Craig Cliff's Blog, page 13
February 27, 2017
This Fluid Thrill’s (belated) 2016 Music Awards
Okay, here goes. My nine favourite albums that were released in 2016 and three other awards. And, of course, a playlist!
For reference, here' are my lists from 2015, 2014, 2013 & 2012.
Favourite Albums
St Lenox – Ten Hymns from my American Gothic
Nerdy on so many counts (musically, lyrically, thematically), St Lenox is Andrew Choi, a lawyer-turned (home) recording artist. His backstory and this album (and 2014’s 10 Songs about Memory and Hope) seems to sum up the possibilities of artistic life now. So it’s production and existence is a positive message – no doubt.
But it’s subject matter is difficult to read without a pessimistic slant given events after the album’s release in October – the life of immigrant communities in the US (‘I’m going to New York City to chase the American superdream’), Politics (see: Nixon, track 4)…, Racial and socioeconomic (dis)harmony the Public School System (the title of Track 3!).
There’s a certain amount of prescience in the lyrics. ‘Thurgood Marshall’ could just as easily be talking about the Supreme Court’s ruling on Trumps Muslim Ban (and Trump v the Courts generally):
The Peep Tempel – Joy
I discovered these Australians early in 2016 via their song ‘Carol’, which led on to their second album, Tales (2014). I loved the dirty, driving rock sound, but most striking is the work of singer Blake Scott. He inhabits a cast of layabouts, good-for-nuthins and scary buggers in his songs, and his voice takes on a real range, sounding in one song like The Sleaford Mods, and another like Mark Lanegan.
Anyway, I was so in love with Tales I started thinking up ways I could bend the rules and put it into my top albums of the year. Then in October, they dropped Joy. Same Scott roleplaying/voice-hopping. And songs like ‘Brains’ and ‘Rayguns’ hurtle down the track. But there are slower, more bifuricated songs on Joy, too. This approach goes down a treat on songs like ‘Kalgoorlie’ (she lost her sight in a bar fight) and ‘Constable’ (‘I got ghosts in my walls and in my pockets but at least I own my house’), where the scary buggers and misery can take centre stage.
This is a band I’d love to see live. If you’re reading this guys: it’s not far! C’mon.
Big Thief – Masterpiece
It takes some cajones to name an album Masterpiece.
The title track (released as a single in 2015) was my gateway into Big Thief. It remains the standout track on the album – somehow straight-forward and lush all at once, eminently earwormable – but there are other fantastic songs here too, like ‘Paul’ - a love song turned break-up song thanks to a killer chorus rewrite, ‘ Interstate’, ‘Humans’, ‘Parallels’.
Big Thief makes to most of Adrienne Lenker’s voice and her articulate lyrics – but the secret lies in the band’s use of noise. This isn’t as a simple as a Pixies quiet-loud-quiet progression, or more recently Mitski’s chorus-goes-to-11 tic. Some songs (like ‘Randy’) stay in whispers and string tinkling the whole time. But when the noise comes, och!
Car Seat Headrest – Teens of Denial
2016’s ‘conflicted, possibly over-hyped but I honestly enjoyed this album’ entry.
Will Toledo doesn’t really add anything new to the indie toolkit. CSH is less discordant Parquet Courts. A heavier Pavement. Whatever. And the fact this is Toldeo’s 13thalbum and he’s only 24? Well I haven’t listened to 11 of those (I feel like it’d be like someone going back and reading the short stories I wrote before I turned 23).
But the fact this is pretty much all from one dude? This feels like proper band music, not one dude in front of a computer (cf St Lenox). A proper band with a proper appreciation for its forebears and its audience. And it’s funny.
PWR BTTM – Ugly Cherries
This is one that snuck onto the list thanks to my own tardiness. I love the song ‘1994’, but for some reason never listened to the whole album until January this year (if we’re being picky, the album was released in the US in 2015, but came out elsewhere in 2016 and I live elsewhere, so it’s fine, stand down).
And I only really ‘got’ PWR BTTM when I started watching music videos and live performances.
I don’t have that much knowledge of the queer punk scene to draw on, and I don’t want to be too reductive, but the fact that Liv Bruce and Ben Hopkins can rock out in dresses and ugly makeup in front of crowds of affectionately ugly cis and LGBTIQA kids and this boring white thirty-something in NZ can listen along to the album and dig it (and sound so old talking about it), is another ‘life in 2016 and beyond can’t be that bad’ indicator.
I tend to enjoy the songs that Ben sings more than Liv’s – perhaps because his deeper voice supports heavier musical backing, but together their output makes for a well-balanced album.
Drive-By Truckers - American Band
Okay, so if the theme of this list isn’t already apparent, it’s albums that make you feel that the world isn’t ending and the present is an okay place to be.
Drive-By Truckers had always seemed a strange mix to me. Southern and kinda big-C conservative sounding, but darlings of the elite tastemakers. On American Band the truckers swerve into the oncoming lane and address the present moment. Album opener ‘Ramon Casiano’ is about immigration (He became a border agent / And supplemented what he made / With creative deportation’). The next track is called ‘Darkened Flags at the Cusp of Dawn’, nuff said. ‘Surrender under protest’. ‘Kinky hypocrite’. ‘Once they banned imagine’. You get the picture.
It’s not all one way traffic, though. ‘Baggage’ is a powerful song about hearing of Robin Williams suicide (celebs died in 2015, too, remember) and Patterson Hood’s own experiences of depression. It might just be the song that best stands the test of time.
But for now American Band will be remembered as the album where Drive-By Truckers got political and stuck the landing.
Comparative Interlude
Compare this to Sunlit Youth by Local Natives. The Natives are one of my favourite bands with a limited back catalogue. I loved 2013’s Hummingbird. It killed me. And seeing them like in New Orleans that year is still one of the best two or three gigs I’ve ever been to.
Sonically, they added some keyboards and some studious glitchiness that sounds so ‘now’ it’s a bit cringeworthy, but the harmonies are still there and the more I listened the more it sounded like the kind of The Local Natives I might ask for.
But lyrically, they pushed too far and exposed some serious naiveté. ‘Fountains of Youth’ is a transparent youth anthem that hitched its wagon to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign (‘We have waited so long, Mrs President). Listening to it now (like listening to the 30 for 30 compilation album) just makes me shake my head. ‘Fountain of Youth’ is a fake anthem – a song to rouse the already woke. It’s answers are readymade and, it turns out, insufficient. Optimism on record was not a good look in 2016.
But the Bush years ushered forth albums like The National’s Boxer, and maybe this reality check will help other bands remember the shittier side of things. Guitar music always works best when it’s the underdog behind the mic.
Lucy Dacus – No Burden
Speaking of underdogs and guitar music, 2016 was another strong year for female singer-songwriters and female-fronted bands. Lots of strong women taking the tropes of the swinging dicks who’ve ruled the roost long enough and subverting them while also, just fucking rocking in their own right. (Spotify’s Badass Womyn playlist is a pretty good entrée into this world).
Lucy Dacus’ debut album was one of my faves. It rocks. It’s honest. ‘I don’t be funny anymore’. ‘Troublemaker Doppelganger’. The album starts with such a head of steam and keeps you the rest of the way.
Momentum seems to be very important to how these songs are constructed. Album stand-out, ‘Strange Torpedo’, is just one long enjambment, it’s lines rolling over the end of one bar and into the next. Fantastic.
Camp Cope – Camp Cope
Another late entry, another Australian group, another lot of kickass females making guitar music.
From the first line (‘This is the hardest ground I ever walked on’) it’s clear this is an Australian singing. I’m not sure what the accent is that Aussie singers slip into, but it’s so distinct. Georgia Maq sounds like a rock-reversion of Missy Higgins (or Sarah Blasko or Kate Miller-Heidke). A less precious Courtney Barnett. This is meant to be dismissive – I’m genuinely curious about what happens to their vowel sounds when they sing.
Anyway, back to Camp Cope. There’s some great lyrics.
‘They say the only thing that stops / a bad man with a gun / is a good man with a gun / the lies they use to control you’ (‘Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams’)
‘I’ve been desensitized to the human body / That I could look at you naked / And all I’d see would be anatomy / You’re just bones and insecurity / Flesh and electricity to me’ (‘Flesh and electricity’)
Camp Cope: a good place to go for a bit of angst.
Marching Church – Telling it like it is
Rounding out my top 9 is another dose of angst. But this is not singalong pub music. I’m not sure what a Marching Church gig would be like.
