was a Friday night and there were a lot of professors and a lot of students. We went to a dive bar with a rooster logo where a middle-aged ex-military bartender appeared ten minutes after we walked in. She served us more beers. We rode our bikes over the train tracks to the Haunt and drank more beers. Okkervil River played their instruments very well and Will Sheff sang very well. It made me happy. It made a man in front of us with a green shirt that said "Paddy's" on it even happier. "Paddy" drank a lot of beers. Sometimes he drank half-empty beers that were just sitting on the edge of the stage. Sometimes he put his arm around girls that he didn't know, and they didn't like it at all, but that didn't slow Paddy down. I went to the bathroom after the show and Paddy was there and he asked me, "so what's your deal." I think he meant it to be friendly but I didn't know what to say, and I didn't have a deal, so I just shrugged and left. We rode our bikes back into town and I realized that my back tire was flat. We stopped. We drank whiskey in a bar in a basement and then we tried to go back to the rooster bar and then we learned that, in Ithaca, bars close at 1 in the morning. That's why they all had to drink so fast and so early and ask what the deal was because they were running out of time.
Tom Etu
buffaBLOG Summer Party @ Duke's in Buffalo, NY, August 10th

 Some people remembered bits and pieces the next day. Others needed verbal cues and a bit of shoving before it all came swimming back into their recollection. Jack Topht enraged, elated, irritated and enlightened us. A beach ball and other inflatables were passed around in a massive game of "keep it up!" Some in attendance probably played their own version of 'keep it up' that night, but that's irrelevant. The Malones killed it, and bass player Elliot Douglas was feeling it so hard that he jumped offstage. A fellow blogger guarded one of the band's lead singers (name undisclosed) while he urinated into a garbage can outside DBGB's. Shit got weird at the buffaBLOG Summer Party.

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Songbook Report: The Flaming Lips, the National and Writing Songs for Sci-Fi Movies About Murderous Children


If you love movies about solemn, pensive young people in dystopian futures, killing each other as part of an allegory about the structure of human society and the necessity of violence for self-preservation, then you must be one happy weirdo this November.

Prior to becoming a trolling poster-boy for the Mormon Church’s nonsensical views on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, Orson Scott Card was better known as the author of Ender’s Game, a novel that, though it only came out in 1985, has become a seminal part of the American science-fiction canon. The novel, which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards (for non-nerds: top prizes for sci-fi and fantasy fiction), tells the story of a young boy, Ender Wiggin, who is recruited by international armed forces so that he can be trained to fight a seemingly-hostile alien race. Ender proves to be lethal and ruthless and is used as a tool by those in power to eradicate the aliens. The extent to which Ender does so “against his will” is subject to some debate, but the main idea here is where we should be drawing our lines in the classic conflict of “kill or be killed.”

Over 20 years later, in 2008, Suzanne Collins had an overnight success with a relatively similar theme when the first book of the Hunger Games trilogy swooped in to fill the gaping void left in the wake of the last Harry Potter novel for adults who demand their fiction fast, fantastical and at a seventh-grade reading level. (I presume I do not need to recap the plot here.) Katniss Everdeen (who might as well just be Jennifer Lawrence by this point) is certainly a much less morally ambiguous character than Ender Wiggin (her main character flaws seem to be that she’s a little mopey and disengaged), but she faces similar questions in her own “kill or be killed” scenario. At what point is it necessary to use violence to promote your own well-being and does there ever come a point where we won’t kill another person when our own life is on the line?

Both stories have now been turned into grandiose Hollywood productions. Ender’s Game was released last Friday, to relatively mixed reviews, and the second story in the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire, will be released on November 22, a promotion which this movie almost certainly does not require. (As Conan has often said, “just trying to help this little film out, get the word out there.”) This, of course, means that as part of the promotional run-up to these films, we are treated with movie “soundtracks,” which may or may not include songs actually in the movies but will at least include “songs,” that are at least sung by very popular musical acts, because MONEY.

