Where Is Marietta
Posted: 11 February 2021
Imported from substack so the formatting is messed up, it looks better on substack.
If youre only going to read one essay here, make it the Weezer one under “Vitreous Humor - Posthumous.” An excellent album that does not really have a lot in common with Weezer, besides for kind of the album art.
There are some extra notes that didn’t make it into some of the essays at the bottom of this newsletter.
———————
Index
Everything I really liked has a * in front of its name, everything else runs the gamut from stuff I like to stuff I don’t. Movie/book writing is spoiler-y.
Movies
* Klute (1971)
Crime Thriller
Music
Yves Tumor - Heaven to a Tortured Mind (2020)
Rock/Psychedelic Soul
* Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - The Jazz Messengers (1956)
Jazz
Moss Icon - Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly (1994)
Hardcore/Post-Hardcore
Dirty Bird - For the Time Being (2021)
Indie Folk
Swans - To Be Kind (2014)
Experimental Rock
* asthenia - Four Songs (2014)
Emotive Hardcore
* Gospel - The Moon Is a Dead World (2005)
Screamo/Prog
Vitreous Humor - Posthumous (1998)
Emo/Alt Rock
Tigers Jaw - Tigers Jaw (2008)
Emo/Indie Rock
Tigers Jaw - Charmer (2014)
Indie Rock
Movies
———————
Klute
Donald Sutherland always looks like he’s on the brink of tears. It brings an interesting juxtaposition to his otherwise stoic character - silent, dependable, and about to cry. Quite the charming fellow.
Klute is beautifully shot crime thriller that focuses on the potential victim (Jane Fonda’s character, Bree) and isn’t really about the crime at all. Bree feels stuck. An early scene reveals that she has been seeing a therapist for a long while, and she feels like these sessions have not led to any changes in her life. The threat of a violent stalker hangs over her and mirrors her mental state; lurking in the background, popping up from time to time as a reminder that he exists, like a nagging thought or a bad habit. A presence that is constantly felt.
Sutherland’s character, Klute, shows up, and things begin to change for Bree. His search for a missing man picks Bree up from her mental quagmire and gets her moving again. Of course being stalked by a violent maniac is serious. It’s not just a problem to ignore and hope for the best. Of course it’s difficult to accept a meaningful relationship with her uninhibited desire to control, fueled by years of soulless half-hour hook-ups with nameless johns. Something needs to change. The status quo cannot stand. We follow Bree as she struggles to grow and overcome her self-destructive tendencies.
Klute is an honest look at how difficult it can be to change. You may know exactly what it is that needs changing, you may know exactly how harmful it might be to stay the same. But it’s left entirely up to you to make the scary, uncomfortable choices to reject complacency, to keep yourself from imploding. It’s up to you to confront reality. And that can be very painful!
Music
———————
Yves Tumor - Heaven to a Tortured Mind
Rock/Psychedelic Soul
The stars, ocean waves, and dancing flames.
We weave in and out - the music syncs with and departs from the pulse of the world around us, flourishing in our periphery. Among its pulses, tressed between primordial bass grooves and the fractured beats of the future, we find lucidity.
These songs stood out to me every time I went through this album: Gospel For A New Century, Kerosene!, Dream Palette, and Strawberry Privilege.
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - The Jazz Messengers
Jazz
In college I took a poetry writing class which was part of a program with senior citizens who lived near the campus. It was a class in the sense that it was guided, but our work was not graded, there were no harsh critiques. It was a place for experimenting and sharing. My poems were abstract, word soup, mood and tone and not a lot of substance. Many of the seniors wrote about the lives they lived, people they remembered, regrets and cherished moments. One of the first (maybe the first) prompts we had was to pick a song title at random from strips of paper in a hat. My prompt was “Mood Indigo,” a song I had not (and still have not) listened to. Here is the first stanza of my poem:
Mood Indigo
And a rendezvous in blue,
A peacock in the night,
Tinting a rainbow black, pouring its color into a bucket,
And washing your dirty clothes.
