In Which The Devolutionist Makes Reading Recommendations

The Devolutionist is not a huge fan of Matt Taibbi.  He's got passion, but sometimes he does not seem to have a clear handle of his subjects (his writing on the Wall Street bailouts, for example, came off, in the Devolutionist's opinion, like a college paper written by someone who had given up understanding his research even as he continued to cite sources.)  He should stick to writing articles like this one.  It doesn't break any new ground, but it does put insightful context around the Tea Party:

Tea & Crackers

As a complement, this article from the Village Voice works nicely.  VV writers have a habit of not pulling punches, so it's refreshing to read a piece in which the author begs people to "stop believing a word this pus-bucket, Breitbart, utters."  The Devolutionist has the same thought every time he sees Andrew Breitbart in any forum:

White America Has Lost Its Mind

One wonders if the media coverage of the Tea Party and "humans" like Breitbart and Palin and their ilk has less to do with their importance and more to do with that same urge that causes people to rubberneck at accidents on the freeway.  It's as if the media is collectively saying "What a fucking mess, are you kidding me?"  It's a theory, anyway.

In Which The Devolutionist Throws Up In His Mouth A Little

When oh when will this douche noodle's fifteen minutes be up?

Levi Johnston Makes Gross Porn Video With Some Old Lady

In Which The Devolutionist Swelters And Gives His Opponent Ninety Seconds To Sweat In Response

The temperature in Los Angeles hit 113 on Monday, the highest temperature ever recorded here since the city started recording temperatures in 1877.  Your Slow-Roasted Devolutionist does not have air-conditioning in his 1920s-era apartment, and so he has spent much of the last two days in the library and a variety of Starbucks. Even though the apartment does not get much in the way of direct sunlight and is only on the second floor, it still felt like a blast furnace the last three days.

Some would say that Los Angeles is already hell and the temperature finally caught up, but your Devolutionist is not one of those people. This city may be far from perfect, but it has its charms.  And the Bare-Ankled Devolutionist appreciates any place where he can go for months at a time without putting on a pair of socks.

Now the state of California has its problems, and tonight Jerry Brown and Meg "The Forehead" Whitman will debate for the right to spend the next three years trying to fix those problems.  The Forehead has already spent something like $119 million on her campaign.  Why she could not just donate that money to some sort of charity that might help people who need the help now, instead of on a vanity gubernatorial campaign, is beyond the Devolutionist's understanding.

Not that it will matter if we are all doomed, and it is possible the damage California has done to its economy and tax base and general mindset is irreversible.  But someone still had to command the Titanic even after it hit the iceberg.

In Which The Devolutionist Is Happy His Lack Of A TV Prevents Him From Watching Bill Maher

Oh, your Devolutionist used to enjoy Bill Maher.  He was smarmy and brooked no bullshit.  The man once went into his audience to physically throw some 9/11 Truthers out of the studio before security could do it.  So it's a little disconcerting that he brings on guests like Andrew Breitbart, who spouts more nonsense in thirty seconds than CNN's entire anchor line-up spouts in a year.  And CNN has Rick Sanchez.

Anyway, your Socially-Networked Devolutionist was reading some quotes from Maher's latest show on Facebook and he saw where Breitbart is pushing the right-wing meme that made its way into the GOP's Pledge to America: conservatives were shut out of the healthcare debate, the congressional town halls were dominated by leftist union members, and so the entire bill must be repealed, and we need to start over with an open and honest debate about the whole issue.

Now, Andrew Breitbart might actually know this is bullshit, but his shtick requires him to pretend otherwise, nay, to shout otherwise as loudly as he can.  But the Devolutionist paid attention to that debate, and he remembers things a little differently.  To wit:

In Which The Devolutionist Makes a Point So Obvious Even Greg Gutfeld Could Grasp It If He Was Not Such a Blithering Jackass

Fox douche noodle Greg Gutfeld has a post that would insult the intelligence of Fox News website readers if your average Fox fan had the intellectual curiosity of even your average house plant.


Sometimes Ye Olde Devolutionist wonders how people much more passionate than he can spend all day every day correcting the record on this sort of lazily-written crap.  Gutfeld parses the number of Americans without health insurance and finds that nearly 20% make between $50,000 - $75,000 per year, and another 20% (give or take) makes above 75K per year.  Thus his conclusion: "So while we've been constantly told that people cannot afford insurance, these numbers say otherwise."

