Lover, You Should've Come Over
Posted: 18 February 2021
Imported from substack so the formatting is messed up, it looks better on substack.
I’m trying something new and linking album titles (they’re underlined! You can click them!) to youtube/spotify/bandcamp.
A lot of writing about music that reminds me of other music in this one. Read the rest at your own risk, except for the fun essay about peanut butter serving sizes under “Dream, Ivory.”
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Index
Everything I thought was incredible 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. There are some looser, uncategorized post-scripts at the bottom of the newsletter.
Books
Zadie Smith - White Teeth (2000)
Fiction
Music
* Jeff Buckley - Live at Wetlands, New York, NY 8/16/94 (2019)
Folk Rock/Psych Rock
Mineral - The Power of Failing (1997)
Emo
Third Eye Blind - Third Eye Blind (1997)
Alt Rock/Post-Grunge
* Silver Jews - American Water (1998)
Indie Rock
* Metallica - Kill ‘Em All (1983)
Thrash
Monikino Kino - Prázdniny (2014)
Ambient/Downtempo
Jeff Rosenstock - I Look Like Shit (2012)
Punk/Emo
Jazz Celula – Oheň Až Požár (1976)
Psychedelic Jazz Funk
Dream, Ivory - dream, ivory EP (2016)
Lo-fi/Surf Rock
Robert Schumann - Jingjing Zhang spielt Robert Schumann (2020)
Classical
Glocca Morra - Ghoul Intentions (2012)
Emo
Books
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Zadie Smith - White Teeth
Where did we come from, and where are we going? As a species? Within a culture? As individuals? What gravity does something as nebulous as family history hold in our lives? White Teeth is a novel about time and culture, about nature and nurture, about our pitiful struggle to shape the present into a mirage of a past that never really existed.
Maybe, you will argue, these questions are too vague. EVERYTHING can be about time and change if you squint hard enough. But White Teeth is not abstract - it tackles these questions explicitly, through the lens of Jamaican and Bangladeshi immigrants and what happens to their culture and religion in England. It is about their children, their children’s children, their parents, and stories about their parents’ parents. We see vignettes of critical junctures in their lives. We see them struggle and move through life, make difficult choices and react to difficult situations. Their hopes and worries about their children. We are along for the ride to see the events that shape them, how the weight of history and the glimmer of the future push down on both ends and turns coal into diamond.
White Teeth is not without flaws — it lulls you in, convinces you that the characters, who we learn so much about, are important. But they are not. They are cosmically insignificant, the same way their forebearers were. This is a novel where the story is front and center, where the events that take place and who they take place to are the meat of the experience. The characters never feel solid beneath our feet, their decisions never completely make sense.
We spend long stretches of time with a character, learn about them as we follow them around, nothing happening, and then suddenly jump to another, less familiar character as events explosively unfold. Critical moments occur and we skip years into the future, characters’ thoughts and emotions left behind, a mystery. We see characters fight but we never see them make up. We go through expanses of detail to set up for quick jokes. Characters have their time to shine and fade into the background, forgotten, until they show up with a wink later on.
But like I said, the characters are not what White Teeth is about. They exist as archetypes; gradually familiar vessels, overflowing with water. We find out what happens to them, what had happened to them. Through them, with them, we question who we are. It is a novel about the immigrant experience, but, on an existential level, about everything that means. What happens to you when you immigrate? What happens to your past? What happens to your children? What did you think would happen? What did you WANT to happen? How about if you replace the word “immigrate” in these questions with “grow up”?
It’s clever. It’s very funny. It’s a little slow at times. It’s heartfelt. I liked it.
Music
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Jeff Buckley - Live at Wetlands
Folk Rock/Psych Rock
How do you say anything about this? Jeff Buckley makes me want to cry.
Out of the live albums on Spotify I like this one because the songs don’t end. They’re all two to three times longer than the studio versions, you get to really bask in Buckley’s ethereal croons.
Mineral - The Power of Failing
Emo
Mineral feel similar to other mid-late 90’s emo acts (Texas Is The Reason, The Promise Ring, Sunny Day Real Estate). If you like those bands, you might like Mineral.
Third Eye Blind - Third Eye Blind
Alt Rock/Post-Grunge
Did you know that this band is still active? I can’t say that I love this album, but I think “Semi-Charmed Life” through “Graduate” is an incredibly strong stretch of songs. They all rule, they’re all a lot of fun, I am happy to hear any of them any time they appear in the universe.
Musically I don’t know much about alt rock or grunge or nu-metal, but looking this album up and seeing “Post-Grunge” was a bit of a lightbulb moment. The opening track, “Losing a Whole Year,” is very grungy! They have the Fuel-style “BLEE BLAH BLEE BLAH” chorus, which immediately solidified exactly what alt rock is in my brain. Here’s my theory that I’m coming up with based on one Third Eye Blind track: alt rock was grunge moving in a poppier direction. Maybe obvious! But I’ve never seriously sat down and though through “what is alt rock.”