It’s a little embarassing looking back at work from years ago, wondering, what did I see in this? I was very proud of it. I don’t know if I’m still proud of it, but I’m glad I wrote it. Whenever the words “Mood Indigo” come up anywhere I think “and a rendezvous in blue” to myself.
Moss Icon - Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly
Hardcore/Post-Hardcore
This band is so good. Generally, I want to like late 80’s and early 90’s emotive hardcore more than I do - Indian Summer being a specific band I have in mind here. Their song “Angry Son” (also known as “Woolworm” - how cool is that. There’s a song out there with two totally different names) has a riff that you’ve almost definitely heard before, a foundational pillar in contemporary emo and post-rock. They’re important bands! Indian Summer, Rites of Spring, The Promise Ring: all bands that I respect, bands that paved the way for a lot of music that I really like, but bands who I don’t like that much!!!! These jigsaw pieces just do not neatly fit into my brain.
So it’s exciting for me when I do really like an early post-hardcore band! I don’t even think it’s fair to call Moss Icon emo, their sound is much closer to hardcore than acts like Indian Summer or Funeral Diner who developed in a more post- direction, who have roomier melodies, more dynamic jumps between quiet and loud sounds. Maybe their later work starts to have longer, dreamier guitars. But the Moss Icon creating Lybernum Wits whisper like Slint while destroying you with a 1000 pound bass guitar. Their riffs chug, their songs move, they scream like Ian Mackaye while suffocating you.
History and roots and sounds and everything aside, they’re just really good. Listen to the first 10 seconds of “I’m Back Sleeping, Or Fucking, Or Something” and tell me that bass doesn’t have you making this face, even if just for a moment:
Dirty Bird - For the Time Being
Indie Folk
My friend Blake plays drums in this band!
I don’t listen to a lot of folk but this reminds me that for a while, ~5 years ago, I would go to Sofar shows pretty often. At one of them, Adam Neely, now of Youtube fame, was playing guitar (Maybe it was the bass, but 99% of the Sofar performances I have seen were a singer and guitarist, it would be shocking if it were otherwise). Later in life I found one of his videos online and learned that he routinely gets hundreds of thousands of views. His videos are fantastic and he deserves the attention! But that was something I never expected.
With the exception of Neely, I don’t remember any of the musicians I saw perform. Maybe part of it was the lack of a program — simultaneously the charm of the shows, this seductive secrecy, but not conducive to building a fan base for the artists. I have (had? I don’t know where they are) two CDs from these shows. One of them was one of my first instagram posts; I’m kind of amazed that I was able to dig up this photo:
All of these memories, the musicians I saw, the music they played, are faded. I remember some of the venues, though. I remember who I went to the shows with. My first Sofar show was at a venue run by Ilegal Mezcal in Tribeca, I went with my friend Max. They served cocktails. I discovered that I really like mezcal.
Swans - To Be Kind
Experimental Rock
Fireworks go off in my brain whenever artists really engage with their mediums. I love post-modern literature, books that are aware that they are books, books that use their book-ness (footnotes, notes from the author as the author, variable chapter arrangements) with intentionality. I love modern art that, in some way, addresses the question of what art is. The message of the work is placed within a context, and that context is brought to the forefront. Everything meta-textual is as crucial and as much part of the work as the content. McLuhan came screaming down a mountain about the medium being the message and we have been living in his world ever since.
You can trust Swans. They have spent over thirty years perfecting their art, making you feel miserable, crushing you under the unbearable weight of your own humanity.
asthenia - Four Songs
Emotive Hardcore
Really outstanding emotive hardcore out of Tokyo. Emo/post-hardcore/math rock have a huge scene there! Lots of great talent.