Marching Church started as a side project of Iceage’s Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, and it’s his abrasive, detuned singing that’s the most immediate marker of this band too. I quite liked Iceage’s 2014 album Ploughing into the field of love, but Rønnenfelt’s very audible inhalations can get a bit much. There’s more of a beat to Marching Church’s music – something a little Boomtown Rats or The Cure – and Rønnenfelt breathes in more quietly (god, I sound like such a pedant – but listen to both albums and you’ll understand).
But just when a song sounds like it’s just about acceptable to put onto your summer barbeque playlist, the beat drops and Rønnenfelt moans:
Like a spotlight in some bizarre theatre of loneliness
Fist-fucked by destiny, I'm positioned like a beggar
At the heart of life, sugar
It’s moments like this that make Telling it like it is great and remind you not everything needs to be shared.
Song of the year
‘Ya Ya Ya’ by You Won’t
This category might be better named ‘A song release this past year that didn’t come from one of the best albums but was crazy catchy thanks to liberal use of nonsense syllables’. See also ‘Class Historian’ by BRONCHO. Bonus points this year for those nonsense syllables evolving into a kind of yodel. Genius.
Amid the Ya Ya Ya's, there's a sweet love song from one misfit to another:
Best concert Low at Bodega, Wellington
I was curious how Low’s slow, melodic drone would feel live. Well, it felt amazing. It sounded recording studio quality, without feeling canned or pat. Those harmonies. The long, noisy interludes. Tremendous.
Earworm of the year ‘Jet’ by Paul McCartney and Wings
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For reference, here' are my lists from 2015, 2014, 2013 & 2012.
Favourite Albums
St Lenox – Ten Hymns from my American Gothic
Nerdy on so many counts (musically, lyrically, thematically), St Lenox is Andrew Choi, a lawyer-turned (home) recording artist. His backstory and this album (and 2014’s 10 Songs about Memory and Hope) seems to sum up the possibilities of artistic life now. So it’s production and existence is a positive message – no doubt.
But it’s subject matter is difficult to read without a pessimistic slant given events after the album’s release in October – the life of immigrant communities in the US (‘I’m going to New York City to chase the American superdream’), Politics (see: Nixon, track 4)…, Racial and socioeconomic (dis)harmony the Public School System (the title of Track 3!).
There’s a certain amount of prescience in the lyrics. ‘Thurgood Marshall’ could just as easily be talking about the Supreme Court’s ruling on Trumps Muslim Ban (and Trump v the Courts generally):
I'll need a sermon on the mount, need to be born again Turn a new leaf, a second spring, a new and visceral reminder That good can triumph over evil, and the law Can be a terrifying blunt force to strike the Love of country into brave young heartsSonically, Choi’s I suspect this is my annual ‘fall completely for the whole schtick/sound but the love won’t last’ entry.
The Peep Tempel – Joy
I discovered these Australians early in 2016 via their song ‘Carol’, which led on to their second album, Tales (2014). I loved the dirty, driving rock sound, but most striking is the work of singer Blake Scott. He inhabits a cast of layabouts, good-for-nuthins and scary buggers in his songs, and his voice takes on a real range, sounding in one song like The Sleaford Mods, and another like Mark Lanegan.
Anyway, I was so in love with Tales I started thinking up ways I could bend the rules and put it into my top albums of the year. Then in October, they dropped Joy. Same Scott roleplaying/voice-hopping. And songs like ‘Brains’ and ‘Rayguns’ hurtle down the track. But there are slower, more bifuricated songs on Joy, too. This approach goes down a treat on songs like ‘Kalgoorlie’ (she lost her sight in a bar fight) and ‘Constable’ (‘I got ghosts in my walls and in my pockets but at least I own my house’), where the scary buggers and misery can take centre stage.
This is a band I’d love to see live. If you’re reading this guys: it’s not far! C’mon.
Big Thief – Masterpiece
It takes some cajones to name an album Masterpiece.
The title track (released as a single in 2015) was my gateway into Big Thief. It remains the standout track on the album – somehow straight-forward and lush all at once, eminently earwormable – but there are other fantastic songs here too, like ‘Paul’ - a love song turned break-up song thanks to a killer chorus rewrite, ‘ Interstate’, ‘Humans’, ‘Parallels’.
Big Thief makes to most of Adrienne Lenker’s voice and her articulate lyrics – but the secret lies in the band’s use of noise. This isn’t as a simple as a Pixies quiet-loud-quiet progression, or more recently Mitski’s chorus-goes-to-11 tic. Some songs (like ‘Randy’) stay in whispers and string tinkling the whole time. But when the noise comes, och!
Car Seat Headrest – Teens of Denial
2016’s ‘conflicted, possibly over-hyped but I honestly enjoyed this album’ entry.
Will Toledo doesn’t really add anything new to the indie toolkit. CSH is less discordant Parquet Courts. A heavier Pavement. Whatever. And the fact this is Toldeo’s 13thalbum and he’s only 24? Well I haven’t listened to 11 of those (I feel like it’d be like someone going back and reading the short stories I wrote before I turned 23).
But the fact this is pretty much all from one dude? This feels like proper band music, not one dude in front of a computer (cf St Lenox). A proper band with a proper appreciation for its forebears and its audience. And it’s funny.
PWR BTTM – Ugly Cherries
This is one that snuck onto the list thanks to my own tardiness. I love the song ‘1994’, but for some reason never listened to the whole album until January this year (if we’re being picky, the album was released in the US in 2015, but came out elsewhere in 2016 and I live elsewhere, so it’s fine, stand down).
And I only really ‘got’ PWR BTTM when I started watching music videos and live performances.
I don’t have that much knowledge of the queer punk scene to draw on, and I don’t want to be too reductive, but the fact that Liv Bruce and Ben Hopkins can rock out in dresses and ugly makeup in front of crowds of affectionately ugly cis and LGBTIQA kids and this boring white thirty-something in NZ can listen along to the album and dig it (and sound so old talking about it), is another ‘life in 2016 and beyond can’t be that bad’ indicator.
I tend to enjoy the songs that Ben sings more than Liv’s – perhaps because his deeper voice supports heavier musical backing, but together their output makes for a well-balanced album.
Drive-By Truckers - American Band
Okay, so if the theme of this list isn’t already apparent, it’s albums that make you feel that the world isn’t ending and the present is an okay place to be.
Drive-By Truckers had always seemed a strange mix to me. Southern and kinda big-C conservative sounding, but darlings of the elite tastemakers. On American Band the truckers swerve into the oncoming lane and address the present moment. Album opener ‘Ramon Casiano’ is about immigration (He became a border agent / And supplemented what he made / With creative deportation’). The next track is called ‘Darkened Flags at the Cusp of Dawn’, nuff said. ‘Surrender under protest’. ‘Kinky hypocrite’. ‘Once they banned imagine’. You get the picture.
It’s not all one way traffic, though. ‘Baggage’ is a powerful song about hearing of Robin Williams suicide (celebs died in 2015, too, remember) and Patterson Hood’s own experiences of depression. It might just be the song that best stands the test of time.
But for now American Band will be remembered as the album where Drive-By Truckers got political and stuck the landing.
Comparative Interlude
Compare this to Sunlit Youth by Local Natives. The Natives are one of my favourite bands with a limited back catalogue. I loved 2013’s Hummingbird. It killed me. And seeing them like in New Orleans that year is still one of the best two or three gigs I’ve ever been to.
Sonically, they added some keyboards and some studious glitchiness that sounds so ‘now’ it’s a bit cringeworthy, but the harmonies are still there and the more I listened the more it sounded like the kind of The Local Natives I might ask for.But lyrically, they pushed too far and exposed some serious naiveté. ‘Fountains of Youth’ is a transparent youth anthem that hitched its wagon to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign (‘We have waited so long, Mrs President). Listening to it now (like listening to the 30 for 30 compilation album) just makes me shake my head. ‘Fountain of Youth’ is a fake anthem – a song to rouse the already woke. It’s answers are readymade and, it turns out, insufficient. Optimism on record was not a good look in 2016.
But the Bush years ushered forth albums like The National’s Boxer, and maybe this reality check will help other bands remember the shittier side of things. Guitar music always works best when it’s the underdog behind the mic.
Lucy Dacus – No Burden
Speaking of underdogs and guitar music, 2016 was another strong year for female singer-songwriters and female-fronted bands. Lots of strong women taking the tropes of the swinging dicks who’ve ruled the roost long enough and subverting them while also, just fucking rocking in their own right. (Spotify’s Badass Womyn playlist is a pretty good entrée into this world).
Lucy Dacus’ debut album was one of my faves. It rocks. It’s honest. ‘I don’t be funny anymore’. ‘Troublemaker Doppelganger’. The album starts with such a head of steam and keeps you the rest of the way.
