Stuffing Stockers

2009 is practically over, but before it’s done with, we’ve got Christmas to take care of! I thought to list down some books and music that I’ve enjoyed in the past year just as a quick sort of summary, but also as a source of last-minute gift suggestions. Five each (plus bonuses), and I tried to keep them to recent releases, which is much easier for music than it is for books, considering my reading patterns.

This is also by no means a best-of list, especially considering how my tastes can sometimes be rather esoteric. It’s more of a review of things that I’ve enjoyed in the past year. I hope that you and yours can too.

So, if you’re running short of ideas and running short on time, consider giving these a shot. Alternatively, give yourself a little Christmas treat after a long year.

Books

2666
Roberto Bolaño

For a period of time after reading 2666, I couldn’t read anything else without feeling underwhelmed. Bolaño’s opus is a towering achievement, at turns absurdly funny and hopelessly dark, at once irreverent, unabashed, sprawling and intense. While it is true that one’s mileage may vary with regards to certain portions of the text, the quality of Bolaño’s prose never slips, which ought to be a remarkable achievement except for how it is overshadowed by the book’s immense ambition and spectacular beauty. It is works like these that inspire the very sort of hope that we should have in art, where imagination is vested with powers incomparable and the written word has the ability to intone, inspire, crush and create. It is works like these that remind you the importance of art, as well as its limitless nature.

[You can get this in a couple of humongous hardcover editions, a new one-volume paperback, or the box set that split it up into three books. I liked the one I have the best, which is the three-book edition.]

All-Star Superman
Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely with Jamie Grant

Grant Morrison is my favourite comic book writer, and sometimes one of my favourite living writers. I say sometimes because in the multitude of his ambitions, he quite frequently (if I dare say) falls somewhat short. But on the good days, when it all comes together, Morrison is able to take the comic book medium to quite incredible heights. All-Star Superman sees Morrison in some of his best form, reimagining the Superman story in a manner both bold and brilliant. It all comes together (with Quitely’s art and Grant’s inks) in a package that makes you realise the things that all things are possible in the comic medium.

[You can get the collected edition in two volumes, which are available in hardcover and (I think) paperback. I'm not sure if you'll have too much luck hunting down the individual issues.]

Death At Intervals
José Saramago

Of Saramago’s many otherworldly talents, one of them appears to be the ability to make the most absurd plots function. In Death At Intervals, he tells the fable of a country in which everyone, one day, just stops dying. At the hands of a lesser writer, this would probably have drowned in some unspectacular, but Saramago somehow manages to pull it off. What emerges is (as one would expect from a Saramago novel) a bleak exploration of human nature. Every celebration is simply a secret waiting to reveal its cost.

What I didn’t expect, however, was just how humorous the whole thing was. In these pages, Saramago finds the perfect balance between the more piercing perspectives into human beahaviour and the somewhat irreverent and unexpected jokes. It’s a brilliant thing to see. (He wryly lampoons everything from the government, the mob, and even the editors.)

The second half of the novel takes an even more unexpected turn and I am well aware that this will probably not succeed as well as the first half of it. Within it, Saramago decides to personify death, and his characterisation of her is arguably less likely to be as convincing as the remarkable first half of the novel. Nevertheless, I liked it, because it surprised me how it had a certain type of sweetness that I wouldn’t have expected to see outside of the very best children’s fiction.

[This is available in paperback in a variety of covers. There was a black hardcover a while back, but if you ask me, the purple Vintage edition with the cute comic art cover is probably the best representation of its contents.]

Pandora In The Congo
Albert Sánchez Piñol

At the heart of Pandora In The Congo is a writer who writes the tale of a certain Marcus Garvey. It begins by caricaturising the adventure novel, and then bursts into one of its own in the tradition of Conrad and Rider Haggard.

Piñol seizes you from the get-go with his startling imagination and boundless energy, and leads you through a novel like the architect of a good rollercoaster ride. It has thrills, spills, blood, wit, candour, altruism, hearts of darkness, romance and discourses on human nature. It asks difficult questions! It enthralls and excites! It has murder! It has villains! It has ugly humans doing ugly things! It has frightening underground humanoids! It has romance in the trees! What’s not to like?

[I've only ever seen a paperback edition of this.]

The Way Through Doors
Jesse Ball

Jesse Ball’s book is in essence a variation of The Arabian Nights. It is a scheme of things that appeals to us, I think, because of our inherent desire to believe in the power of stories. In order to prevent Mora Klein from slipping into slumber (and thus causing her dreadful harm), Selah Morse, our wonderfully unreliable narrator, has to tell her stories. It is a celebration of the artform in a manner both earnest and sweet, albeit slightly challenging because of its charming oddness and unusual form.