If you think I am exaggerating when I say that “Woolworm” AKA “Angry Son” by Indian Summer is a foundational pillar of contemporary emo/post-hardcore, check out “Transistor” by Don Martin Three. Check out Asthenia’s song “こぼれ落ちる” which starts at 10:57 here:
Gospel - The Moon Is a Dead World
Screamo/Prog
Do you ever, while walking outside, lift up your head and feel like you’re suddenly two inches shorter? This isn’t like, a regular occurence, but is a very specific feeling I sometimes have.
This album is insanely good. On “Golden Dawn” a strained voice shouts:
Hey you, you got a cigarette man?
You know I know you got one on ya.
Which I think captures Gospel’s entire ethos.
Also, their dummer has been uploading videos of their shows from the mid-2000s to Youtube: [link]. Very cool!
Vitreous Humor - Posthumous
Emo/Alt Rock
Hail, traveler. Come closer to the fire, enjoy the warmth and humanity of the tunes played by Vitreous Humor, and hear the tragic story of a little band called Weezer.
Four fellows in early 90’s LA, led by a certain Rivers Cuomo, are pushing a rock sound different from the grunge surrounding them. They have vision! They know what they want to do, and they know it will be good. They release their self-titled debut, now known as the Blue Album, in 1994, and it is an instant hit. They are catapulted to rock-and-roll stardom.
Our hero, Rivers Cuomo, riding high on the adrenaline of being a rock star, has greater aspirations. His music will not stop at becoming more powerful, at penetrating deep and rattling the bones of his audience, no no no. This is not enough. He is going to create an entire rock opera. This idea is scrapped, but bits and pieces make it into Weezer’s next album, Pinkerton. A dark album, exploring desire and sin and vanity, exploring the tribulations of being a rock star, cosmic in scope. Cuomo pours his heart and soul into it, and it gets a luke-warm reception. He takes it personally, is crushed:
''Everybody hated it,'' says Cuomo. ''Critics, the majority of our fans, most of my friends and family, the other band members....Everyone thought it was'' — he pauses, letting the thought hang — ''an embarrassment. One of the worst albums of all time.'' [quoted from Entertainment Weekly]
He felt like he had bared his soul, was unprecedentedly vulnerable, revealed shameful truths hidden in his heart. For this, his reward was rejection. He is pulverized into a mush, his ego flatlines instantly. A shell of a man, he paints his entire room black. He takes some time to recover from this horrible event. Cautiously, Weezer begin playing shows again. They start working on a new album.
Five years after Pinkerton we get the Green Album, and it is as polarizing as Pinkerton was. Spencer Owen at Vice rates it a 4 out of 10, a terrible score, writing, after listening to the album:
My heart was broken. Really. This is going to sound like hyperbole, but I hated music at that moment. [Vice link]
The Green Album seems to lack a soul. Weezer release 13 (13!!!) more albums, and none of them return to the heights of the Blue Album. Pinkerton is re-discovered and roars skyward, is now considered a classic album. But everything else has not.
Everybody wants more Weezer. A year before the Green Album, a little band called Ozma come onto the scene with their album Rock and Roll Part Three and instantly out-Weezer Weezer. Cuomo considers it one of the two essential albums every Weezer fan should hear. Another musician, Billy Cobb, releases an album in 2020 called Zerwee, with a very explicit goal:
I just wanted to make a good Weezer-sounding rock record because Weezer hadn't actually released a decent one for about three years. [Interview link]
What happened? Why can’t Weezer be the Weezer people want?
What follows is pure speculation on my part. I do not pretend that I know what Rivers Cuomo thinks, what he feels. But perhaps my theories contain a grain of truth, perhaps they are believable enough. We follow Cuomo as he turns away from society in his painted-black room.
The reviews for Pinkerton come in, and Cuomo immediately feels shame, embarassment. He wishes Pinkerton never happened, and vows to never write a sincere song again. At some point in the 20 years following Pinkerton, he solidifies a songwriting system. He explains it in a 2016 interview on Song Exploder [link]: He records interesting guitar riffs in one hand, and keeps a notebook full of potential song lyrics in the other. He is meticulous, keeping track of syllables and rhythms. When it’s time to go to work at the studio, he goes through his recordings and matches them up to song lyrics. His bandmates record their parts without him. This is all glued together.