Momentum seems to be very important to how these songs are constructed. Album stand-out, ‘Strange Torpedo’, is just one long enjambment, it’s lines rolling over the end of one bar and into the next. Fantastic.
Camp Cope – Camp Cope
Another late entry, another Australian group, another lot of kickass females making guitar music.
From the first line (‘This is the hardest ground I ever walked on’) it’s clear this is an Australian singing. I’m not sure what the accent is that Aussie singers slip into, but it’s so distinct. Georgia Maq sounds like a rock-reversion of Missy Higgins (or Sarah Blasko or Kate Miller-Heidke). A less precious Courtney Barnett. This is meant to be dismissive – I’m genuinely curious about what happens to their vowel sounds when they sing.
Anyway, back to Camp Cope. There’s some great lyrics.
‘They say the only thing that stops / a bad man with a gun / is a good man with a gun / the lies they use to control you’ (‘Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams’)
‘I’ve been desensitized to the human body / That I could look at you naked / And all I’d see would be anatomy / You’re just bones and insecurity / Flesh and electricity to me’ (‘Flesh and electricity’)
Camp Cope: a good place to go for a bit of angst.
Marching Church – Telling it like it is
Rounding out my top 9 is another dose of angst. But this is not singalong pub music. I’m not sure what a Marching Church gig would be like.
Marching Church started as a side project of Iceage’s Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, and it’s his abrasive, detuned singing that’s the most immediate marker of this band too. I quite liked Iceage’s 2014 album Ploughing into the field of love, but Rønnenfelt’s very audible inhalations can get a bit much. There’s more of a beat to Marching Church’s music – something a little Boomtown Rats or The Cure – and Rønnenfelt breathes in more quietly (god, I sound like such a pedant – but listen to both albums and you’ll understand).
But just when a song sounds like it’s just about acceptable to put onto your summer barbeque playlist, the beat drops and Rønnenfelt moans:
Like a spotlight in some bizarre theatre of loneliness
Fist-fucked by destiny, I'm positioned like a beggar
At the heart of life, sugar
It’s moments like this that make Telling it like it is great and remind you not everything needs to be shared.
Song of the year
‘Ya Ya Ya’ by You Won’tThis category might be better named ‘A song release this past year that didn’t come from one of the best albums but was crazy catchy thanks to liberal use of nonsense syllables’. See also ‘Class Historian’ by BRONCHO. Bonus points this year for those nonsense syllables evolving into a kind of yodel. Genius.
Amid the Ya Ya Ya's, there's a sweet love song from one misfit to another:
So your daddy was a poltergeistGuys! You had me at the yodelling.
Sent your little sister screaming down the hallway
Well I don’t know about the afterlife
But I can help you to forget about the old days
Best concert Low at Bodega, Wellington
I was curious how Low’s slow, melodic drone would feel live. Well, it felt amazing. It sounded recording studio quality, without feeling canned or pat. Those harmonies. The long, noisy interludes. Tremendous.
It's risky seeing bands live that I love to listen to while writing but @lowtheband tonight were great! pic.twitter.com/iF2hA9grK9— Craig Cliff (@Craig_Cliff) April 1, 2016
Earworm of the year ‘Jet’ by Paul McCartney and Wings
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February 26, 2017
Consumption diary – January/February 2017 (part 2)
For music, see my Burns Fortnight #2 post.
BooksThe Bone Clocks - David Mitchell (novel, audiobook)
Hard to mention this without it sounding like a massive humblebrag, but I remember talking to David Mitchell about this book (he was nearly finished with it) when we were both at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2011. Reading it now, there's a lot in the Crispin Hershey section that borrows strongly from Mitchell's experience at Australian writers festivals (mostly those that pre-date 2011). And there's a New Zealander in the novel BUT he's a dude from the Chatham Islands who is granted the secret to immortality in the 1st half of the twentieth century, so safe to say NOT modelled on me!!
Mitchell is a go-to writer for readers who want chunkiness and can live with the unevenness that is part of the bargain. I enjoyed it, but all the references back to other Mitchell novels felt too much like a self-congratulatory version of the Shanghai Knights effect (oh, so they're in Victorian England, so they have to meet Arthur Conan Doyle etc). It's worse in that the big conceit of The Bone Clocks (there are these two warring factions of immortals and lots of other people have psychic abilities) has now retrospectively infiltrated Mitchell's back catalogue. Most significantly affected/diminished are Black Swan Green and The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
Yes, so a book about which it is easy to feel conflicted.
The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness (novel, audiobook) - Book 2 in the Chaos Walking trilogy, read a couple of years after I really enjoyed Book 1. This one felt more static, and as a result, longer, than the first. But still a pretty great exercise in -building (world-, character-, patois-).
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (novel, audiobook)
The first two hours (audiobook, remember) felt like 90% exposition, but I enjoyed it anyway for its unabashed geekiness. Take a step back and it's a bit uncomfortable to think about how Halliday, the deceased game designer who kicks off the hunt for the key to his fortune, is essentially vehicle for Cline's wish fulfilment. Gee, if only everyone in the world loved the same stuff I love? What if there were hordes of Gen Y, Z, AA and BB kids who devoted 12 hours a day, as Wade Watts does in Ready Player One, to absorbing 80's sitcoms and mastering arcade games? What if everything I know and all my useless skills actually became valuable?
Some problems with pacing, characterisation, and the ending, but I enjoyed this book more than anything I've read in the past year, so there.
10th of December - George Saunders (short stories)
Re-read this to help me think about short stories and oblique angles. Also, gearing up for reading Lincoln in the Bardo next month.
Hicksville - Dylan Horrocks (graphic novel)
Another re-read, another effort to re-centre myself as I geared up for a new/renewed writing endeavour.
The Man Who Could Fly - Rudolpho Anaya (short stories)
Short stories from 'the godfather and guru of Chicano Literature', chosen because of the title story. Interesting without being uplifting or massively transportative.
More Than This - Patrick Ness (novel, audiobook)
Chose this instead of finishing the Chaos Walking trilogy because a) I didn't feel like more sci-fi just yet (though it's not that sci-fi) and b) I was curious what Ness's other YA stuff is like. I'd describe More Than This as emo.
Visual media
This will be an incomplete list as I haven't been keeping record of what I watch, but I think it's a worthwhile exercise this year.
* Films
The Last Valley, Platoon, Sneakerheadz, A Few Good Men, Goodfellas, Trouble with the Curve, Silence.
Silence was the only one I saw in a theatre. I went to a 2pm session on a Friday - one of the affordances of fellowship life - but it was research for my novel. No, honestly. Maybe I'll explain one day.
But Silence. Um. Cinematically, it's essentially a series of torture scenes connected together by shots of greyscale people huddling in one place or another and the crickets and air conditioner hum soundtrack. It's been described as a Scorsese passion project because it was the works for 28 years (and because it was never going to be The Wolf of Wall Street), but maybe it took so long to come to fruition because of a lack of sustained passion?
It's a one-note film that goes for more than two and a half hours. If I had a passion project, it's would be some massive overreach - a symphonic shambles of ideas. But that's just me, I guess.
(And isn't any novel written by 99.9% of writers a passion project, in that it's something the establishment doesn't really want from you. That's how I see my work, anyway.)
* TV (a misnomer - I wonder if we'll ever get around to calling it something different?)
The OA, Fargo (Season 1), Abstract, Luther, selected episodes of The West Wing, and so much Paw Patrol (I wish there were more girl dogs but when I asked my daughter, whose favourite is Sky, she wasn't fazed).
Notes:
Roughly ranked in order of appreciation.Entire series run to present day, unless otherwise noted.
BooksThe Bone Clocks - David Mitchell (novel, audiobook)
Hard to mention this without it sounding like a massive humblebrag, but I remember talking to David Mitchell about this book (he was nearly finished with it) when we were both at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2011. Reading it now, there's a lot in the Crispin Hershey section that borrows strongly from Mitchell's experience at Australian writers festivals (mostly those that pre-date 2011). And there's a New Zealander in the novel BUT he's a dude from the Chatham Islands who is granted the secret to immortality in the 1st half of the twentieth century, so safe to say NOT modelled on me!!Mitchell is a go-to writer for readers who want chunkiness and can live with the unevenness that is part of the bargain. I enjoyed it, but all the references back to other Mitchell novels felt too much like a self-congratulatory version of the Shanghai Knights effect (oh, so they're in Victorian England, so they have to meet Arthur Conan Doyle etc). It's worse in that the big conceit of The Bone Clocks (there are these two warring factions of immortals and lots of other people have psychic abilities) has now retrospectively infiltrated Mitchell's back catalogue. Most significantly affected/diminished are Black Swan Green and The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
Yes, so a book about which it is easy to feel conflicted.
