Staff Picks, Piques, &

STAFF PICKS, PIQUES, & PIX

Nocturama, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Mute (2003) In a 1999 lecture, Nick Cave said, “…ultimately the Love Song exists to  ll, with language, the silence between ourselves & God, to decrease the distance between the temporal & the divine.” Now there is a lot of love on Cave and Co.’s 12th album. References to  owers, dreams & Spring abound. But it is not the divine love that inspired the deep, dark & sensuous depth of Boatman’s Call nor the lush beauty of their last album, No More Shall We Part. Nocturama is listenable, but hollow all the same (“Ooh hoo hoo” is even a featured lyric). The last song is a rare exception, an epic 15-minute romp with Cave & cohorts yelling, “Babe, I’m on  re!” after each stream of consciousness verse. Pray that the next album starts where Nocturama ended, at a raucous party emblazoned with almighty  re. — Leah Bobalova

Traf c Signal Readings: Stillness & Other Stories, Courtney Angela Brkic, FSG, $23 (May 2003) E.M. Forster had no inkling when he said, “Only connect.” Courtney Angela Brkic, a researcher & translator in Croatia & forensic archaeologist in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the war, connects with a vengeance. She becomes sniper, victim, diplomat, mourning parent, prisoner. This is the best  ction debut I’ve read in years. She not only knows where the bodies are buried, she gets them to talk.

God Save My Queen: A Tribute, Daniel Nester, Soft Skull Press, $13. Just what the world needs, another sprawling trickster rock&roll “meditation” — Pale Fire, it ain’t. & yet...sometimes an artwork can & does derive legitimate power from its high wire aspect. Is he pulling us, is he pulling himself? Song by Song, album by album, he wrestles epigrams, tales, remembrance of handjobs past. But Queen? Why not Wire, Eno, Elvis Costello, or Prince? Well, they’re all still at it, for one thing. Queen is History, & good, bad & indifferent, they rode a zeitgeist, straddled  ssures of metal, glam, punk & disco. Actually, this slim & gnomic text reminds me of Pound’s Cantos, & their rants & asides. Wasn’t it Noel Coward who praised the great power of cheap pop songs? These Foolish Things Remind Me

UsualSuspectStaffPicksPiques#3 1 1/20/04, 6:48 PM Of Me?

The Book of Leviathan, Peter Blegvad, Overlook Press (Remaindered, go  gure.) A beautiful book in every sense, design and content. Assembled from The Independent on Sunday newspaper strips in the late 90s, Leviathan recounts the adventures of baby Levi & his tutelary & spiritual guide, Cat. Matt Groenig calls it one of the “Greatest, weirdest thing’s I’ve ever stared at!” Blegvad juggles light & dark, airy & heavy, discourse & tautology, palindrome & pun, verbally & visually, as only a mad Yank-turned-Brit can. (Think Terry Gilliam.) Find a copy, & give it to that friend still mourning Gorey’s passing. Peter Blegvad is one of those guys who Astonishes every 5 or 10 years, in whatever medium he chooses. As a musician, he was in Henry Cow/Spapp Happy in the 70’s & did a great solo album (Kew Rhone), collaborated with Carla Bley & the Golden Palominos in the 80s. What next? — rvb

John Henry Days, Colson Whitehead, Anchor Books, $14. paperback, 389 tiny-tiny-print pages. It’s been a long 28 weeks & I still can’t  nish John Henry Days. I started out the normal way, reading a few pages of Colson Whitehead’s greatly admired novel on the commute bus, during breaks, for those last few minutes before falling asleep. It is well- written, characters have development, plot’s (sort of) easy to follow, description plentiful. Trouble is, I  nd with JHD that I am bothered by having to think about all of the little details of every-day life that I ordinarily work to block out; any American airport I’ve ever been in, suburban strip malls lining outskirts of every town & city, all-you-can-eat-buffets (already so grotesquely portrayed in the Cohen Brother’s Fargo & in local TV commercials advertising local all-you-can-eat-buffet), those all too familiar motels, mediocre & dilapidated, all with salon-tanned, dumpy denizens dressed in matching shirts, & with that particular woman outside who sits endlessly smoking. I was advised to read it in one sitting so that all such fabulous, intricate details & their interconnections would not be lost. JHD is at times extremely verbose, & there are sections so tedious I thought I’d die before  nishing them. So I’ve left them