Long have we departed from the land of a rock opera, from meticulously crafted synergies of sight and sound, of passionate beliefs Cuomo could not contain within his mortal flesh. We now contrive to fit together disparate ideas as if by formula. A monumentous amount of work goes into creating these ideas, this is true. Music is his life, and there is nobility in that. But this painstaking, deliberate process, breaking beautiful moments out into distinct pieces and then gluing them back together, intentionally avoiding cohesiveness: What for?
Pinkerton was Cuomo presenting his bare, naked self to the public, and its reception eviscerated him. His dirty honest truth was stomped on. He refuses to be hurt again. These songwriting safeguards are there as a reminder: He will be honest, but not THAT honest. There’s nothing wrong with any of the music since Pinkerton. It sounds good. It moves, it evolves, it sounds warm and inviting. But something essential is missing, a kernel of truth is intentionally hidden away. We are shown a simulacra of the Weezer that sang “The Sweater Song,” that sang “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams.” Vultures will never again peck at Cuomo’s liver.
Tigers Jaw - Tigers Jaw
Emo/Indie Rock
This band seems watery. The self-titled album is enjoyable in a early 2000s indie rock way, not bad by any means, but it seems like they could fit a lot more into their songs. Or they could go the other way and try to have less. In either case, this album very subtly has the wrong amount of a very enigmatic “it.”
Tigers Jaw - Charmer
Indie Rock
Doesn’t seem like they have figured out the right amount of “it” here either. It’s closer to the right amount for sure, though. Very tough to find the right amount of “it” with indie rock.
I feel a great kinship with the song “Cool” — whenever I need to name a file I default to something like cool.txt or cool2.txt.
———————
Thanks for reading! Here are some unrefined thoughts that I couldn’t figure out how to fit, or even if they should fit, in their respective essays:
[1] (Klute spoilers) The plot of Klute is, undoubtedly, about a detective searching for a missing man. Klute discovers that the lawyer who hired him likely murdered the target of his investigation, and that the lawyer likely also murdered two call girls, and has been stalking Bree. All of the tension and horror of this movie is built up around this premise. And it’s truly chilling — the final scene before the ending is horrifying. But those are all just things that happen. I do not think they are what this movie is about.
This is why the confrontation with her stalker is so powerful. The first time Bree comes face to face with reality, when encountering Arlyn Page, she faces existential horror and crawls back to comfort in the lap of her former pimp. She believes that she has control, that she knows exactly how she’s manipulating her tricks. But this illusion is shattered by Mr. Goldfarb, for whom she felt like she was doing something honest and kind: he had lost his wife, she believes that she is the only honest human connection he has. She calls him for help, asking to speak to him, and he leaves money for her with his secretary. Her internal narrative about how important she was to him dissolves. She finds herself reeling, floating in space: her safe, comfortable place was not nearly as grounded as she would have liked to believe. In this liminal state her bogeyman of a stalker appears, the final barrier she needs to cross to be free of all the burdens she had up until then casually accepted in her life.
The last scene has Bree and Klute moving her things out of her apartment, her telling her therapist that she is not sure what life is going to bring. None of her discussions with her therapist involve her stalker at any point in the movie. The stalker is a physical manifestation of her mental blocks.
There’s a very good essay about this movie at the Criterion: [link]
[2] The “Swans - To Be Kind” review is a scrap of a larger essay I would like to eventually write about capital A Art. Some references I had in there before editing them out were to Heidegger’s Hammer, Kanye West, and the movie Clue.
[3] I actually think “Only In Dreams” is the best song on the Blue Album by a million miles but there was no way I was going to write a sentence referencing both “Only In Dreams” and “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams.” That rolls off the tongue like a brick of molasses.
That’s it! Have a great day.