The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness (novel, audiobook) - Book 2 in the Chaos Walking trilogy, read a couple of years after I really enjoyed Book 1. This one felt more static, and as a result, longer, than the first. But still a pretty great exercise in -building (world-, character-, patois-).
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (novel, audiobook)
The first two hours (audiobook, remember) felt like 90% exposition, but I enjoyed it anyway for its unabashed geekiness. Take a step back and it's a bit uncomfortable to think about how Halliday, the deceased game designer who kicks off the hunt for the key to his fortune, is essentially vehicle for Cline's wish fulfilment. Gee, if only everyone in the world loved the same stuff I love? What if there were hordes of Gen Y, Z, AA and BB kids who devoted 12 hours a day, as Wade Watts does in Ready Player One, to absorbing 80's sitcoms and mastering arcade games? What if everything I know and all my useless skills actually became valuable?Some problems with pacing, characterisation, and the ending, but I enjoyed this book more than anything I've read in the past year, so there.
10th of December - George Saunders (short stories)
Re-read this to help me think about short stories and oblique angles. Also, gearing up for reading Lincoln in the Bardo next month.
Hicksville - Dylan Horrocks (graphic novel)Another re-read, another effort to re-centre myself as I geared up for a new/renewed writing endeavour.
The Man Who Could Fly - Rudolpho Anaya (short stories)
Short stories from 'the godfather and guru of Chicano Literature', chosen because of the title story. Interesting without being uplifting or massively transportative.
More Than This - Patrick Ness (novel, audiobook)
Chose this instead of finishing the Chaos Walking trilogy because a) I didn't feel like more sci-fi just yet (though it's not that sci-fi) and b) I was curious what Ness's other YA stuff is like. I'd describe More Than This as emo.
Visual media
This will be an incomplete list as I haven't been keeping record of what I watch, but I think it's a worthwhile exercise this year.
* Films
The Last Valley, Platoon, Sneakerheadz, A Few Good Men, Goodfellas, Trouble with the Curve, Silence.
Silence was the only one I saw in a theatre. I went to a 2pm session on a Friday - one of the affordances of fellowship life - but it was research for my novel. No, honestly. Maybe I'll explain one day.But Silence. Um. Cinematically, it's essentially a series of torture scenes connected together by shots of greyscale people huddling in one place or another and the crickets and air conditioner hum soundtrack. It's been described as a Scorsese passion project because it was the works for 28 years (and because it was never going to be The Wolf of Wall Street), but maybe it took so long to come to fruition because of a lack of sustained passion?
It's a one-note film that goes for more than two and a half hours. If I had a passion project, it's would be some massive overreach - a symphonic shambles of ideas. But that's just me, I guess.
(And isn't any novel written by 99.9% of writers a passion project, in that it's something the establishment doesn't really want from you. That's how I see my work, anyway.)
* TV (a misnomer - I wonder if we'll ever get around to calling it something different?)
The OA, Fargo (Season 1), Abstract, Luther, selected episodes of The West Wing, and so much Paw Patrol (I wish there were more girl dogs but when I asked my daughter, whose favourite is Sky, she wasn't fazed).
Notes:
Roughly ranked in order of appreciation.Entire series run to present day, unless otherwise noted.
Simmering tensions - Burns Fortnight #2
1. Consumption diary – January/February 2017 (part 1)
1.1 Music
Tomorrow (!) I'll post my 2016 music awards - only 2 months late. It's not as if they mean anything. And every day I'm discovering more great music that came out in 2016, so it's just one big exercise in arbitrary memory capture... But, tomorrow!
As for what I've been listening to these past two months, here's a link to my January Playlist (10 songs; 3 of which feature artists in tomorrow's awards).
And here's a bumper February playlist (33 songs) - see what happens when I write full-time?
1.2 - I'll cover books, film and TV is a separate post...
2. Them's a-countin' words
Total words this past fortnight: 8,101 words (short stories: 3k, novel: a sprinkling, others: 4k+)
This fortnight wasn’t as productive as I'd like because of its second week. I got sucked back into some Wellington nonsense. Hopefully it's settled now.
At the start of the fortnight I felt as if I might get the 1st draft of 3 stories completed by the end of Feb, but I'll end with one 1st draft, one half (and that probably needs a hatchet taken to it) and another fractional effort. I also wrote a poem!
3. The news (drip)feed
Maybe you know, but most likely you don’t: THE MANNEQUIN MAKERS will be published in the US. It’s coming out in September from Milkweed Editions, a full four years after the NZ and Australian versions. (Aside: I have no idea how the Romanian version has done, so don’t ask). The TMM page on Milkweed’s website went live recently here.
I really like the US cover. The blurb is a placeholder as certain authors read the book in the hopes of getting someone with US cachet to provide a blurb. There’s one writer in particular that I love (or at least, I love his work!) who is reading it, but the whole blurb economy isn’t something I want to get too tied up in thinking about.
As for the pages in between the covers, it’s so long since I was done with the edited manuscript I feel about it the same way I feel about my life before parenthood (my daughter is also 4). I would do many, many things differently – but that’s only natural. I am perhaps most pleased with the sweep of it. I may not have done everything the right way, or done justice to the chances I gave myself, but I wanted something chunky – both in terms of size (100,000+ words) and being composed of largish, relatively distinct sections. So chunky: check!
Just as THE MANNEQUIN MAKERS (historical, more intricate/plotted) was a reaction to A MAN MELTING (contemporary, off-the-cuff), I’m volleying my next book back across the net. THE LOCATION SCOUT (working title only) takes place in the contemporary world (though it has its historical preoccupations/anchors). It won’t, I don’t think, be “chunky”. It will still bear the traits of my thematic maximalism (of which my ten-year-old story ‘Copies’ is perhaps the most emblematic example), but it will be more focussed.
4. O-tago
Last week was Orientation Week here at Otago. Before then, I felt as if I was below Dunedin's median age. Now, I'm well above it.
I really liked the 'summer' Dunedin and I think I like the term-time Dunedin as well. They are both very different, but at heart they're the same. Like the original and acoustic versions of 'Layla'. (Not that any of the recent arrivals to town would get that simile. God, I feel so old.)
The weather the last two weeks has actually been summery and I've been riding my bike as much as I can and playing around with the panorama setting on my phone.
From near the Soldier's Monument, Highcliff Rd, Otago Peninsula
Spot my bike
St Kilda BeachWe went up to Christchurch for the weekend as my wife's extend family had an impromptu get together. It was easy to jump in the car and drive 4.5 hours up and back (it's easy when the kids sleep at least!) and it's always interesting driving up that way and passing places from THE MANNEQUIN MAKERS, or that inspired the fictional places.So, one month in - how am I feeling about Dunedin and the Burns? Great. The only thing holding me back is myself.
Time to throw myself into THE LOCATION SCOUT. Got my Sharpies, got my index cards, got my Blu Tac. Time to plot this mother out!
February 13, 2017
Through the embers: Fortnight 1 of the Burns
1.
I wrote 4,266 words over 7 writing days (week one started on a Wednesday; week two started on a Tuesday due to family being down for Waitangi weekend). All of my efforts were spent on two short stories: the bio story I mentioned in my previous post and another story, which I selected from the master list of things to write that I compiled. Let's call this story 'Robinson'.
Both stories are progressing, but I wonder if they aren’t too similar. I might have to write a third story (less arch, less ‘laugh at him, now comfort him’) this month to bring a bit more balance to my output and exorcise one more set of ghosts before I dive back into THE LOCATION SCOUT.
2.
I will tire of fire-related puns soon enough.
3. This is where it all happens
Parting shot from last year's fellow (possibly how I contracted this punning disorder)
My desk, my Mac, my mess
The gravity-forced attrition method of choosing which story to write next. Helps when you have off-brand Post-its. [image error] My magnolia
At first I thought it was a bible, but it's The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns.Thanks Victor!
My morning ride
It's always like this...
Except when it's like this (hail from yesterday's weather bomb)
It's official. Come & visit!
4.
One consequence of all this newfound writing time is I need to spend more time finding new (or remembered) music to add to my ‘Working’ playlist. Which is not a chore at all.
If given the option of not being able to read any more, and not being able to listen to music, I'd choose not reading. Not happily, or lightly, but I would.
5. Further exploits in procrastination
I found myself searching online for a coffee mug. I considered personalising one to commemorate my year in Otago. Like, a picture of Mr Burns from the Simpsons with the caption: ‘Burns Fellow’... something so lame and obvious that I managed to snap myself out of it.
So I’m still using the dinky little Arcoroc cup I found in the dinky little kitchenette and having to make too many trips to make tea during my day and maybe I will end up ordering something in another moment of weakness.