In Which the Devolutionist Discovers Jesca Hoop is Not an Unlikable Kate Bush Knock-Off

Yr. Musical Devolutionist has been aware of Jesca Hoop in the same sense that he’s aware of vegan food: it exists, people seem to like it, but though he has heard good things, it does not sound interesting enough to actively seek out.  If the Devolutionist is hungry, he likes to eat chicken or hamburgers or sushi.  If he is jonesing for pop music sung by female voices, the ipod is chock full of Tori Amos, Cat Power, and bands like Stars and LAKE. 

Seeing as how the ipod’s hard drive has a couple of unused gigs, I figured I’d give Hoop’s new album Hunting My Dress an audition.  I’m pleased to report she’ll likely find a spot in the rotation.  This record is full of off-kilter loopiness guided by Hoop’s unpredictable voice, which can soar into higher registers or slink into a sultry purr, all with an unclassifiable accent that clips off some words and draws out others.  It’s as if the Corrs were channeling Fiona Apple, filtering out all the moody angst.

The songs on Hunting My Dress come at you from odd angles.  Hoop is not grounded by her own piano playing like Tori or her guitar like early Liz Phair, which frees her and producer Tony Berg to explore the sonic spectrum.  The album opens with the slow-burning “Whispering Light” and its hippie-drum-circle beat, expands to the crashing drum machines over the chorus of “Angel Mom” and the dance-beat pop and overdubbed vocals of “Four Dreams” (easily the best cut on the record) to the violin-backed acoustic guitar pickings of the album’s title song, a meditation on love that, like the rest of the songs here, is shot through with naturalistic imagery (“And the tall trees all fell down/And they scattered seeds on the ground.”)

Perhaps the best way to describe this album is through what it lacks: devotion to any particular style, fear of exploration, or desire to please one subset of listeners over anyone else.  In other words, there is something here for every fan of pop music.

The lack of a constant –either in instrumentation or lyrical themes or Hoop’s voice – is what gives this record its power.

In Which The Devolutionist Hears The Sound of Saint Bartlett

Damien Jurado has always been about simple.  Strumming his guitar and accompanied by a hushed violin, some tinkling piano keys, or brushes caressing a tom, he spins tales of heartbreak set in sparse landscapes, conjuring images of flat Texas plains and old trucks zooming along dirt roads, trailing clouds of dust.  But Saint Bartlett, his ninth album, calls to mind a different geography: the lush greens of the Seattle native’s Pacific Northwest (the album was recorded in Oregon): rain dribbling on tree leaves, a melancholy soul with a picture window, a cup of tea, and time.  It is a record of ramshackle beauty.

Jurado has continued the work he began in isolated spots on 2008’s Caught In The Trees: orchestral arrangements, overdubs, and his usual melancholia replaced by a sense of wistful – dare we say it – playfulness.  He has left behind the hard-bitten working-class lives of 2003’s Where Shall You Take Me and the heartbroken suburban adulterers of 2006’s And Now That I’m In Your Shadow.  Still, the melancholy bard retains a tinge of darkness as he spins tales of growing up and accepting.

Saint Bartlett was recorded in a week, with Jurado and producer Richard Swift playing all the instruments.  There was little in the way of rehearsal or polishing.  The album opens with “Cloudy Shoes,” a song Jurado reportedly wrote in six minutes while producer Swift was taking a phone call, and for which he recorded guitar and vocals in one unrehearsed take (other instrumentation was looped in later.)  The song is a stunner, a story of a man trying to live up to an ideal self he pictures in his head.  When he tells this image “You have a way about you/I wish that I had” one can hear the longing in his voice, the knowledge he has work to do, shaded with the hope of someone who believes he can achieve this longed-for state of grace.

This sense of hope and longing permeates the entire album.  “Rachel and Cali,” a throwback to the simpler arrangements of his past work, is a sort of call-and-response about an unrequited love between two young people that ends on the melancholy note of one telling the other “Sometimes I wish you knew/How I keep living for you/A friend is just a lover/You’re not committed to,” punctuated by lonely taps on a xylophone.  “Kansas City,” a sparse throwback to Jurado’s past work, is underscored by the sounds of a car braking and voices on a radio fading in and out of the static as the singer tells himself over and over “I know someday I will return.”  On “Kalama” Jurado sings of regrets over a son’s efforts to retain his distant mother’s affections, and his gradual coming to grips with the impossibility of achieving this goal, and in “Beacon Hill” he learns to accept the loss of someone who may not have loved him after all.

Saint Bartlett may not sound like your typical Damian Jurado record, but it is a natural evolution: the sounds of an adult learning to let go and not spending time moping over past youth (the twelve songs clock in at a brisk thirty-six minutes.)  It’s a new direction for Jurado, and one with territory he has the talent and maturity to mine.