Two of the songs used to promote these films come to us by way of two of the most respected and critically-acclaimed bands of the past several years: the Flaming Lips and the National. These bands are also certainly both “popular” to some degree though they’re not exactly “my mom knows who they are” popular and it’s probable that many of the potential viewers of these films will have no familiarity with them at all. It seems more likely that (following a trend that seemingly started with the Twilight movies) the producers of these films reached out to the Lips and the National because, while trying to cast the widest net possible, these bands seemed to fit snuggly into the “well-known act that a music-savvy young adult might appreciate” slot on their demographic score-card. Given that this all has the opportunity to be nothing more than a transparent money-grab, it’s somewhat interesting then that both bands not only turned in songs that are entirely enjoyable but that actually seem to reflect the themes of the films they’re meant to promote.



The Flaming Lips took their task so seriously, in fact, that they actually wrote and released an entire EP of songs based on the story of Ender’s Game. For those familiar with the Lips’ discography, it isn’t exactly surprising that they’d revel in the opportunity to release a musical essay about a boy who is shot into space to save the world from aliens. If Orson Scott Card hadn’t written it, Wayne Coyne probably would have. The themes of survival and the inner-struggle between being peaceful or violent are also vintage Flaming Lips material.

Their song, “Peace Sword (Open Your Heart)” is a throwback to their Soft Bulletin-Yoshimi days where they perfected the art of couching heavy, existential lyrics in airy, psychedelic sing-a-longs. Wayne Coyne doesn’t say much here (some of the other songs on the EP are a bit darker and more direct, which is probably why “Peace Sword” was chosen to represent the film) but we still get a poignant look at the conflict Ender faces as he becomes a world-extinguishing killing machine.

Lines like “I was trained to ignore your pain” and “I drained the sun of its light” are contrasted with the repeated mantra of the song “open your heart to me, open your heart, you’ll see.” It’s a chilling image of Ender at the helm of an intergalactic space station, recognizing that he’s a utensil of death while softly encouraging his enemy to “open their hearts” to him… likely meaning both to try to sympathize with him, understand him and, physically, open their hearts, as he ends their lives. The name of the song itself, “Peace Sword,” is a contradiction of pacifism and destruction and eerily symbolizes the way in which Ender strokes his enemies’ hair with one had while slicing their throat with the other.



The National’s contribution to the Catching Fire soundtrack was originally called “Dying is Easy” but was mysteriously renamed “Lean” prior to the album’s release because heaven-forbid a song promoting a movie about post-apocalyptic murder-games seem too “edgy.”

Being a fairly staunch National fan, I have no problem defending the frequent criticism that many of their songs “sound the same,” though even I have to admit that the chord progression, melody and pacing of “Lean” are all very similar to the track “Pink Rabbits” off of the National’s Trouble Will Find Me LP released earlier this year (which I voted as my favorite song of the first six months of 2013). Despite the similarities, the song still works for all the same reasons: a circular underlying-urgency, a propulsive build-up to a climax that never seems to arrive and Matt Berninger’s melancholy, half-awake delivery like a melodic drunk on the verge of passing out.

The verses stick to a formula, describing the ways in which “everybody” is the same in that we’re all desperate in various ways and that we’re all essentially just looking out for ourselves. These are concerns that could potentially be grafted onto the residents of Katniss’ District 12 (ie. needing friends, knowing when the world will end, knowing what you’re running from) though in a humorously incongruous line Berninger sings: “everybody wants a sip of wine to drink.” (Haha, no, you want a sip of wine to drink Matt, these people want their children to not be recruited for the murder-Olympics and to wake up breathing in the morning.)

In the pre-chorus of the song, the narrator then sings of an impending doom, a “fever on the rise” and “waters in your eyes,” before singing (in a lyric that is so fundamentally Berninger-esque, it’s hard to believe he hasn’t used it yet): “lover, lead us all to smithereens.” The refrain is then “dying is easy, I believe my love, and my love relieves me.” It’s a sentiment that’s almost the inverse of the “peace sword,” switching the point of view to that of a potential victim. If it’s easy to kill someone (and it seems to be for Katniss) then it also must be easy to die. The National take the idea of Katniss being “victorious” by killing others and cynically flip it around to the perspective of the collateral damage.

