Juliet, Naked

Okay, I finally saw it. (Pay per view alert!) I can't even explain why it took me so long, considering how absolutely this film dovetails with everything I'm about. But a few thoughts:

1. Nick Hornsby is my favorite living writer. I'm not claiming he's the greatest literary talent or anything like that, but everything this man writes makes utter and perfect sense to me. This blog owes its existence to his book Song Book; I've read everything he's published. And of all his novels, Juliet, Naked is quite possibly my favorite. (Notice how I hedge my bets, because, jeez, I love everything he's done.) Nick, if by any chance this blog post surfaces on your feed -- please do let me know. I promise I won't get weird.

2. Kinks world lives.  Casually, walking through Waterloo Station, a snippet of dialogue -- a throwaway, really, if you didn't know better -- mentions that the station is a big deal if you're a Kinks fan (KAPOW).  Later, Ethan Hawke performs "Waterloo Sunset" at a local gig, and it's almost unbearably beautiful.

3. Chris O'Dowd is so underated. So many of us have connected via fan websites; O'Dowd plays a superfan we can all identify with. I love how his passion for the music, versus his cluelessness in life, is so delicately delineated. His face registers all the nuances of a response to music that is heartfelt and yet, hell, totally beside the point. Except okay, but whoa . . .

4. And the songs? If you're gonna do a movie about an elusive rock talent, you gotta line up some quirky folks to write his songs. Monsters of Folk's Conor Oberst and M. Ward, Robyn Hitchcock, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy-- I've written about them all over the years. Click on their links in the column to the right.  This film totally gets the music right, which buys it major cred.

5. Okay, now I get Ethan Hawke. He started out so young, and so beautiful (really, those cheekbones are so unfair), I never thought much of him. It wasn't until I saw Boyhood  a couple years back that I realized he is actually an actor of a very high degree. Here he's playing a grizzled, washed-up musician who dropped out of the biz and disappeared 30 years ago, inadvertently gaining a cult following. He's a mess of a human being, and Hawke plays it to the core, never making excuses for him. All right, Ethan, now I officially forgive you for Great Expectations.

6. Gotta stand and face it -- life is so complicated. One of the things I most love about Nick Hornsby's novels is that there are no pat solutions -- lost loves lead to new opportunities, and we all pick up our sorrows and move on. I love how this film doesn't settle for a cheesy plot resolution, but still leaves us encouraged for the next chapter. Viva life!

"Belinda" / Ben Folds

Well, kiddies, here's what I have for you today -- the final track from Ben Folds' new album Lonely Avenue. It's not the saddest song on the album -- that would be the absolutely shattering "Picture Window," with "Claire's Ninth" running a close second.  Those two are too sad even to write about.  Listening to this album over and over (I had to write a review of it for Blogcritics) put me in a real existential funk, which was only exacerbated by the blustery wet autumn weather.

But don't blame Ben -- blame his lyricist.  When you get to be insanely successful like Ben Folds, you can have your pick of writers to do your lyrics (not that Ben Folds even needs anybody else's lyrics), and so whom does Ben pick?  Why, the same guy I'd pick -- that adorable British novelist Nick Hornby, whose spiky, bittersweet, zeitgeist-defining novels line my shelves. Just about every novel Nick Hornby has ever written has at least a couple of scenes that reduce me to gasping laughter, and another three or four that make my throat tighten and my eyes sting with tears.  Shoot, even Hornby's newspaper columns have that effect on me.  His book of music essays, Songbook, was what first inspired me to blog about pop music.

Putting together Hornby and Folds might have been too much of a good thing, but hell, these guys are such pros, they can perfectly calibrate the snarkiness and the sentiment and come up with just the right cocktail.  Song after song on this album, they just nail it.

Hornby is an innate storyteller, and each of these songs come embedded with characters and plot. This song in some ways brings the album full circle, being told from the standpoint of a touring rock musician.  It's not Folds, though, not exactly -- this singer is an oldies act, facing nostalgic audiences night after night, and every night they clamor for his showstopper, the one big hit of his career. (Clever line: "He always hears how much it means to people / There's a lot of fortysomethings wouldn't be in the world without it" -- which dates his audience as the 40-somethings' parents, well into their sixities.)

They came to hear "Belinda," and while he may save it to the very end (hence track 11), they won't go home until they've heard it.  But here's the catch: He wrote it about his old sweetheart when they were still in love -- before he screwed around with a blond flight attendant and left Belinda. Years later, he is curdled with regret.  And every night, he still has to get up on stage and sing this love song to the woman whose heart he broke.  