This was a happy accident for me. I picked it up not knowing what I was getting into. I ended up delighted and rather mesmerised. There is a purity and beauty to this that reminds us that perhaps the best parts of our lives are reserved for those unafraid to dream.

[I got this on paperback. I don't know if it comes in any other form, but that Vintage edition was put together in the most lovely fashion.]

Bonus Mention

Your Inner Fish
Neil Shubin

Here’s one additional book I thought I ought to mention. Unlike the rest of the books here, it’s a non-fiction book that essentially deals with the theory that we’ve all evolved from fish. It’s written with great clarity and much enthusiasm, and I’m sure this will win Natural History more than a few new students.

Music

Abbey Road [2009 Remaster]
The Beatles

The Beatles return with their entire catalogue remastered, and I am of the opinion that they are quite remarkable. Nowhere is this more welcome (well, to me, anyway) than with Abbey Road. The differences between the remaster and the original will probably not be as pronounced on Abbey Road as compared to some of the other albums, but it’s these differences that reinvigorate the album and give it a new dimension. The percussion pulsates in She Came In Through The Bathroom Window. The bass drives The End forwards in a way I could never have dreamed. Like I said, it’s not that the differences are night and day, but what differences they are.

Funny feeling, this. It’s 2009, and the Beatles rock again.

[This is available as a single album release and, if it's a special someone who happens to be a Beatles nut, as part of The Beatles Stereo Box.]

The Hazards Of Love
The Decemberists

The Decemberists returned this year with a gigantic rock suite telling the story of a pair of star-crossed lovers, an evil child-killing fellow, a jealous mother, a forest and a river. I suppose if there was anything characteristically Decemberist, it would be something like this.

The band has probably not sounded better (so far), with top-notch production (just listen to the opener) and some of the best musicianship they’ve yet exhibited (all around, though Chris Funk’s electric guitar and Jenny Conlee’s organ will be the most immediately impressive). And really, who wouldn’t want to see the grand, operatic ambition of telling a story like that with excellent music? The album’s massive ambition is a thing to admire, although it sometimes does end up being the album’s greatest fault. It feels every now and then as if they haven’t got enough material to sustain the suite; and sometimes slips into a sort of Disney phase (the romantic sides of the album, in particular). Nevertheless, there’s plenty of good music here, and it’s a spectacle that you really shouldn’t miss.

[The album is available at the Decemberists store, among other places, but I wanted to note that if you get it there now, you will also get a DVD of the animated feature that they put together to accompany the album.]

Humbug
Arctic Monkeys

Humbug is a carnival with a dark twist, a biting poison and the occasional moment of sweetness. Unlike the first two endeavours of the Arctic Monkeys, it is a quite successful attempt at making an album as a cohesive whole. It definitely feels as if they don’t feel the need to impress so immediately anymore (most notably in the very controlled and cheekily vulgar opener, My Propeller), and that shows in the care that has been taken in crafting some of this music. There are fewer hooks, fewer catchy singles, fewer overt displays of showmanship, but definitely a marked maturity to their musicianship. It’s an excellent album by an excellent band that’s showing signs of moving in the right direction.

[All major record stores, and probably most minor ones too.]

Middle Cyclone
Neko Case

Nature and the need for love frame Neko Case’s latest album, and in this balance we find something pleasant, bittersweet, and ultimately sweeping. There is a cinematic quality to this album as it moves from country to noir to rock and even to the spiritual. The range of it alone is impressive, and is made even more impressive by her incredible voice. And while it is one of the very best voices in the business, demanding your attention at every turn, credit should go too to the band for managing to produce a Walden-esque aesthetic within the confines of the album.

Resembling a midsummer night’s dream of forests and fireflies, of rain on the fields and creaking cicadas in the dark nights, tinged with more than a hint of heartbreak, the album turns out to be a thoughtful endeavour that I found thoroughly enjoyable.

[It's really not anything like the cover.]

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix

Early Phoenix stuff has always somehow struck me as promising and yet lacking in some way. That wasn’t at all the case with this cleverly titled album. It’s an album that tries to deal with the grandiose themes of love and angst and disappointments and living in frame of their now-mature sense for pop-rock. In doing so, Phoenix abandons their sophisticated and excessive arrangements for something more urgent, something that breathes. It understands loneliness. It understands hurt. It asks that you pull your socks up. It asks that you step on the gas and ride into the sunset. By somehow drawing upon Mozart, Liszt, Brain Eno and Daft Punk, Phoenix has produced a work of youth and hope that burns as brighter than anything I’ve heard this year (and many others).