This album’s also kinda funky with some of the more rapped lyrics, like on “Semi-Charmed Life”, which made me think of like. Sublime, Smash Mouth, Barenaked Ladies. Red Hot Chili Peppers? That was a moment in music. Not sure about the history there either, maybe something to do with hip hip’s popularity around then? And I guess that’s why nu metal came into existence around then? And then I guess indie rock had a bit of a resurgence because people got sick of Slipknot and Koяn, and then the internet came onto the scene and flipped everything except pop music on its head.
The biggest problem I have with this album is that the songs are all 4 to 5 minutes long, and there are 15 of them. That’s way too long! The first half of this album rules but, at some point, it starts to drag. This major flaw, bad as it is, is incapable of putting any kind of damper on the incredible power of
🎵 IIII waant sooomething eeelse 🎵
🎵 to get me through this 🎵
🎵 semi-charmed kind of life 🎵
Silver Jews - American Water
Indie Rock
This is what I actually wanted to hear every time I thought I wanted to listen to Pavement.
Metallica - Kill ‘Em All
Thrash
Metallica were my gateway into metal as a teen. I was hesitant to listen to them for a while! I had convinced myself that metal could NOT be good, that I was NOT the type of guy to listen to metal. It was a genre for misfits, unlike me (haha). There was a Youtube video of a guy playing Battery on an erhu (my memory is a little foggy. But this is what I remember) which piqued my interest, and then I listened to Master of Puppets, and that kicked that door wide open.
Prior to that erhu cover of Battery, I held some very questionable, very elistist opinions about music. I was in the “I listen to everything except rap and metal” camp, based entirely on similar things I’d seen people write online. This was years before I actually owned any music. I had never purchased a CD at this point, my musical exposure was basically whatever my dad played and then what I would listen to on Winamp’s online radio stations. I decided that cool genres to be into were techno and punk rock (ska punk specifically. SKA PUNK!!!!), so I would listen to those online radio stations when I got home from school.
All of this changed over time - I think everyone has their own little journey they go on to figure out what kind of music they actually like. I gave Metallica a shot and liked them, which opened me up to other thrash bands like Slayer and Testament (never really got into Megadeth, I have more thoughts about Anthrax for another essay). From there I moved in a few different directions, but I never got too into the extended metal universe. I like Black Sabbath and stoner metal a lot, and listening to the Locust repeatedly probably opened me up to screamier singing, which might be what led me to my love of post-hardcore. But other metal genres like doom, black, sludge, power, death - I can appreciate them for what they are, but they never totally clicked.
I still listen to Metallica, like, all the time. Kill ‘Em All is a great record. Sometimes you just really want to listen to Metallica.
I’ll leave you with the in-depth interpretation of the lyrics to Metallica’s “Seek & Destroy” provided by the great thinkers at genius.com:
Monikino Kino - Prázdniny
Ambient/Downtempo
Thank you to my friend Asia for playing this on her infrequent music livestream [twitch.tv link].
I have a love/hate relationship with ambient music - I’ve listened to a lot of it on radio stations, but it’s not a genre I’ve ever really engaged with further. I haven’t dug into any artists, had any strong impressions about anything I’d heard. I downloaded the Minotaur Shock album Maritime when I was younger and listened to that a bunch. I’m still not sure if I ever really liked it. I listened to Dntel’s album (you know, the one (ringing ringing ringing ringing ringing off)) a lot, and definitely still like that. These are what Prazdniny bring to mind; more Minotaur Shock than Dntel, but same ballpark.
The more active songs on this album are a lot of fun, like Bezky. The rest of the album suffers from the classic ambient/downtempo curse of starting off strong but slowly blurring together and making me want to take a nap.
Jeff Rosenstock - I Look Like Shit
Punk/Emo
Rosenstock’s a really talented songwriter! A lot of punk/emo bands fall into a comfortable groove and stay there, Rosenstock moves around and experiments and his songs develop and shake you around. He crosses genre boundaries with an ease and fluidity that seems welcoming and accepting, and brings you right along to join the party. There’s a little something for everyone, and it’s really well executed.
The last song on this album, “I Don’t Wanna Die,” is a really cool deep cut of the song by the same name by GING NANG BOYZ, a Japanese punk act. Rosenstock loves punk music!
Jazz Celula – Oheň Až Požár
Psychedelic jazz funk
Psychedelic jazz funk. The Youtube account that uploaded this [Funked Up East] has a lot of interesting 70’s and 80’s music from eastern europe - lots of funky jazz, probably enough music to explore for a few years, if you happen to like avant-garde soviet jazz.
Dream, Ivory - dream, ivory EP
Lo-fi/Surf Rock
Measuring out ingredients when you’re cooking is pretty idiosyncratic, right? Some people measure things out carefully, weigh out portions, most people (I think) just kind of eyeball stuff they’re already used to cooking. Cooking is a much looser art than baking.
It’s easier with discrete measurements: one egg or two eggs are different enough quantities that you don’t really need to think about it too much. Maybe you could debate two small eggs versus one extra large egg. But generally, I don’t think eggs cause a lot of measurement trouble. Garlic cloves are also easy enough to manage.
