Extremely Close and Incredibly Precious
A Paxton-Pullman Vortex for the New Generation


Think about it--you’ve never seen Jonathan Safran Foer and Sufjan Stevens in the same room, have you? Have you? When one shows up somewhere, why does the other seem oddly absent? Did Sufjan really need to get his harmonium from the coat check, just as Safran showed up at the Literacy Benefit? And did Safran really have to email a haiku about Darfur to Kofi Annan, ten minutes before Sufjan played Southpaw?

Safran and Sufjan. Sufjan and Safran. Maybe you hadn’t thought to be suspicious about it, but maybe that’s just because you’ve never had reason to. UNTIL NOW.

And it’s not just their names either, those too-perfect, vaguely Ottoman-sounding names. They both live in Park Slope. They’re both cutesy as fuck. They’re both quiet, and fragile, and thoughtful, and attractive in a feminine way. They both have ideal bone structure. They both inspire a mind-blowing hatred in other young artists that threatens to have that bone structure rearranged.

They’ve both written an over-reaching masterpiece before their thirtieth birthday. They’ve taken on subjects and conceits that were probably too much, too soon, and yet they pulled it off well enough to erase any doubt about their genius. They give some meaning back to that word, genius, a word that’s been thrown around like rice for far too long. Their art is baroque and ambitious and modern and precious and yet curiously full. It resounds.

I kind of wish my name was Soren Supermann, and I wrote plays about Stalinist superheroes who still sleep with the nightlight on. The three of us would hang out by the pond at Prospect Park and skip stones, and have funny, earnest conversations with children and their au pairs.

But everyone knows that that’s impossible. I hate Stalinists, I can't stand conversations with children, and, as we've already established, they’re the same person.

A Letter to a Trainwreck

Part 2 in our continuing series, “Letters That Will Never Be Read”

Dear Pete Doherty,

I love you. I love you sooooooo much.

Forgive me for being forward, Pete, but I wanted to get that out of the way. I think it’s important that we remember this as we keep reading. Up the Bracket is one of my favorite albums of all-time. The first side, all the way up to “The Boy Looked at Johnny” (but not counting the miserable “Radio America”), is probably the most classic string of songs this era has produced. It’s slouchy and elegant and tuneful and rebellious and yayed-up, and was the soundtrack to more nights than I could tell you. I’ll never forget that.

That said, you’ve really got to get your shit together, Broseph.

There’s myth-creating, fine. I think you’ve been pretty naked in your ambitions on that front, between the tabloid shit, the Kate Moss saga, your determination to be photographed with syringes stuck in your arm (or sticking them into passed-out girls, whatevs). We get it—you mean it. You don’t have to prove yourself by taking this to its only logical conclusion. I’m not telling you anything you haven’t already thought about, either—I think you’re actually fucked-up like a fox, and fully aware of what you’re projecting.

The problem is, you haven’t produced enough great work to die as a genius, guy. If you die now, you die as a buffoon who wrote a few great tunes and fucked a really hot chick. That would be fine for most folks, but I think you’ve got more in you. I think you could be one of the greats, one of the icons, if you can just focus on the goddam work.

The Libertines had a few classics, but was mostly uneven and tossed off. Same for that godawful collection of demos you passed out. You should’ve kept those in the vault. And now Babyshambles seems headed in the same direction—for every “Fuck Forever” or “Killamangiro”, we have to put up with an entire side’s worth of forgettable sketches. You aren’t good enough to sketch, Pete, not yet. Finish the fucking tunes, weed out the bad ones, and make the records as sharp as guillotines.

If you really want to die, do it after three or four timeless albums. I’ll definitely be heartbroken, and I’ll probably write some misguided obituary about what could have been. There’s no sense in your death at any point, but less than no sense now, before you’ve done what you could to become what you set out to be, earnestly, an Englishman and a hero.

Sincerely,
Brian

Indie Rock Makes Me Tired


It’s not actually that the music itself does, mind you. I’m mostly unapologetic about being an indie schmuck. What I can’t handle is the volume. Which is to say that I can handle the actual volume, I can’t handle the physical volume. The amount of shit I need to hear. I can’t handle trying to keep up with 5 new albums reviewed on Pitchfork everyday. I don’t have the time to troll Kim’s for hours at a time, picking out CD’s and then putting them back because I can’t justify $15.99.

Vinny’s going to buy it anyway. Vinny buys everything, sad, nameless indie bands with stupid fucking names, bands that will never be heard by more than 400 people. Bands like The Fellowship of Brothers. Like Lulu Lulu. And Chapter 13: The Forgotten Chapter. He buys more stupid shit than I even knew existed, just because he loves to be surprised so much. When he can find a tiny band to love that he plucked out of the used rack, like a demigod, determining that this band won’t be forgotten, not by me, not today. I love that about him. He also makes four times more than I do.

But even if it weren’t about money, and I could just download whatever album I wanted, for free, I don’t think it would matter. I’d still be behind. I don’t feel the urge to read four music magazines a week, ten different blogs everyday at work. I don’t have the stomach to hit the Mercury on a whim, to see if whoever’s playing is any good, because it makes sad to sit through bad sets. I only hit safe and sanitized shows by bands that I already know, at safe and sanitized venues like Irving, and even then only rarely.

I don’t feel the pressing need to buy new CD’s every week, especially new bands, when there are so many bands that I love coming out with second and third albums. I’m still trying to weed out the bad bands that I liked too much their first time around—can’t figure out why I ever liked Fischerspooner the way I did—without worrying about a new batch I might realize I never liked much to begin with.

I could care less about The Knife. I could give a fuck about Tapes and Tapes. They’re probably great (the Tapes and Tapes video is a classic, the only thing I’ve heard), but I just don’t care enough to find out right now. Maybe that’ll change, and I’ll get a second wind and start buying discs and obsessing about every Next Big Thing again. I’ll blow hundreds of bucks and subscribe to NME, and I’ll take only my week off all year to go down to Austin next spring. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll never listen to music the way I listened to music when I was 15.

I know that makes me sound sad and old, but I know I’m not old. I’m just tired.

“Banquet” Will Survive Nuclear Holocaust

Remember 2005? Remember when those really annoying Brit bands started getting a lot of attention? The Futureheads, The Kaiser Chiefs, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party…they all played this derivative angular shit, kept their Northern accents real thick, and aped Gang of Four like it was going out of style. (It was.)

“I Predict a Riot”? Exciting for a few minutes, hooligans getting beat down, OK, but then nope, this is actually kind of tuneless. Ditto for the other fucks—it sounded so trendy, so intentionally gritty, and in the end disposable. I was glad when they started going away a bit (though granted, Arctic Monkeys’ trajectory started a bit later, and so the backlash is just beginning for them.)

Except for that one tune, “Banquet,” the one that got flogged for months at every bar, club, or house party where anyone ever denied hipsterdom.

That Bloc Party song wouldn’t go away, actually sounded the sleekest and the trendiest of that whole bunch, and yet it never sounded old. Actually, it still doesn’t. When it came on during the theme park scene in Entourage the other night, it sounded fresh as ever. That’s a pretty amazing thing. Trendy, and yet incredibly persistent. A Bungalow-esque phenomenon. They've created a cockroach, a twinkie that’ll outlive every other bit of organic matter in the city.