Bonus Mentions

It’s Blitz!
Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Together Through Life
Bob Dylan

Two more albums that I didn’t have space for. I wanted to say that even not being the biggest fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I really enjoyed It’s Blitz!. Together Through Life, on the other hand, sees Dylan put out music that’s perhaps more… ‘grounded’? I don’t know if that’s the word for it. I have a terrible vocabulary. It certainly has a far less epic feel than the preceding albums in his discography, and doesn’t carry the same sense of importance about it, but it features Dylan in a somewhat more relaxed mood, delivering some very clever lyrics and supported by impeccable performances. Excellent stuff.

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Bah, Humbug.

I got my hands on the new Arctic Monkeys album Humbug a couple of days ago. Since then, I’ve had a couple of listens, and here are some impressions.

My first thought was that Humbug definitely has a bit more weight about it than the earlier albums. Perhaps not keen to stick with the streetwise lyrics and furious showmanship of the two preceding albums, the Arctic Monkeys have put out a piece of work that exhibits a level of artistic maturity that to me is very welcome, but might alienate fans who fell in love with them with their debut album.

To me, it feels like a natural progression from Favourite Worst Nightmare, which at times took darker turns than one would have expected of a band that started life with the pop poetry of adolescence. No longer caught in that transition, Humbug embraces the Arctic Monkeys’ new, shall we say, world-view with quite some aplomb. There is drama to be found in the wicked characters, the cryptic and clever lyrics, and the inherent strangeness of this new album.

Certainly, the arithmetic, hook-based nature of their earlier work can scarcely be found here, and in its place is a clear attempt to produce a more cohesive album. Most tracks don’t come across as attempts to craft catchy singles. Instead, the entire experience has more layers and nuance than anything that they’ve ever done before. I will say that admittedly, no song quite hooked me in the way that some of their earlier songs did, but between a catchy three-minute ditty and a more well-balanced experience, I’d gladly pick the latter.

The album opens with My Propeller, which, compared to their last two outings, proves to be quite restrained, perhaps a sign of the recognition that there’s no longer hit the ground with something loud and flashy, or perhaps a declaration of intent, because it leads perfectly into the leading single Crying Lightning. A more cohesive album, as I was saying. Crying Lightning proves to be the perfect lead-in to an album with a dark and yet carnival atmosphere. The fuzzy guitar and unusual lyrics set the tone really quickly.

I remember thinking on my first listen that the two opening tracks also highlighted the band’s blossoming musicianship; and Alex Turner also showed that despite trading little street observations for darker, stranger things, he’s still quite capable of lyrics ranging from clever and oblique (“With folded arms you occupy the bench like toothache/Stood and puffed your chest out like you never lost a war”) to the inventively crude (“My propeller won’t spin and I can’t get it started on my own/When are you arriving?”).

I really like Dangerous Animals. The lyrics are quite spot-on, the performance of the band is quite remarkable, and the spelling game makes it one of the catchiest songs on the album. It’s like an old Arctic Monkeys song infused with a little more maturity, a little more wisdom and a little more imagination. It takes a more poignant turn with Secret Door, which I must say has a fantastic melody. Potion Approaching then provides more of their impressive musicianship, although admittedly Fire And The Thud didn’t catch me.

Cornerstone is probably one of the most brilliant things they’ve ever done, or just a decent ballad that fills the space of Fluorescent Adolescent on this album, depending on which side of the fence you’re on. The lyrics are achingly good, the tune itself is beautiful, and Alex Turner’s ever-maturing abilities as a singer are on full display here. I’m pretty sure you could easily make a case for it being the strongest piece in Humbug. This is the way love songs ought to be done, and it’s moments like these that sets the Arctic Monkeys apart from their contemporaries.

Dance Little Liar didn’t do much for me, like it was always wanting to be more than it actually was. I have a feeling it’ll grow on me later though. Pretty Visitors, full of force and intensity, struck me as classically Arctic Monkeys. It is however tinged with the darkness of Humbug, evident in the imaginative lyrics. There is also a vicious sense of humour to be found here. (“Which came first?/The chicken or the dickhead?”)

The album ends with the evocative The Jeweller’s Hands, something of a punk-era Alice In Wonderland tune. It’s a fitting conclusion to an album that is in turns clever, dark, expansive and filthy.

Overall, it’s an interesting direction, and while it has its problems (mainly that some of the songs really didn’t seem to hook me), it’s great to see the band appearing to have less of a need to impress and more of a desire to produce something more artistically complete. As a result, it’s nowhere near as accessible as their earlier works, but it’s probably going to outlive either of their first albums. The Arctic Monkeys have always showed a love a classic film in their music, but this is the first time that they’ve stopped framing scenes and started putting together a motion picture.

Humbug is a very competent album, and quite the experience. It has some startlingly brilliant moments, and some humdrum ones too. And perhaps its greatest problem might turn out to be the band’s reinvention and the risk of alienating their fans. Artistically, it bodes well for the band. The sense of ambition suggests that even at this remarkable level, the best is yet to come.

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