It makes sense. There’s not much to live for in Panem anyway, and there are worse ways to die than at the hands of Jennifer Lawrence.


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Songbook Report: Okkervil River's The Silver Gymnasium


Upon first hearing that Okkervil River’s new album, The Silver Gymnasium, would “take place” in 1986 in Will Sheff’s hometown of Meriden, New Hampshire, one could imagine that, given Sheff’s proclivity for conceptual narrative, the album would probably tell an auto-biographical story about Sheff’s childhood and be thematically dominated by nostalgia. The first few singles released from the album, along with promotional video footage from Sheff’s hometown and a companion 8-bit video game (also taking place in New Hampshire – 1986), seemed to make clear that the conceptual aspect of this album was no idle threat. It seemed possible that once we finally heard the entire album, we’d be treated to a sprawling epic of events and characters and climaxes and denouements, all giving us a glimpse into the world of Sheff’s Reagan-Era Meriden.

What ends up being so interesting about The Silver Gymnasium then, is that it isn't so much an album about Sheff’s childhood experiences as it is an album about remembering those childhood experiences. All of the things that happen to you as a kid probably aren't that compelling, in and of themselves, but they become that much more meaningful when you add in the context about how those events have affected you throughout your life. And maybe even more important, is how the memories of those events have affected you. The events themselves are in the past. They can’t touch you. The parts that stay with you are only in your head, and they’re unreliable, and prone to distortion, and often out-of-order. Sometimes you’ll probably find that you don’t even necessarily “remember” an event, you only remember yourself remembering the event.

It’s down this rabbit hole (or down this deep river) where Sheff finds the framework for the narrative of The Silver Gymnasium. It’s not really a straightforward “story,” and perhaps that’s appropriate because memory doesn’t really work that way. If you were to think about something like a single year from your childhood it would probably look less like a historically accurate account and more like a jumble of feelings, where you identify some key events and then get detoured when you think about how you currently feel about those events, and then drift off and start thinking about what may have led up to those events, and then realize something else, seemingly unrelated, that also reminds you of those events.

In that sense, The Silver Gymnasium is less a chronological sequence of occurrences and something more like Benjy Compson’s narration in the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury. It’s lucid and emotional and a bit confusing at times, but you get a distinct feeling for what’s important to the person telling the story and also get some rather vivid depictions of particular events in their past. 


The music on the album seems to follow this game plan as well. The songs are the usual pop-folk-rock hybrid that Okkervil River has been playing for over ten years but with perhaps a bit more emphasis on melodicism. There are definite 80s’ touchstones (see: saxophones, synthesizers, guitar solos covered in corn-syrup) but there’s also an overall sheen of what can only be described as “joyousness,” which seems compulsively applied to even, what would otherwise be, the darkest songs on the album. On almost every Okkervil album to date, there’s been at least one “slow burner;” a late-night song not necessarily designed for foot tapping. Here, it seems primed to be “Lido Pier Suicide Car” before three-quarters of the way through the song the band explodes into the sonic-equivalent of a victory parade. It’s as if even the hardest of memories are required to be strained through filters until they come out in the present looking tolerably cheerful. Sheff’s vocals meanwhile, which usually run the gamut from forlorn to furious, are reigned in to somewhere between wistful and determined.

All 11 songs on the album seem to subscribe to this basic musical format, though interestingly, the two vinyl-only bonus tracks, “Do the Crawl” and “From a Cutlass Cruiser,” have a much different tone. They’re conceptually related to the rest of the album but they’re definitely outliers; much darker, much more straightforward, a realistic feeling of menace lurking beneath the surface that doesn’t seem to penetrate to the rest of the album. (Appropriately, the fourth side of the double-LP containing these bonus songs has a black inner-circle while the three sides of the album-proper are white.)


Given the emphasis that The Silver Gymnasium has on the effect of remembering the past, just as many songs on the album seem to take place in the present day, or before/after 1986, as they do during that year. However, Sheff does appear to have identified ‘86 as being especially significant.