6. You can never step on the same wildlife cruise twice.
Over the long weekend, I took my wife, kids and in-laws on the Monarch Wildlife Cruise, which goes out round Harrington Point at the end of the Otago Peninsula.
We saw fur seals,a seal lion eating a squid, nesting shags endemic to Otago, Bullers albatross, Southern Royals, a couple other mollymawk species, nellies, terns. No spoonbills or Hectors dolphins like my first trip five years ago. Still a good haul, but nowhere near as much fun as the first time for all manner of reasons.
Giant petrel taking off[image error] Sea lion with black-backed gull
[image error] White capped albatrossCompare and contrast with our trip to Tunnel Beach at the end of Jan. No bird or marine mammal sightings of note. When we got down to the beach it was high tide so there was no sand to stand on. My son decided he didn’t like being carried on the way back up, nor did he feel like walking. For the last 500 metres (which is at a 15 degree gradient) I carried him like an inconsolable lamb.
And that trip was fricken great. The kind of day one should be careful not to sully by rushing back again too quickly.
Everyone enjoyed it, honest7. Research highlight
An article by Catrien Santing on Pope Benedict XIV, who is often held up as a supporter of the enlightenment, but also canonised a bunch of folks who did some science-defying stuff, including my boy San Giuseppe da Copertino.
The article was titled ‘Tirami su’.
I never really thought about whether the name of the dish meant anything (maybe it was a place, or a person), but when I translated it (Pick me up / Lift me up / Raise me up) the phrase made sense for a coffee-soaked dessert and an article about a levitating friar.
Pity I can’t stand coffee, and gag at the sight, smell, mention of tiramisu.
8.
8.1 - I went to an open lecture on Brexit, Trump and the rise of populism. It was interesting. I'm still trying to figure out how contemporary I make THE LOCATION SCOUT. Like, is it Feb 2017 and two non-Italians are driving around Italy talking about the Muslim ban and the precariousness of the Euro?
*Shrug*
Open lecture8.2 - I was on a panel with two other writers about the writing process here at the university. It was mostly about how we find the time to write. I've tried a lot of different things, working around different work and family situations.
My current situation, I have to say, is pretty sweet.
January 30, 2017
Sit back and watch me burn
[image error]
View of Ocean Beach (St Kilda and St Clair) from Lawyers Head, Dunedin, today.
¡Hhhhh!
That’s the sound of this blog taking its first gasp of air after a jolt from a pair of defibrillator paddles.
To what do we owe this resurrection? The Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago, that’s what.
I’m sitting in a room in the house I’ve rented for twelve months in the Dunedin suburb of Shiel Hill, just around the corner from Every Street where the Bain’s tumbledown house stood before it was razed 17 days after the murders.
This room has a desk and a double bed, and will accommodate visitors when the guest room next door is already occupied.
The set up at my new home
(note the completely blank Word document on the screen on the right)
I will have an office in the university’s Arts Building from tomorrow (the residency starts officially on 1 Feb), and I plan to go there every weekday to bash at a keyboard with reckless abandon. But I also plan to sit here, in my 2nd guest room in my temporary Southern home, in the early hours of the morning, while my wife, daughter and son sleep. I want to return to my 5am starts, even though I am suddenly time rich, because I know how time can slip away once the kids wake and a thousand little chores and cellphone alerts shunt me further from the calmness that is the spine of why we’ve come here: to write.
What will I write? (This is the bit you bookmark and come back in 12 months to fling in my face or, for the modern Democrituses, just have a good laugh).
I want to finish my novel about a location scout and a levitating saint. The working title is, unimaginatively, THE LOCATION SCOUT. When I say 'finish', it implies I’ve started it, which is one kind of true. I’ve researched stuff like the life of St Joseph of Cupertino, location scouting, screenwriting, the life and work of Martin Scorcese (on whom I’m loosely basing the benevolent director in the book). And I have a few chapters, composed in 2015, before my infant son began to wake at 5am and crowded out the last of my writing time (and energy). Re-reading these chapters last month, I suspect they are all bound for the recycle bin, and I'll need to reacquaint myself with my Pastrovicchi and the latest trends in VFX.
I won’t worry too much about moving the wordcount forward on the novel until March, though.
February I plan to exercise my dormant writing muscles by working on two short stories. One of which is, like THE LOCATION SCOUT: something I’ve broken ground on but stalled. Let’s call this ‘the Bio story’. The second story exists only as a series of to do list items:Go through notebooks, spreadsheets, draft emails and Evernote to catalogue short story ideasChoose 2nd story to write in FebWrite 2nd storyThese stories will be added to the pile of my published and unpublished stories since I put together A MAN MELTING (*takes a moment to compose himself after realising it’ll be nine years in September since AMM was accepted for publication*), from which I will, eventually, produce another story collection.
The view from my home office, looking towards St Clair
(taken 1 hour before the stormy photo at the start of this post)By the end of the year, if my writing muscles come back lithe and limber, I may have two finished manuscripts: a novel and a story collection. Or not. Two finished manuscripts is only one version of a successful year.
The novel may take longer. It may need longer, deserve longer. So long as it has 12 (okay, 11) months worth of good progress, then that’s success too.
I may become possessed by another idea and produce part or all of a different manuscript. This scenario would involve much angst and self-flagellation, but it’s conceivable I’d come out the other end and be happy with my year’s work. But it’s certainly not Plan A.
I’ll also try to post here more often. After only one post last year, that won’t be hard. In the order of one or two posts a month about life in Dunedin and how I’m getting on. Maybe the books I read on those afternoons I’m done writing for the day. Certainly the music I’m listening to while I work.
Blogging is part of the recipe for a successful year. Not the quality of the blogging (!), just the exercise. It’s no coincidence that it's also nine years since I tried to write a million words in a year (and failed with distinction). What I learnt from that process was that writing of any kind begets writing. Having ideas begets more ideas. Being chained to a keyboard and forcing yourself to write when bored leads to production. And some of that production is good. Some of it is dross, mind.
This post is me clearing my throat and flexing my metacarpals to ready me for work on the Bio story.
So forgive this. All this. It’s what I’ve always done online: exhale myself so I can inhale more exciting thoughts and words for my stories. That, and create discoverable, binding-but-not-that-binding deals with the universe about how productive I will be.
¡Hhhhh!
That’s the sound of this blog taking its first gasp of air after a jolt from a pair of defibrillator paddles.
To what do we owe this resurrection? The Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago, that’s what.
I’m sitting in a room in the house I’ve rented for twelve months in the Dunedin suburb of Shiel Hill, just around the corner from Every Street where the Bain’s tumbledown house stood before it was razed 17 days after the murders.
This room has a desk and a double bed, and will accommodate visitors when the guest room next door is already occupied.
The set up at my new home(note the completely blank Word document on the screen on the right)
I will have an office in the university’s Arts Building from tomorrow (the residency starts officially on 1 Feb), and I plan to go there every weekday to bash at a keyboard with reckless abandon. But I also plan to sit here, in my 2nd guest room in my temporary Southern home, in the early hours of the morning, while my wife, daughter and son sleep. I want to return to my 5am starts, even though I am suddenly time rich, because I know how time can slip away once the kids wake and a thousand little chores and cellphone alerts shunt me further from the calmness that is the spine of why we’ve come here: to write.
What will I write? (This is the bit you bookmark and come back in 12 months to fling in my face or, for the modern Democrituses, just have a good laugh).
I want to finish my novel about a location scout and a levitating saint. The working title is, unimaginatively, THE LOCATION SCOUT. When I say 'finish', it implies I’ve started it, which is one kind of true. I’ve researched stuff like the life of St Joseph of Cupertino, location scouting, screenwriting, the life and work of Martin Scorcese (on whom I’m loosely basing the benevolent director in the book). And I have a few chapters, composed in 2015, before my infant son began to wake at 5am and crowded out the last of my writing time (and energy). Re-reading these chapters last month, I suspect they are all bound for the recycle bin, and I'll need to reacquaint myself with my Pastrovicchi and the latest trends in VFX.
I won’t worry too much about moving the wordcount forward on the novel until March, though.
February I plan to exercise my dormant writing muscles by working on two short stories. One of which is, like THE LOCATION SCOUT: something I’ve broken ground on but stalled. Let’s call this ‘the Bio story’. The second story exists only as a series of to do list items:Go through notebooks, spreadsheets, draft emails and Evernote to catalogue short story ideasChoose 2nd story to write in FebWrite 2nd storyThese stories will be added to the pile of my published and unpublished stories since I put together A MAN MELTING (*takes a moment to compose himself after realising it’ll be nine years in September since AMM was accepted for publication*), from which I will, eventually, produce another story collection.
