something about last year's album from Plants and Animals, "The Jungle"

 

Here is an album that did not get enough attention last year—The Jungle, by Plants and Animals. It was released in October 2020 and is Plants and Animals’ fifth studio album and first in four years. The Montreal indie-rock band broke through with its 2008 album, Parc Avenue, which featured the glorious kiss off, “Bye, Bye, Bye.” But coverage of subsequent albums dwindled. High-profile music site Pitchfork had reviewed every Plants and Animals album since 2008, but not this one. I do not know why: the band self-produces wonderful, beautiful-sounding records, and The Jungle is no exception.

 

The title track features a restless bass and head-nodding beat. Plants and Animals has always captured this kind of nervous cool. The last 90 seconds jams out. The song sounds casual, but that belies its precision. The good ones can make it sound easy. Then comes “Love That Boy” with its acoustic layers, electric guitar shimmering out alien, submerged little notes, and trippy, translucent lyrics: “Is the moon following us? Is it moving at exactly the same speed? All experience connected, holding on its fingertips.” The floaty sounds complement the tight drumming and loudly churning bass.

 

What follows are the album’s best parts. “House on Fire” is fucking great. The hi-hat riding atop a throbbing, plucky bass; the synthesizer that comes in at 51 seconds like the air horn on a semi-trailer truck; the programmed synthesizer that darts through scales; and then the verse—delivered with ebullient focus and clarity: “Your house is burning—your home is on fire!”

 

Plants and Animals capitalize on that intensity with “Sacrifice.” This song includes sudden rhythm changes. Insistent tom drums and gained-up guitar hack away through several chippy bars in the verse, then chords splish as the singer implores, “Hold on to yourself / Don't you want to die?” Then the song abruptly downshifts into a dependency-shedding chorus: “I gave you the best years of my life, volunteered on your behalf / sacrifice—it doesn't matter—for dopamine and lots of laughs.”

 

A cassette tape that sounds like it was left in the car all summer plays a recording of an acoustic guitar picking out a chord. Jangly, slightly warped. That is “Get My Mind.” At 21 seconds, the hi-hat opens up, the drummer raps on the snare, and the music tumbles into a song. A guitar slices off a thick, fuzzy riff of single, heavy notes, and the arrangement builds into a spiritual experience.

 

And it is here that The Jungle pulls back. “Le Queens” steams. A woman sings, “Sous les lumières dans le Queens / Tu t'embrasse avec moi / Ton visage blanche sous les fars / Pour la premiere fois”; then a switch to English: “Baby, don't you laugh ‘cause hearts get broke like that.” On “In Your Eyes,” a heavy phaser with subtle wah-wah effect produces underwater tones. And then the finale: “Bold” walks in quietly. But at the chorus, it cries out for your attention: “Waiting for you to be more bold / The drama rising, running out of time / Okay, what's next?” I first heard The Jungle two months ago. I have listened to it over and over, and I know what is next. I will return to The Jungle as time runs out.

 

 

 

 

something about "You Were Never Really Here" by Jonathan Ames

Joe's job is rescuing young girls who have been kidnapped and trafficked into the sex trade. You Were Never Really Here describes a job that will probably put Joe out of his misery.

Joe, a former Marine and FBI agent, gets hired to save the daughter of a corrupt politician in New York. But when he briefly disturbs operations at a brothel, Joe becomes a threat to a conspiracy and soon learns the stakes are higher than just a few months' income for a sex trafficker. The threatened trafficking organization murders the few important people in Joe's life. Joe, a deeply damaged human being, responds immediately by going on the offensive. He intends to brutalize his way to the crime boss who just destroyed the life Joe had come to accept. Now he has nothing left to lose.

"You Were Never Really Here," a slim novella published in 2013, was a huge departure for American author Jonathan Ames, whose work tries to be humorous. A gritty film version written and directed by Lynne Ramsay came out in 2017. It stars Joaquin Phoenix, who is real and the best actor of all time.

The book has a clumsy description of Joe early on. I wanted Ames to take us deeper. But, nevertheless, You Were Never Really Here was a highly engaging but too short read.

about a late spring weekend

 

I love rain—I want hours of rain, rain that pools on the ground under weighty skies and then runs paths in and out of the puddles. Rainy weekends are the weekends I want. How about you? Some people say weather is a dull topic of conversation. I guess they are right.