Sheff was born in 1976 and so would have turned 10 during the summer of 1986. The lyrics to the album appear to contain some explicit references to events that may have occurred during that year, but the artwork included with the album might supply further clues. William Schaff’s amazing map of Meriden, New Hampshire covers the entire gatefold of the vinyl album. (If you compare it to a real map of Meriden, it’s rather accurate. Kimball Union Academy, where Sheff’s parents both taught, takes up most of the town’s real estate.) On the map there are numbers with circles around them, clearly representing each track on the album. Some tracks have as many as six marks, seemingly indicating that the action of the song takes places across multiple locations. One might think this guide could help to reel in some of the more difficult to parse out songs but honestly, it often creates more questions than it answers.

Additionally, there’s a recurring theme of “seasons,” both in the lyrics of the album and the artwork. Schaff’s map is separated into sections of spring, summer, fall, and winter. The corresponding colors for each of these seasons then adorn the lyric booklet from left to right (though I’m not entirely sure that the song themselves are meant to be categorized as falling into one of the four seasons). The idea of “seasons” passing, re-visiting seasons through memory, and seasonal language is heavily present through the album. Seasons, perhaps, as the most easily identifiable periods of time that we collect and store away on the mental timeline upon which we place our potentially unreliable memories.


The following is my best attempt at briefly identifying how each song on the album might either narrate a particular event from Sheff’s past or describes his present-day feelings about his memories of those events, the collision of which might take place in the "Silver Gymnasium" itself.

1. “It Was My Season”

Map: a mark on Plainfield Elementary School and a mark on Chellis Road leading out of town to the northeast.

This song appears to be about the narrator having a great deal of affection for another person, revealed in a slight-twist ending to be another male, named Jason. Their childhood engagements seem extremely dramatic and important to the narrator at the time but as he states toward the end of the song, he “hardly thinks about it now.”

2. “On a Balcony”

Map: a single mark on what appears to be a motel leading north out of town on Rt. 12A.

This seems to be one of the songs that is about “remembering” more than it is about any particular event from Sheff’s childhood. The language is largely mature and seems to reference the paralyzing effect that memories can have on your present well-being with the line: “they say you’re living off something-and-soda, some fine wine from 1983.”

3. “Down Down the Deep River”

Map: a mark on Colby Hill Road leading over Bloods Brook at the north end of town, a mark near Raynis-Ford Cemetery stating “…and I’m so sorry,” a mark near the woods stating “where I last saw Frankie”, a mark on the road leading to Plainfield Elementary, a mark on Main Street, and a mark at the “home of the solid ghost.”

Here, there are explicit references to childhood events: the narrator camping out in a tent with a friend (possibly Jason?) talking about the kinds of things that kids talk about. There are also references, however, to a seemingly tragic event: a rescue team, the narrator inconsolable, the narrator’s father providing comfort. On top of all of that, there’s the present-day consciousness of needing to travel down the “deep river” of one’s memory to even see these events unfold and the realization that you “can never go back,” you “can only remember.”

4. “Pink-Slips”

Map: a mark on what appears to have been Sheff’s home from 1976-1984.

This song is similar thematically to “On a Balcony” in that it switches back to a largely mature perspective and the narrator’s thoughts on how his past has shaped his present. The line that “only happy until the age of ten is still a gift” seems to indicate that something tragic did, indeed, happen in 1986, and the restless, drunken “laureate of the Granite State” described near the end of the song seems to be the result.

5. “Lido Pier Suicide Car”

Map: a mark near the “creepy physical plant” (this seems to be very close to the actual location of the “Silver Gymnasium”) and a mark in the sky near what looks like an Imperial Shuttle.

This song seems to be an extension of “Pink-Slips” where the same despondent narrator finds himself crashing a vehicle into the ocean and ending up in the “stars.” I’m guessing here, but it’s probably a metaphorical description of the way that someone might act in an extreme or rebellious fashion in order to try to outrun their past.

6. “Where the Spirit Left Us”

Map: a mark in the parking lot of the motel, a mark near the “bird sanctuary” and a mark on what appears to have been Sheff’s house from 1984-1991.