The view from my home office, looking towards St Clair(taken 1 hour before the stormy photo at the start of this post)By the end of the year, if my writing muscles come back lithe and limber, I may have two finished manuscripts: a novel and a story collection. Or not. Two finished manuscripts is only one version of a successful year.
The novel may take longer. It may need longer, deserve longer. So long as it has 12 (okay, 11) months worth of good progress, then that’s success too.
I may become possessed by another idea and produce part or all of a different manuscript. This scenario would involve much angst and self-flagellation, but it’s conceivable I’d come out the other end and be happy with my year’s work. But it’s certainly not Plan A.
I’ll also try to post here more often. After only one post last year, that won’t be hard. In the order of one or two posts a month about life in Dunedin and how I’m getting on. Maybe the books I read on those afternoons I’m done writing for the day. Certainly the music I’m listening to while I work.
Blogging is part of the recipe for a successful year. Not the quality of the blogging (!), just the exercise. It’s no coincidence that it's also nine years since I tried to write a million words in a year (and failed with distinction). What I learnt from that process was that writing of any kind begets writing. Having ideas begets more ideas. Being chained to a keyboard and forcing yourself to write when bored leads to production. And some of that production is good. Some of it is dross, mind.
This post is me clearing my throat and flexing my metacarpals to ready me for work on the Bio story.
So forgive this. All this. It’s what I’ve always done online: exhale myself so I can inhale more exciting thoughts and words for my stories. That, and create discoverable, binding-but-not-that-binding deals with the universe about how productive I will be.
March 27, 2016
Archival activity II
Since I last updated my personal website (craigcliff.com) in May 2013, not a lot has changed in terms of my writing career. No new books have been published (funny that, since I've completed none in that time). Only two short stories have been published, and two translations (a Spanish version of 'Copies' and a Romanian version of my novel) which, in truth, represents not effort on my part (at least not in the last three years). I went to Iowa for a writer's residency and didn't write enough. I quit writing my Dom Post column and wrote an essay about how blah I felt about four years of output. I read a lot about watching video games and wrote an essay about it.And that's it.
(I think. I haven't been a fastidious blogger over this period either, so my records are sketchy.)
But my online bio and bonus blather is more out of date than all that. I got promoted twice at work (and turned down a third promotion). I co-created another human being. That first human being that was but a pooping, suckling lump in May 2013 is now a singing, twirling Frozen reenactment. I sold a house and bought a new one. I am so fucking middle class it hurts.
(Or maybe I'm just really committed to researching the bourgeoisie?? Seed of doubt: planted.)
Ahem.
Like I did last time, I'm posting the old version of the Q&A section here (well, after the jump) because I am bad at filing things / have trouble knowing what to be embarrassed about / get public and private mixed up.
You can read the new version (small tweaks for now; some bigger changes will appear if I can think of bigger questions) on my website.
Standard author bio written in the third person
Craig Cliff was born in Palmerston North and spent most of his childhood on sports fields or in the city library, which started life as a department store. His collection of short stories, A Man Melting, won Best First Book in the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. According to the judges A Man Melting was ‘of the moment and is rightly at home on a global platform. Cliff is a talent to watch and set to take the literary world by storm.’ In 2012 he was a judge of the inaugural Commonwealth Short Story Prize and had stories translated into Spanish and German. He writes a column for the Dominion Post about his double life as a writer and public servant in Wellington, where he lives with his wife and daughter. The Mannequin Makers is his first novel.
Bonus Q&A with myself
The banner of this website describes you as a 'Writer, columnist, public servant'. What do you do for a day job?
I'm a Senior Policy Analyst for the New Zealand, Ministry of Education.
When do you find time to write?
I was lucky enough to work part-time for a while in 2011 and 2012 and that's when I broke the back of The Mannequin Makers. But I've been back to full time, five days a week, at the Ministry since September 2012.
These days I write between 5am and 7am on weekdays, then head to work. That's the plan, anyway. I became a father late last year and that's meant getting up at 5am isn't always easy.
Is your dream to become a full-time writer?
That depends. I'd like more time to write, of course. But I really enjoy my job. I think I'm good at it. It's nice to use a different part of my brain, to collaborate on projects and deal with other people, to have a beer on Friday and toast a good week's work. You don't really get that as a writer. And you don't get paid every fortnight. That's a biggie.
I've made the choice to live in New Zealand, have a family and a mortgage and be a writer. So I'm going to have a day job for a while yet. And that's cool.
You attended the International Institute of Modern Letters MA programme back in 2006. Is that when you wrote the stories in A Man Melting ?
No. I actually tried to write a novel that year — a great experience but I think it was a mistake to try and write a novel from go to whoa in eight months. Too many decisions were made for the sake of expedience that then became so integral to the fabric of the novel that it was beyond fixing. The manuscript now sits in my bottom drawer along with the novel I tried to write when I was twenty-one.
So when did you turn your attention to short fiction?
I've always written short fiction. It's a natural progression to start with the shorter form and work your way up to the longer, if that's your goal. I mostly read novels when I was younger (Douglas Coupland, Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk), so that's what I grew up wanting to write. Tastes change, of course, and eventually I found an appreciation for subtlety (though I still love me some Vonnegut). After finishing my MA, I really wanted to keep writing, but didn't have the reserves of energy needed to start another novel. So I returned to short fiction.
The first two stories I wrote after doing my MA were 'Copies' (which has since been included in three anthologies) and 'Another Language' (which won the novice section of the 2007 BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards). Something clearly clicked and things began to fall into place.
In 2008, while living in Edinburgh, I tried to write one million words in 366 days (it was a leap year). I only wrote 800,737 words, but it was a very successful failure. Almost every story in A Man Melting was written or revised during that year.
Your novel, The Mannequin Makers, is quite different to your short stories. For one, it's historical. Was it a deliberate choice to go in a different direction?
Yes and no. After finishing the stories in A Man Melting, I started working on a novel that took a character from one of these stories and spent more time with him. I plugged away at this project for quite a while, but always seemed to get bogged down. The novel was set in the present and focused on a dude about my age, with experiences not dissimilar to mine.
When I finally gave up on this novel, I decided that the next thing I worked on would either be set in the past or the future. The future seemed too easy - I could just make things up - and I thought doing research would help me feel like a proper writer. So I chose to focus on two ideas that I'd been kicking around for a while that needed to take place in the past and devote the next two or three years to them.
Having said this, I don't think The Mannequin Makers is a million miles away from my short stories. I was on a panel discussion at a writers festival once about 'Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary'. I do that a little bit (like in my story 'Evolution, Eh?'), but more often I think I'm finding the ordinary in the extraordinary. In a story like 'The Skeptic's Kid', the extraordinary (extinct animals begin reappearing all around the world) is there front and centre, but the story is ultimately more concerned about the relationship of the young narrator and his mother. Same goes with The Mannequin Makers, which could be described as high concept - a window dresser raises his children to be living mannequins - but is secretly (not-so-secretly, now) more interested in what it's like to stand very still for a long time.
What are you working on at the moment?
Fatherhood, full-time work, finishing off The Mannequin Makers, doing publicity and judging the novice category of the BNZ Literary Awards mean I don't have anything major on the go at the moment.
But I have a long list of short stories I want to write and relief is in sight: I'm off to Iowa City in August 2013 to take part in the International Writers Program. In addition to writing some killer short stories, I'll do a spot of research for what might become my next novel. At the moment I'm describing it as 'Jonathan Franzen meets Douglas Coupland meets H.G. Wells'... but it'll be something entirely different when I'm done with it, no doubt. It's early days.
Links
The Quest for a Million Words - the record of a year spent writing like stink.
This Fluid Thrill - My blog, where you can catch my thoughts about writing, reading and whatever else passes my field of vision.
December 30, 2015
Best albums of 2015
This year I’ve got a clear top eight and at least another ten that make up a second tier of honourable mentions.
Both tiers are stacked with female-fronted bands or singer-songwriters. And while the #1 spot was claimed by a dude’s one-time bedroom project, 2015 deserves to be remembered as a year the ladies killed it. Frances Quinlan’s Hop Along produced the year’s best rawk album. Alicia Bognanno’s Bully revived grunge as a viable aesthetic. And Courtney Barnett... Hold on, I'm getting ahead of myself.
#8 Father John Misty – I love you, Honeybear
Josh Tillman’s Father John Misty persona is the male version of Lana Del Rey. FJM is even more overt about the facade (there’s even a song called ‘The night Josh Tillman came to our apt.’), but through this mask he’s unlocked something his eponymous work lacked. Just like Lana Del Rey, the crooning can get a bit much, though he hasn’t overdosed yet (in contract, I couldn’t make it though LDR’s 2015 album Honeymoon; while I’d rated Ultraviolence as one of my favourites last year).
