The collection Refined Sugar has the quick-beat, party song “Somebody Scream,” and the reflective and slow-beat “Life Goes On,” a song of the acceptance of disappointment, though there the narrator, the singer, is still wondering: “Maybe someday you’ll tell me why, why you had to hurt me,” a wondering that suggests an incomplete acceptance.
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Romance and Modernism: Smokey Robinson, My World: The Ultimate Collection
Smokey Robinson’s music is not haunted or helmed in by gospel pieties, blues grievances, or social conflicts, but, instead, his music is the music of the open, questing spirit, the sensitive heart, the sensual body: a modern man, liberated, loving, and thoughtful.
The Beautiful Music of the Son of Ali Farka Toure: Vieux Farka Toure
I do not know the language, or languages, in which Vieux Farka Toure’s songs are written so I cannot discuss their meaning: I can only suggest something of what they sound like and their effect on one listener. This is music of many delicate notes, notes like softly splashing rain, refreshment for a dry season.
Last and First: Carl Hancock Rux’s Good Bread Alley and Rux Revue
Transcendence is not what Rux’s music offers: instead, in a world with spirits and no gods, one feels as if one has a companion for one’s journey, someone to share the struggles—and some of the pleasures—with.
Evidence: Fine Young Cannibals’ The Raw and the Cooked, Hootie and the Blowfish’s Cracked Rear View, and Lenny Kravitz’s Greatest Hits
The Uses of Belief: Susan Werner, The Gospel Truth
Love, instinct, doubt, and the wonder of nature: all part of life, all objects of contemplation—do not deny them, do not simplify them, advises Werner. On “Don’t Explain It Away,” Werner’s singing is well modulated, with a nuance that is the exact opposite of what one expects of a rhetorical inclination or tone; and although the album does not sound explicitly rhetorical it is rhetorical.
Interview with Dorothy Porter
Dorothy Porter talks about her new novel El Dorado, on the “obscure and effete in poetry,” the reasons for and difficulties with writing novels in verse, her narrative technique, and much more.
A review of El Dorado by Dorothy Porter
Once again, Porter succeeds in that impossible juggling act of narrative and poetry. Even for the most casual of reader, El Dorado reads easily as a fast paced, intense and psychologically satisfying thriller. For those who want more than simply a quick escape, El Dorado explores complex topics of childhood innocence and guilt; love and hatred; desire and psychosis with the kind of taut intensity that only poetry can provide.
A Place Where Love Can Grow, by the band Faith, featuring Felice Rosser
What is music for? That is a question one rarely asks out loud and yet it is a question that every piece of music must answer. After first hearing the album <A Place Where Love Can Grow, I thought of it as creative, intelligent, consistent, and interesting…
A review of Trilby by George du Maurier
I think the greatest merit of Trilby is in its obviously deeply-felt evocation of the Bohemian, artistic side of Paris in the middle of the 19th century. I have come across some indication [6] that what Du M wrote may not have been literally true in its details … but it is hard to believe that the spirit of Du M’s writing is not somehow true.