Here, the narrator appears to be going back and addressing himself as a child after whatever tragic event occurred in 1986. He has the present-day hindsight to see “where the spirit left [him and his past self]” but isn’t able to do anything about it but re-live the experience over and over.

7. “White”

Map: a mark on the cemetery and a mark at the “Lake of the Strangled Crane.”

“White” looks to be one of the songs that flashes back to 1986 where the narrator is again addressing Jason (see: the reference to his father and sister mentioned in the first song) and the feeling of invincibility that children have during the “summer” and “spring” months of their lives. By the end of the song, however, “fall is here, and the leaves all go down” and “winter’s here, and it’s too cold to drown” (which is an ominous statement about what might be the unspoken tragedy lurking in the background). 

8. “Stay Young”

Map: a mark at French’s Ledges and a mark at Sheff’s first home.

This might be one of the most apparent songs on the album that speaks from a present point-of-view on how to process and deal with the memories of one’s youth. Though the events themselves are gone, there are apparently still lessons to be gained from innocence and exuberance and sincerity.

9. “Walking Without Frankie”

Map: a mark at the Lake of the Strangled Crane, a mark at “Soucy’s,” a mark “where I last saw Frankie,” and a mark in the sky near the moon.

“Walking Without Frankie” is full of references to locations in Meriden while the narrator seems to re-trace steps that he might have walked at one point with “Frankie.” He then mentions the last time that he saw Frankie before he “shot five thousand feet up into the grey sky,” possibly indicating here that “Frankie” has died, as the narrator ends the song with the repeated refrain that “he wants Frankie.”

10. “All the Time Every Day”

Map: a single mark on Rt. 12A.

This song is actually set up as a call-and-response, though it’s difficult to tell without looking at the lyrics. Each verse is actually a convoluted question that essentially amounts to: “do you feel weak and powerless and crushed under the weight of your past?” and each chorus answers: “all the time, every day.”

11. “Black Nemo”

Map: a mark leading out of town on Rt. 12A, a mark on Bonner Road near some VHS tapes, a mark near Sheff’s second home.

The last song on the album appears to be Sheff coming to peace with his re-visiting Meriden, and the memories contained therein, as well as an acceptance of the “seasons rocketing past him… a little more every day, all the time.” The song ends with Sheff, again, seemingly speaking to his past self, looking him in the eye, and saying goodbye:

“I know you think you knew him, but you were passing through him. Light as air he’s leaving. There… he’s gone.”


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Songbook Report: Neko Case's The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You


Neko Case’s new album is called The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You.

That’s a pretty personal statement and this is a pretty personal album. In the past, Case largely wrote songs that were (at least seemingly) fictional, with stories about colorful characters and criminal activity that often earned her the label of a “country-noir” singer-songwriter. Here, Case seems to be the main character on the album as she sorts through her feelings on being a 42-year old, life-long bachelorette who has spent the majority of her adult life as a touring musician.

Case’s perspective on writing the album can be more thoroughly understood through this excellent interview by Consequence of Sound, where Case describes going through a number of personal issues after the release of her last album, including depression and her father’s death. In the aforementioned interview she states that The Worse Things Get is “really autobiographical because my mind just didn’t have room for anything else.”

Further context can be had by becoming acquainted with Case’s constantly-updated (and frequently, very funny) Twitter account, where it’s nearly impossible to reconcile how she is able to tour, record music, and run a farm in Vermont, with her ubiquitous online presence. She loves animals and nature, is unabashedly foul-mouthed and honest, and easily banters with fans and nationally renowned comedians alike as if everyone in the world is a potential best friend.

From there, we get to the content of the album itself. Musically, Case is on the same path she started treading with Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and Middle Cyclone.  This is meticulously produced folk-rock with heavy emphasis on melodies to show off Case’s phenomenal vocal talent. Thematically, she’s looking at a few things here but chief among them is her level of comfort with her identity as a single woman in her forties, struggling against the societal norms that would compel her to at least have been married (maybe divorced) and and/or a mother by this point in her life.