I love you, honeybear has enough up-tempo numbers, like ‘Ideal Husband’, to keep things varied — and funnily enough it’s these faster tracks that let Tillman growl and prowl the stage like FJM does best. May his path continue to diverge from his Lana, I say!
#7 Will Butler – Policy
When I’m not listening to it, I begin to suspect this is just a minor album by the third most talented member of Arcade Fire, and that I’m only fond of it because of its title (for most of my working life I’ve had the word “policy” in my job title).
But then I listen to it again (I always seem to find my wake back to it) and ‘Take My Side’ starts up, dirty and jangly, a brisk Dylan-with-a-briefcase ditty, and I couldn’t give a toss where this album fits in any other list or hagiodiscography. I love it. It should be higher! (I'm listening to it now.)
#6 Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit
I saw CB and her band at Bodega in November and it was a good gig. The best of the year to that point (a title she’d hold for about three weeks). Best of all it opened up new dimensions on her album, which had been feted since before it even dropped and I’d listened to four or five times.
Till the live show, it felt like the words overshadowed the music (and, deep down, I suspected the buzz was more to do with the paucity of straight-shooting, story-telling, guitar-driven songwriters than the fact Ms Barnett was fit to stand alongside Lou Reed or Warren Zevon...) but in concert she was more like this generation’s Jack White – a guitarist-cum-historian. While White (who, it’s easy to forget, was once tolerable) called back to Led Zep, Barnett is more interested in aping Nirvana and Mudhoney. She played at ear-bleed volume, with songs drawn-out with solos and feedback. It was terribly enjoyable.
And it’s there on the album, too, if you know what to listen for.
#5 Bully – Feels like
Bully’s songs aren’t as articulate as Courtney Barnett’s. The opener, ‘I remember’, begins, “I remember / I remember my bad habits / I remember getting too fucked up / I remember throwing up in your car.” It’s over in 1:47, and is pure 90’s grunge (even if it inverts the classic soft-loud-soft progression).
In many ways, Feels Like, sounds like a Hole record – somewhere between the too-raw to be pleasant Pretty on the inside and the too-smooth to be genuine Celebrity Skin (but rockier than Live Through This). So, pretty much as if Hole ever made an album you’d still care to hear today.
The standout tracks. still feels grungy, but also very 2015. From my favourite, ‘Trying’:
Been praying for my period all week
And relief that I just can't see
I question everything
My focus, my figure, my sexuality
#4 Hop Along – Painted shut
‘The Knock’ is probably my favourite song of 2015. But I’ve learnt it’s not the best song for a party playlist, or a family barbeque. Quinlan’s voice is too abrasive, the pitch too unconventional, for casual listeners. This is angry-but-thoughtful music to be consumed with headphones.
So begins Painted Shut, and so it continues. Song after song of sonic-challenge. The lead guitarist who can’t help weaving notes in and out and around the groove. The over-reached “Juuuuuust” in ‘Waitress’; “People of the wooorrrlld” in ‘Happy to see me’. But herein lies the charm. It’s the sort of album where, if you hear a track over the sound system at a cafe or a restaurant, you get this stupid grin, while those who can blank it out, and those who can’t furrow their brows.
#3 Torres – Sprinter
I first heard ‘Sprinter’, the song off the album of the same name, on a Spotify ‘Discover Weekly’ playlist. Actually, ‘Discover Weekly’ turned me onto Hop Along, Bully and artist #2 too, so that algorithm is doing something right. For some reason, though, I associate Torres with chance discovery more than the others. Perhaps because she was the first of this quartet? Perhaps, by spinning Sprinter so much in May and June, it skewed the algorithm in favour of these other female-fronted outfits?
MacKenzie Scott is 24, but sounds ageless. For her sophomore album, she’s surrounded herself with smart cookies and strong musicians, and gone for a gutsier sound, but it’s still very much a personal, confessional work.
Absorbing and addictive.
#2 Du Blonde – Welcome back to milk
Du Blonde is another Father John Misty / Lana Del Rey mask. After releasing her debut under her own name, Beth Jeans Houghton had a breakdown, scrapped an album and reinvented herself as a brasher, Stones-ier self and very nearly won 2015. She certainly won best refrain of the year with the chorus of ‘Young Entertainment’: “What is like, what is it like, what is it like to fuck your mistress with her hands tied?”
One of the album’s strengths is its cussing. Every swear is well deployed – it’s power doubled by the contrast to the nu-folk fantasy of Houghton’s first album. It does mean Welcome Back to Milk isn’t family friendly – but the album cover tells you that! – but, unlike Hop Along, this is music for company. From the chugging opener, ‘Black Flag’, to the more languorous but no-less muscular ‘Hunter’ and the full-on ballad ‘Four in the morning’, this is an album full of great songs, great contrasts, great bile and great bravado. Brave Beth!
#1 Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Multi-Love
Some people find God. Ruban Neilson found Prince. For Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s third album, Neilson’s project actually approaches orchestral levels — one highlight of the live show is when his dad chips in with the brass instruments — without losing the lo-fi, glitchy feel of previous outings.
Lyrically, the album can be obtuse in its details, but is centred on a simple enough narrative (set running on ‘Multi-love’). It feels fresh and brave and unlikely.
The title track and ‘Can’t keep checking my phone’ are two of the best singles of the year, ‘The World is Crowded’ is probably the best slow-jam, and the whole thing is perfect plug and play music for a range of settings.
I saw UMO perform at Bodega in mid-December and it was easily the best concert I’ve been to since I was in the States in 2013. If there was any doubt about which album would top my list, those ninety minutes sealed the deal.
Honourable mentions
· American Wrestlers – American Wrestlers· Speedy Ortiz – Foil deer· Rae Sremmurd – SremmLife· Tame Impala – Currents· Laura Marling – Short movie· Viet Cong - Viet Cong· Silicon – Personal computer· Waxahatchee – Ivy tripp· Holy Holy – When the storms would come· Art of Sleeping – Win your heart
And, for a more fulsome steer on what I was listening to in the second half of 2015 (when I disappeared from the face of the earth / this blog), here are links to my monthly playlists:JuneJulyAugustSeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember
June 10, 2015
Comme ci comme ça: Updates
So we had a son in late April. We named him Caio - a nod to those of his roots that are Italian (and a dozen other subsidiary factors that seem trivial when explained). Then we discovered some phones autocorrect this to "Ciao". Even when autocorrect doesn't intervene, some still misread it as "Ciao". Oh well.
We fuck them up, the mums and dads.
We may not mean to, but we do.
*
So the essay I wrote after reading about e-sports and video game spectatorship (see my last post) that went up on the Horoeka site last week.
*
So I'm not sleeping much. When I'm able to get up at 5am, I'm doing work-work. As in "Craig Cliff, Senior Policy Manager, Education Infrastructure Service" work. Not "writing a short novel about a location scout in Italy retracing the life of St Joseph of Copertino" work. Yet.
*
So my story about a Kiwi at an ANZAC day barbeque in Perth, 'Recessional', was published in the Griffith REVIEW in April.
*
So I went to the inaugural conference for the Historical Novel Society of Australasia in Sydney in March. It was equal parts interesting (so many panels about hist-fic - couldn't help but read new ground) and excruciating (being the 'host writer' at a table for the conference dinner was not a good idea).
*
So I bought a little city (it was Galveston, Texas).
*
So I went to a conference in Canberra about designing school facilities in May. At a dinner at the National Arboretum I met a young architect called Caio.
*
So here's three playlists:
March 2015
April 2015
May 2015
*
So I saw Ned Kelly's death mask at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.
*
So my story 'Copies', written way back in the Summer of 2006/07, was translated into Spanish and published online in March ('Copias').
*
So these days I have a two and a half year old and a baby whose age is counted in weeks. My daughter's a sponge. The other day she saw leaves over the ground and said, 'It's a deciduous day, today.'
We fuck them up, the mums and dads.
We may not mean to, but we do.
*
So the essay I wrote after reading about e-sports and video game spectatorship (see my last post) that went up on the Horoeka site last week.
*
So I'm not sleeping much. When I'm able to get up at 5am, I'm doing work-work. As in "Craig Cliff, Senior Policy Manager, Education Infrastructure Service" work. Not "writing a short novel about a location scout in Italy retracing the life of St Joseph of Copertino" work. Yet.
*
So my story about a Kiwi at an ANZAC day barbeque in Perth, 'Recessional', was published in the Griffith REVIEW in April.
*
So I went to the inaugural conference for the Historical Novel Society of Australasia in Sydney in March. It was equal parts interesting (so many panels about hist-fic - couldn't help but read new ground) and excruciating (being the 'host writer' at a table for the conference dinner was not a good idea).
