Real Life Rock (248 page)

9
Chris Estey, writer, and David Lasky, artist, “Critical Mass: A Story of the Clash,” in
Hotwire Comix and Capers
(Fantagraphics Books)
Beginning and ending with Joe Strummer at 50, at his kitchen table on December 22, 2002, about to drop dead. Best panel: future Clash bassist Paul Simonon on the tube one day, two people reading newspapers crowding him on either side, his eyes catching the headlines “Police and Thieves Clash at Notting Hill” on his right, “European Clash in—” on his left. Estey and Lasky leave out the lightbulb going on over his head.

10
Randy Newman, “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country” (Nonesuch at iTunes)
Iraq as the end of America—and maybe a hidden track on the next Dixie Chicks album.

MAY
2007

1
Electrelane,
No Shouts, No Calls
(Too Pure)
Singer Verity Susman could hardly sound more English than her name—loose, flighty, constantly surprised, with an innocence that can re-create itself after every shock—despite a darkening shade. Since their debut in 2001 with
Rock It to the Moon
, this quartet has made music that seems to take place in the air—not flying, just barely off the ground. That lends a sense of abstraction to guitarist Mia Clarke's delirious search for the sublime through repetition, or the rhythms of bassist Ros Murray and drummer Emma Gaze. The lines they trace are straight, but all cut up, out of order, a hopscotch music where you never quite know where you are.

2
Jonathan Lethem,
You Don't Love Me Yet
(Doubleday)
His eighth novel, and his best since
Gun, With Occasional Music
, his first. The oddness there, with the lines between humans and animals a thing of the past, is still present in this apparently ordinary-life tale about a band (you get their whole story in one rehearsal, one gig, and one radio showcase)—present with a con artist who claims to be the guy who thinks up all those senseless-acts-of-beauty bumper-sticker/T-shirt/coffee-mug slogans. The premise is rich; what makes the book sing are Lethem's accounts of what happens when a crowd on the street hears a band inside a building, the way the whole of a song is present in four words of a four-line chorus, or when for a moment four musicians understand each other better than any one of them understands him- or herself: “Denise met the call, ticked the beat double-time. The sound was sprung, uncanny, preverbal, the bass and drum the rudiment of life itself, argument and taunt, and each turn of the figure a kiss-off until the cluster of notes began again. Who needed words? Who even needed guitars, those preening whiners?”

3
John C. Reilly, “My Son John,” from
Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys
(Anti)
The highlight of a set featuring Nick Cave, Bryan Ferry, Gavin Friday, Lou Reed, Robin Holcomb, and dozens more, the Irish ballad (better known as “Mrs. McGrath,” as on Bruce Springsteen's
The Seeger Sessions
) about a sailor who lost his legs to a cannonball takes on an unearthly cast when the not-the-star of
Boogie Nights
and
The Good Girl
barrels into the mystic: when he chants the chorus,
Timmy roo dun-dah, foddle riddle dah, whack for the riddle timmy roo dun-dah
, it feels like a thousand-year-old curse.

4
Paolo Nutini, “New Shoes” (Atlantic)
The whole world may soon be sick of this—every shoe company on earth had to be bidding on it the day after it was released—but for the moment it's as irresistible as irresistible gets.

5
Marnie Stern,
In Advance of the Broken Arm
(Kill Rock Stars)
Want to hear little girls screaming on a beach for 45 minutes? No? This might change your mind.

6
Peter Hartlaub, “Lies, lies, lies, they're going to get this geeky guy,”
San Francisco Chronicle
(March 2)
Much of the best current film criticism is in the “advisory” daily papers run at the end of the supposedly real reviews, as in this one for the PG-13 teen comedy
Full of It
: “This film contains sexual situations, profanity, mild violence, and
several references to the band Poison, which may lead to ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn' getting stuck in your head during the ride home.”

7
Joe Boyd,
White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s
(Serpent's Tail)
He was there, with the British avatars of today's fey freak-folk movement: with the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Anne Briggs, Nick Drake, Vashti. What happened in those halcyon days? One thing after another.

8
Warren Zevon,
Stand in the Fire
(Rhino/Asylum)
Loud in the Roxy in Los Angeles in 1981—with “Mohammed's Radio,” a night that turns its back on the dawn; plus four performances not included when the album was originally released. They aren't as good as the ones that come before—but since there will be no more, they come across, one by one, from “Johnny Strikes Up the Band” to “Hasten Down the Wind,” as heartbreakers.