On “Man,” the first single from The Worse Things Get, we talked about how Case appropriated the stereotypical trappings of “manliness” to point out how she is equally as capable as most men (if not more so) to reside in the provinces of traditionally male-dominated realms. Case actually raises this concern to some degree on each of the first four songs on the album.

On the excellent opener, “Wild Creatures,” Case sings “hey little girl, would you like to be the king’s pet or the king?” She’s presumably speaking to herself as she immediately answers: “I’d choose odorless and invisible, but otherwise, I’d chose the king.” It seems to be another defiant statement of choosing a self-reliant path over conformity, but the postscript somewhat complicates this sentiment: “even though it sounds the loneliest… and my brother’s hands would poison me.” Being an autonomous individual might seem great in theory but it does inherently suggest solitude. Additionally, it makes you more likely to be the subject of envy or disdain for not simply “doing what you should,” especially when you’re treading on the long-established domain of “men,” who tend to be a rather territorially bunch.

The conflict between opting for the unconventional and the resultant isolation is further explored on “Night Still Comes” when Cases asks: “is it cause I’m a girl? If I puked up some sonnets would you call me a miracle?” It’s a brilliantly scathing line but again, it’s immediately followed by indications of detachment, and perhaps all-out reclusiveness, when she states: “swallowed waist-deep in the core of the forest, arboreal feast, let it finish me please.”

On “I’m From Nowhere,” Case continues to derive loneliness from struggling against gender stereotypes as well as from the practical side effects of living a habitually itinerant lifestyle (another reoccurring theme on the album). When she sings “I was surprised, when you called me a lady, cause I’m still not sure that’s what I wanna be,” she’s rejecting the traditional expectation that women act “lady-like” but she then spins it into a joke about how she “remembers the 80’s” and “its puffy sleeves” and she’d “gladly wear the pants into the next century.” It’s a slightly more modest take on the issue, as she ends up at the pensive realization that her life choices have also contributed to her feeling as if she’s “from nowhere.”


Elsewhere on the album, Case re-visits some familiar territory. “Bracing for Sunday” is basically a blueprint for anyone looking to write a Neko Case ballad-noir (“I only ever held one love, her name was Marianne, she died having a child by her brother, he died because I murdered him.”) Neko also covers the Nico song, “Afraid,” and somewhere in a distant universe, two planets collide. It’s a melody that was practically made for Case to sing and its refrain of “you are beautiful and you are alone” is perfectly apt in the context of the rest of the album. “Calling Cards,” “Local Girl” and “City Swan” all keep up the theme of emotional and physical distance, and are all so well-written it’s easy to begin taking Case’s songwriting skills for granted by the end of the album.

The penultimate song on The Worse Things Get is “Where Did I Leave that Fire,” which was featured in the stunning “trailer” for the album released earlier this summer. The track begins with what sounds like a submarine attempting to use radar, (which, is odd, as you would think that underwater would be one of the last places one might find that fire). These detailed production elements, however, build suspense and give the record an underlying sense of menace as if it were recorded in the aftermath of some mysterious disappearance. (Listen also to the vague space-radio transmission sounds between the two choruses on “Wild Creatures.”)

The “fire” here seems to be a reference to a sort of inner strength or spirit and the song ends with the absurdly whimsical set of lines: “I do believe we have a fire lady, you can pick it up if you come down with ID.” With fire presumably re-obtained, Case then ends the album on an upbeat note with “Ragtime,” a celebratory track where Case seems to have found peace with her sense of identity: “I’ll reveal myself invincible soon, I am one and the same, I am useful and strange.”


One of the most memorable tracks on the album though might be “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu,” an entirely a cappella song telling the story of Case witnessing a young child being sworn at and neglected by their mother. The song is meant to serve as a reminder to the child that this event, which they might not even remember, actually happened and will probably end up shaping the person they become. She sings, “you’ll hear yourself complain, but don’t you ever shut up, please kid, have your say, cause I still love you, even if I never see you again.”

The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You is a lovely-sounding mouthful of poetry but it also might be a somewhat logical statement.