*
So I bought a little city (it was Galveston, Texas).
*
So I went to a conference in Canberra about designing school facilities in May. At a dinner at the National Arboretum I met a young architect called Caio.
*
So here's three playlists:
March 2015
April 2015
May 2015
*
So I saw Ned Kelly's death mask at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.
*
So my story 'Copies', written way back in the Summer of 2006/07, was translated into Spanish and published online in March ('Copias').
*
So these days I have a two and a half year old and a baby whose age is counted in weeks. My daughter's a sponge. The other day she saw leaves over the ground and said, 'It's a deciduous day, today.'
March 2, 2015
Spectacles: A tourist in e-gaming
So I'm reading a lot about video games at the moment.
I read SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 by Jon Irwin, and learnt about speedruns (and lost hours watching people churn through old console games, exploiting every glitch and mastering every jump, on YouTube).
I read A MIND FOREVER VOYAGING: A HISTORY OF STORYTELLING IN VIDEO GAMES by Dylan Holmes and got all sentimental about Return to Monkey Island and Metal Gear Solid, then wham, suddenly I didn't know these games anymore, but it was still interesting. Most interesting (perhaps) were the experimental game designers, like Dan Pinchbeck's mod of a first-person shooter that removed all the shooting.
I read CLIPPING THROUGH: ONE MAD WEEK IN VIDEO GAMES by Leigh Alexander and again was most taken by the mention of Rachel Weil, founder of the Femicon Museum, who makes "nostalgic NES games from an imagined alternate history, one where Girly Stuff was also part of the narrative" (p31).
I read a bunch of academic papers on the rise of e-sports (video games as a spectator sport / pro sport), and each lead me to watching more YouTube clips: of League of Legends clashes, Tekken tournaments, Starcraft carnage.
I read a ton on articles and watch some mainstream TV clips about e-sports. Most present it as a confounding phenomenon (can you believe these kids are willing to sit and watch other people play video games?). Some are so bad they seem bent on provoking generational rebellion. The best so far has probably been this longer article by Ben McGrath in The New Yorker.
And I read WOLF IN WHITE VAN by John Darnielle, because I thought it was about video games (turns out the protagonist actually runs a text adventure via snail mail - how quaint). But it actually has some interesting things to say about gaming and narrative and escapism and delusion and depression and, and, and.
It's a stunning novel. It'd probably top my Best Books of 2014 list if I'd read it a few months earlier. It feels both focussed and sparse.
It's plot is driven by three lacunae that are slowly painted in:
1) What happened to Sean's face?
2) What's the legal trouble he's in/been in?
3) What's the text game 'Trace Italian' all about & how does it work?
To this, I guess you could add a broader question ("Who is Sean?) and a more specific one ("What does 'Wolf in White Van' refer to?).
The novel slowly works through these questions. At times the suspense and the narrator's circumlocution feel mechanical (standard literary fiction grasping for page-turner attributes), but every time I receive more information (or outright answers when it came to the title being explained) I'm satisfied.
Like I said, 'Trace Italian' is played via the post, but could easily be one of those earlier text adventure games. Which makes Sean the equivalent of a 248-bit processor. I suspect this comparison isn't lost on Darnielle. Yes, Sean created this game in his late teens (in the wake of his 'accident'), but now he's stuck performing mechanical tasks to enable others to play the game. His legal trouble stems from a player taking the game too seriously -- or: taking it too imaginatively, perhaps. This is a novel about the ways in which we can become trapped. Most of these traps are of our own making, and most of these are entirely in our heads.
February 1, 2015
(Belated) Best Reading of 2014
I've struggled with this post for over a month now (obviously). In 2014 I read about half as many books as I would in a normal year and compiling a top ten seemed too generous. But then, why not be generous? What does it matter if I make it sound like I enjoyed number eight on my list more than I really did? Well, what if you took my advice and read the book and were similarly un-wowed... Because there are 'wow' books out there.
So here's my list of the five wow books I read in 2014, and here's to more quantity and more quality in 2015!
#1 THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO by Patrick Ness (novel, audiobook)
What I said about it in October:
"KNIFE is packed with more ideas than almost any novel I've read this year. It has better characterisation, is funnier and braver and is the sort of book I'd give a Milton Bradley 'Ages 12 and up' label to (coz everyone should read it) rather than 'YA'."
#2 WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead (novel, audiobook)
What I said about it in February:
"My wife and I listened to this on two separate car trips up to the Kapiti Coast over the summer. Haven’t done much in-car listening before., but found it an enjoyable experience. Probably helps that this YA novel about time travel is simply told…"
What I'll add now: "That YA dig was a bit iniquitous. With time away from the book I can say that it held together well, which is rare for time travel stories."
#3 BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy (novel, audiobook)
What I said about it in May:
"Vivid, violent, unhinged, mythic, vile, meandering, arch... Blood Meridian is an Elmore Leonard western written by the bastard love child of William S Burroughs and Henry Miller.
Now I get why people rave about CMcC and Blood Meridian in particular."
#4 I'M WORKING ON A BUILDING by Pip Adam (novel/short stories, NZ)
What I said about it in July:
"The boldness... is most evident structurally, with chapters ordered in reverse chronology. The main (human) character, Catherine, isn’t present in every chapter, and when she is, we’re never that close to her. We slowly unpick her past, from earthquakes to failed relationships, but the book, like Catherine, seems more focussed on buildings. Structure trumps character, quite deliberately.
At one point a minor character admires the Rankin Brown building at Victoria University, a boxy, concrete, characterless thing, but an amazing structure if you know what to look for. Same goes for I’m working on a building, I think."
#5 ARMS RACE by Nic Low (short stories, NZ/Aus)
I read this in December and the first week of January, so I haven't written about it yet. And maybe I'm breaking my own dumb rules by including it in this list. But this is my kinda story collection.
I first read Low when I was judging the 2012 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His story, 'Rush', was the funniest of the several hundred I read. It was also risky, sharp, political. You can read 'Rush' for yourselves now in ARMS RACE and see what bowled me over.
Sometimes there's a sense of trepidation when reading a full collection from a new writer you've loved in a small dose. But there was none of that when I cracked open ARMS RACE. Low can write, but he can also think. I was ready to be challenged. And entertained. I was not disappointed.
So here's my list of the five wow books I read in 2014, and here's to more quantity and more quality in 2015!
#1 THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO by Patrick Ness (novel, audiobook)
What I said about it in October:
"KNIFE is packed with more ideas than almost any novel I've read this year. It has better characterisation, is funnier and braver and is the sort of book I'd give a Milton Bradley 'Ages 12 and up' label to (coz everyone should read it) rather than 'YA'."
#2 WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead (novel, audiobook)
What I said about it in February:"My wife and I listened to this on two separate car trips up to the Kapiti Coast over the summer. Haven’t done much in-car listening before., but found it an enjoyable experience. Probably helps that this YA novel about time travel is simply told…"
What I'll add now: "That YA dig was a bit iniquitous. With time away from the book I can say that it held together well, which is rare for time travel stories."
#3 BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy (novel, audiobook)What I said about it in May:
"Vivid, violent, unhinged, mythic, vile, meandering, arch... Blood Meridian is an Elmore Leonard western written by the bastard love child of William S Burroughs and Henry Miller.
Now I get why people rave about CMcC and Blood Meridian in particular."
#4 I'M WORKING ON A BUILDING by Pip Adam (novel/short stories, NZ)
What I said about it in July: "The boldness... is most evident structurally, with chapters ordered in reverse chronology. The main (human) character, Catherine, isn’t present in every chapter, and when she is, we’re never that close to her. We slowly unpick her past, from earthquakes to failed relationships, but the book, like Catherine, seems more focussed on buildings. Structure trumps character, quite deliberately.
At one point a minor character admires the Rankin Brown building at Victoria University, a boxy, concrete, characterless thing, but an amazing structure if you know what to look for. Same goes for I’m working on a building, I think."
#5 ARMS RACE by Nic Low (short stories, NZ/Aus)I read this in December and the first week of January, so I haven't written about it yet. And maybe I'm breaking my own dumb rules by including it in this list. But this is my kinda story collection.
I first read Low when I was judging the 2012 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His story, 'Rush', was the funniest of the several hundred I read. It was also risky, sharp, political. You can read 'Rush' for yourselves now in ARMS RACE and see what bowled me over.
Sometimes there's a sense of trepidation when reading a full collection from a new writer you've loved in a small dose. But there was none of that when I cracked open ARMS RACE. Low can write, but he can also think. I was ready to be challenged. And entertained. I was not disappointed.
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