UsualSuspectStaffPicksPiques#3 2 1/20/04, 6:48 PM forever to themselves, inevitably losing at least some of JHD’s over-all interconnection, which I’ve now become only mildly interested in. I admit to a kind of awe Colson Whitehead inspires in me. After all, I can’t  nish his book on account of living in the hedonistic consumer hell he so lavishly describes, & yet he had the discipline to write every single word of the goddamn thing. — Sabrina Can eld

Mike’s picks: Ichi the Killer, Dir. Takashi Miike. Worldwide Cinema, 2001. De nitely not for the squeamish or easily offended! An acid- addled, manga-based yakuza  ick so violent & graphic it borders on absurd black humour. Scenes include tongue & nipple mutilations. (Those who  nd Miike’s  lms exploitative should watch Audition [1998] instead, one of the most intensely sophisticated studies of violence in recent years.)

Austerlitz, W.G Sebald. Trans. Althea Bell, Modern Library, $13.95 In brief this novel concerning the Holocaust centers on Austerlitz, a Czech-born Jew who, after spending most of his life in England, tries to recount childhood memories of both his Czech hometown & his parents during WWII. A very brief note on stylistics: Combining history,  ction, travelogue, & photography, this book contains one of the most  uid prose writings in contemporary literature, divided into 3 paragraphs ranging about 298 pages. Sebald wrote such re ned sentences that his narrative style seems out of place & time compared to other recent writers. If you haven’t read Sebald before, I’d suggest starting with his shorter work Die Ausgewanderten/ The Emigrants because I personally know people who, on quite the opposite pole, really loathe his style. — Michael Rinaldo

DVDS: The Adventures of Antoine Doinel: The 400 Blows, Antoine & Colette, Stolen Kisses, Bed & Board, Love On The Run (The Criterion Collection) This box not only contains most of Truffaut’s best, but forms something unique in movie history: A series following the same character, from adolescence through adulthood, played by the same actor, Jean-Pierre Léaud. We get to watch Jean-Pierre/Antoine go from brooding juvenile delinquent to dishonorably-discharged soldier to classical music clerk geek to private detective to freelance writer, through marriage, children, affairs, divorce. Antoine’s not always likable, but his enthusiasms, his romantic melancholy & rebel streak, make him usually sympathetic. This DVD sets a new standard, from its suitcase-like box & 72 page bonus book & sleek DVD cases (designed to look like paperbacks), to hours of bonus interviews, documentaries, commentaries, &

UsualSuspectStaffPicksPiques#3 3 1/20/04, 6:48 PM early shorts. And the movies, oh yeah, the movies themselves range from pretty damn  ne to terri c to great.

Beware Of A Holy Whore (Wellspring) Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s black comedy, about the misadventures of a  lm cast & crew. It’s Murphy’s Law: everyone schtupps everyone else, a prima donna star who wants a rewrite, the producer’s a thief, the director (Lou Castel) is a psycho who takes forever to arrive & makes everyone wish he’d go away again. The great camerawork is by Michael Balhaus, who’s gone on to work with Scorcese.

The Merchant of Four Seasons (Wellspring) Another terri c Fassbinder, the movie itself is a tragic, nearly unbearable variation of 100 bottles of beer on the wall — making Leaving Las Vegas look like Sound of Music — as well as a tale of downward & upward mobility. Hans Hirschmuller & Hanah Schygulla are amazing. Bonuses on this disc include a commentary track by Wim Wenders & two documentaries, count ‘em, two... — T Warburton y Bajo

UsualSuspectStaffPicksPiques#3 4 1/20/04, 6:48 PM