I was an English major in college but I had to take at least one “math-type” credit to complete my degree.  I chose a “logic” class because it seemed to be the least “mathy” of all of the math class options. I don’t remember much from that class (which always reminds me of Patton Oswalt’s “Physics for Poets” bit) but I do recall something called the “transitive law.” It’s the one that says: if A = B, and B = C, then A = C. So if “The Worse Things Get” = A, and “The Harder I Fight” = B, and “The More I Love You” = C, then, according to the transitive law of album titles, what Case really might be saying here is: “The Worse Things Get… The More I Love You.”

Bad things happen sometimes, kid. Your mom might swear at you and neglect you, you might struggle against the inequality inherent in the system, you will get lonely, your parents will die. But the worse these things get (the harder she’ll fight, the harder she’ll fight) the more Neko Case will love you.



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Songbook Report: Okkervil River's The Silver Gymnasium (video game)


Okkervil River are releasing their latest studio album, The Silver Gymnasium, on September 3. If you read this blog often, you’ve probably seen Mac make several references to my geekery over this band and that is because they are one of my favorites and they are very worth listening to and you should all be making their music go into your ear holes.

We already knew that The Silver Gymnasium would be something of a concept album about lead singer/songwriter Will Sheff’s childhood in Meriden, New Hampshire and that it would take place in 1986. The few cuts from the record that have been released thus far have certainly all supported that premise.

We did not know, however, until a few days ago, that Okkervil River would be releasing a video game companion to the album, also called The Silver Gymnasium. And you can play that game HERE.

Unsurprisingly, the game takes place in “New Hampshire – 1986” and, fittingly, it has been designed as an homage to the style of games that would have been popular at that time. The Nintendo had only been released in North America for around a year by the summer of 1986, and not many console games would have quite resembled what’s seen in The Silver Gymnasium. (Ghosts n’ Goblins, released in November of ’86 might be the closest, graphically.) Given the fact that the main character starts the game on a computer, it’s more likely that the reference points here are the early Sierra adventure games made for Apple and PC, such as King’s Quest, Space Quest, etc.

The game, which Sheff co-created with Benjamin Miles of Eyes and Ears, is fairly straightforward and fairly short. It’s a promotional piece as much as anything else, but it also does a great job of evoking the feeling of the era while firmly reminding you that it is a retrospective. The graphics are meant to look like an 8-bit game but they’re clearly modern. The soundtrack is nostalgia-laden chip music but the songs are all from the upcoming Okkervil album, which hasn’t even been released yet in 2013. There are numerous references to 80’s culture but with understanding winks to the fact that you’re seeing them in the future.


It’s a combination of elements that plays with the cross-section between your memory and your present perception which, if I had to guess, will be a dominant theme on The Silver Gymnasium album as well.

The meta aspects of the game aside, there’s also something to be said for the emotional impact that a video game can have on the human mind and Sheff is attempting to channel that here. Similar to music (itself, a large element of most video games), a well-crafted game environment can have a profound effect on the imagination. Anyone who experienced 80’s and early 90’s gaming culture knows that even the most basic constructions had the ability to create worlds in one’s mind where only the simplest presentations of light and sound existed in actuality. The dissonance between reality and a virtual world is a special phenomenon, which, if harnessed properly, can produce an incredibly affecting experience.

The portion of The Silver Gymnasium that is available to play now is only the first of three segments, and Sheff has indicated that the sequel chapters will be released in the next several weeks. The first chapter is called “Chapter One - All the Days of Your Life in a Line” (a line from "Down Down the Deep River" and also a bit reminiscent of an early Okkervil lyric: “my bad days all got together and they stood in a row for me.”)

The game starts with a nameless protagonist in New Hampshire - 1986. Though it would be natural to presume that the bespectacled main character is patterned after Sheff, he has stated that: “the story is fiction, which is why the kid has black hair. He’s sort of his own character. It’s a tie-in! Like a Dr. Who novelization with a side-plot not affecting the main arc. You’ll see…”


The game moves quickly and easily enough from this point that there’s no real sense in giving away the story when you can experience it yourself. It also might be easier to analyze what exactly this journey and The Silver Gymnasium may represent after we’ve experienced all three chapters.