How about onions? What’s a medium onion? I think I know what a medium onion is. Depending on the recipe, it’s probably not a big deal to have too much or too little onion. But there’s a pretty big difference between, say, a large onion and a small onion. It’s easier if you have the right size onion for the task, but it’s also fine to just chop a bigger onion in half. Then you have to do something with your other onion half, but that’s another story. This is a very manageable situation. Not as neat as eggs or garlic, but manageable.
Spaghetti took me a while but I’m comfortable with it now. I think a serving is supposed to be 1/8 of a box, but I have abandoned all pretenses of servings there. I eyeball a good amount by holding it between my thumb and index finger and go from there. If I had to use a spoon to figure out how much spaghetti to eat… I don’t know. I would probably still eat a lot of spaghetti.
The real dilemma, as I see it, is with things in jars: peanut butter, capers. I think there is something unpleasant about using measuring spoons with peanut butter - maybe if you’re baking cookies or something and want to be precise. But if you’re just trying to eyeball a serving of peanut butter? I dunno. With stuff like cheese you can pretty easily just figure out how much of the cheese is 1/8 or whatever and go from there. You can do this with however much cheese you have, it’s easy to figure out what a serving of cheese looks like. Peanut butter? There are no reference points. Sometimes there’s an odd amount of servings in a jar - 17? How are you supposed to know how many servings are left? There’s no way. There’s absolutely no way anybody accurately keeps track of how much peanut butter they’re eating, or how much is still in the jar. I don’t think it’s possible.
Capers are even worse. They come in oil, and there’s no way to get the capers out of a bottle without pouring out half of the oil. Even if you’re playing it by ear and just eyeballing a tablespoon, you’re going to have like, half a cup of capers still in the container. But most of the oil is going to be gone. I don’t think they keep as well without the oil - are you supposed to eat the entire bottle within a few days? Reserve the caper oil when you’re getting the capers you need for your recipe? Top it off with other oil???? Spend 15 minutes fishing capers out by the teaspoonful? Maybe I will figure this out one day. Maybe it was just this particular brand of capers that had weird, very narrow packaging that a tablespoon couldn’t fit into. But for now, caper containers are a complete mystery to me.
The other side of all of this is I’m overthinking it all. I don’t bother with careful measurements with tomato paste, and that stuff comes in cans that you can’t close back up. Whenever I have peanut butter it’s usually on the side; I don’t cook with it and I don’t really care if I’m getting exactly 1 (one) serving. I just wish I didn’t have to think “does this look like enough” every time I eat peanut butter. Maybe writing it out will expel that demon. Then I could think about more pressing issues, like what kind of captivating essays to write for my newsletter.
Jingjing Zhang spielt Robert Schumann
Classical
Beautiful piano music. I didn’t really “get” it the way I “get,” say, Debussy or Chopin, but I have also listened to a lot more Debussy and Chopin than Schumann. Maybe it’s something you have to really spend time with to understand.
Glocca Morra - Ghoul Intentions
Emo
Angry screamy emo, closer to a Dogleg or Snowing (Glocca Morra’s Florida peers) than a Marietta or Algernon Cadwallader. Glocca Morra are a titan of emo but this release is much more jagged and isn’t as exciting as their later music (Obscure Moon, the legendary Just Married). Other projects the band members have been in are very cool (GUNK are incredible) and there was a lot to this band, but not on this EP.
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[1] There’s so much more to say about White Teeth. It’s about the immigrant experience! Tremendous questions about identity! I can’t figure out a way to get into specifics without abandoning cohesiveness. There are at least 5 protagonist-y characters, starting with Archie, who is the hero, but culturally totally lacking. We learn the most about Samad, he makes the religious and cultural questions obvious. Magid and Millat are the center of the drama, but we learn about them through Erie, who, like Magid and Millat, longs for a sense of belonging, an escape from the in-between of being a child of immigrants. You have Clara, who quickly achieves independence from her past, and who I wish we got more of after the first few chapters. You have Alsana, not concerned with any of Samad’s religious tribulations, wanting her family to be united. You could write about the themes of White Teeth through the lens of any of these characters. It’s an incredibly dense book.
[2] My musical taste in middle school quickly moved on from techno to euro-dance and happy hardcore. Happy hardcore eventually dropped out of the rotation and was replaced with Groove Salad, an ambient/downtempo radio station that is functioning to this day [here]. I don’t really listen to much electronic music or pop-punk these days, although I did listen to a lot of house, dnb, and dubstep in college. I still have a huge soft spot for the classic euro-dance hits.
In high school, when I was really at the peak of my musical self-discovery, I was mostly listening to then-contemporary indie rock: The Shins, The Hives, Modest Mouse, The Strokes, Spoon. Stuff like Minor Threat, Metallica, and The Locust had their place but were mostly on the sidelines.
[3] Jury is out on what Jeff Rosenstock is like in person - I have negative reviews from a friend within some degrees of separation from him. His performing persona seems very Andrew W.K. - lots of (punk-flavored) energy.
[4] My friend Max introduced me to the Funked Up East Youtube channel by linking a [psych rock album by the band Dos-Mukasan], which I think is very good, a few years ago.
Have a great day.