In the mean time, there are plenty of interesting Easter Eggs in the game to take a look at.

Soundtrack

The main draw here might be the aforementioned chip music versions of three songs that have been released so far from The Silver Gymnasium. Sheff and Miles have done an excellent job on these, getting the notes to hit all the right spots to make you feel like you’re actually listening to a period piece Nintendo soundtrack.

“It Was Our Season” – This is the song that plays during the title sequence and credits. You can listen to the studio version of this song HERE.

“Down Down the Deep River” – This is the song that plays once the protagonist picks up his Walkman. It plays everywhere in town (except the library!) Listen to various open mic night versions of this song HERE.

“Lido Pier Suicide Car” – This is the song that plays once you enter the crypt. Listen to an acoustic version of this song HERE.

Movies in the Video Store

If you go into the video rental store (slash “Deli-Mart”?), the clerk will warn against renting any “Rated-R” movies. You can look at the following movies on the case on the back wall.

Scott Coffey’s Space Camp, starring Scott Coffey
Jean-Claude Van-Damme in: No Retreat, No Surrender
Cannibal Ferox
Creepers, starring Jennifer Connelly
Hardbodies II

The Space Camp entry is a bit of a joke as Scott Coffey actually plays a rather minor role in the film. Both that movie and No Retreat, No Surrender were released in 1986. Cannibal Ferox was a 1981 film by Umberto Lenzi, renowned for being one of the most violent movies ever made. Creepers is a 1985 Italian, horror film that does star a young Jennifer Connelly. Hardbodies II is the 1986 sequel to… Hardbodies.

Books in the Library

When you go into the library you can look at the following books on the shelves. The books appear to be organized by topic on each shelf. They also appear to be organized such that they become darker and more mature once you enter the basement. Most of the books have an emphasis on the mysterious or the fantastical.

Upstairs shelves: The first two shelves seem to contain young-adult/fantasy novels. The third shelf contains young-adult/science-fiction stories. The fourth shelf contains young-adult/mystery novels.

(Left to right)

Shelf 1

De Uendliche Geschichte by Michael Ende (the German version of The Neverending Story)
Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Dragon and the George by George R. Dickinson
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

Shelf 2

Danny, Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherin Paterson
Lizard Music by D. Manus Pinkwater (The librarian recommends this book as you leave)

Shelf 3

Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Mt. Analogue by Rene Daumal
Terran Trade Authority: Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD by Stewart Cowley

Shelf 4

The Hardy Boys: The Secret of the Caves
The Hardy Boys: A Figure in Hiding
Nancy Drew: The Strange Mystery in the Parchment
Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Forgotten City

Basement shelves: the first shelf contains highly controversial “adult” novels. The second shelf contains what would generally be considered “young-adult novels” but that contain elements of horror or controversy. The last two shelves all contain books or grimoires dealing with magic, the occult, and the supernatural.

(Right to left)

Shelf 1

 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis
Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

Shelf 2

The Wish Giver: Three Tales of the Coven Tree by Bill Brittain
Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
A Watcher in the Woods by Florence Engle Randall

Shelf 3

Liber Razielis Archangeli
Little Key of the Whole Art by Hygromancy
The Orgone Energy Accumulator, Its Scientific and Medical Use by Wilhelm Reich
Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen

Shelf 4

The Sworn Book of Honorious
The Confession of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross

Grave Stones

When you enter the graveyard there are four graves that are a lighter shade of gray, which you can inspect more closely. Each grave belongs to a man that died in 1986.

Richard Manuel, Died: March 4, 1986
Harold Arlen, Died: April 23, 1986
Phil Lynott, Died: January 4, 1986
Jorge Luis Borges, Died: June 14, 1986

Richard Manuel, one of the lead singers of The Band, hung himself in a motel room after a long struggle with alcoholism and drug abuse. Phil Lynott was the lead singer of Thin Lizzy and also died after a history of a substance abuse. Harold Arlen (from… Buffalo, New York) was a composer of several classic songs, including “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” He died of cancer. Jorge Luis Borges was a famous Argentinean writer of fantastical short stories. He also died of cancer.


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