Take a listen (and don't turn it off too soon -- wait 'til you've heard the actual song he's singing about).




Now, being the geeky fangirl I am, I've actually pondered this before.  It's one thing for Paul McCartney to sing "My Love" and think about his late wife Linda, whom he loved till the day she died; it's another for Eric Clapton to sing "Layla" about his ex-wife Pattie Boyd Harrison Clapton, whom he divorced.  How does he feel, singing that song?  Does he picture Pattie to himself or does he just sing the notes?  Ray Davies can cut a song like "Property" out of his repertoire if the memories of his divorce sting too much (was that Yvonne he left for Chrissie Hynde?), but what if you only had a couple of recognizable hits?  Could Gerry Marsden have gone on singing "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" if the girl he wrote it for hadn't come back and married him?  And what about the Left Banke -- if they'd stayed together, would they be forever singing "Walk Away Renee" about the bassist's girlfriend, that girl who got away?  It makes you think.

So it's secretly thrilling to hear that Nick Hornby has been wondering this too. (Have you been reading my diary again, Nick?)  Hey, he's no rock star himself, so he's free to imagine, just like he can imagine himself into the life of a nine-year-girl or a redneck Alaskan stud.  He's a talented wordsmith and all, but it's that understanding of the human heart that really makes Nick Hornby so wonderful to read.  And when you add in Ben Folds' plaintive melodic gifts -- well, it's a heartbreaking album. But in a good way.

"Something to Talk About" /
Badly Drawn Boy

No, this isn't a cover of the Bonnie Raitt song, although I like that too. (Believe me, Bonnie and I go way back.) It's the theme song from a quietly brilliant little film from 2002, called About a Boy, starring Hugh Grant and based on a novel by Nick Hornby -- combine those two and how could you miss? I'm crazy about the both of them, no use pretending otherwise, and although I'd never heard of Badly Drawn Boy before, I fell in love with the charming soundtrack immediately. Later I found out that it was written by Damon Gough, who is Badly Drawn boy, in one of those I'm-one-guy-but-I-pretend-to-be-a-whole-band deals, a la Dashboard Confessional or Iron and Wine. So be it, I'm willing to keep an open mind. I'm vaguely aware that he dresses like Mike Nesmith gone grunge, but so what? And he cites his favorite artists as Bruce Springsteen, Jeff Buckley, and the Pixies -- well, two out of three ain't bad, as Meat Loaf used to say. (Or still says, for all I know.)

Man, am I cutting this kid slack. But really, let's face it, if the songs are good who cares about the rest? And the songs are good.

Acoustic guitar, a little spatter of keyboards, simple drumbeats, syncopated melody -- this is clean classic pop, married to quirky lyrics that would make Nick Hornby proud. (Have I ever told you guys about my Nick Hornby fixation? How his book Songbook changed my life? Remind me sometime.) The gist of the story -- which like any good story shouldn't be simplified -- is about a slacker cad (my man Hugh Grant) getting gradually entangled with a gawky adolescent and his awkward mother (the brilliant Toni Collette) and discovering that life's all about human connections. I know I know, it sounds like you'd retch at the cliches, but trust me, it works on screen, thanks to brilliant direction by the Weitz brothers Paul and Chris, and also a snarky smart screenplay by Peter Hedges (though from now on they should let Nick write his own screenplays because he's a genius and should get all the money. And Nick, really, if you google yourself and read this, email me because we need to talk).

But back to Badly Drawn Boy. What I love about this song is not only it's stop-and-start rhythmic pattern, which is so engaging, but the great throw-off quality of the lyrics, which matches the slacker sweetness of this movie. It's pretty much all embodied in the middle verse, which is the one I tend to sing to myself at random moments: "Ipso / Facto / Using up your oxygen / You know I'm shallow / Calling out for extra help / You've got to let me in / Or let me out." Well, that 's the movie in a nutshell, and there's some serious genius about getting a soundtrack that really marries to the storyline like that.

Plus, I don't know, but I love Gough's earnest folky voice. Sure, this is laid over with back-up oooh's and a kinda glossy arrangement (it's like a wall of sound writ small), but I find this warm and appealing, the same way as all the songs from the movie Garden State. Which is a whole 'nother story.

Let's cut to the last verse, which sums it all up: "I've been / Dreaming / Of the things I learnt about a boy who's / Leaving / Nothing else to chance again /You've got to let me in / Or let me out." Which is really the quandary we all face, isn't it? How do we manage to still be cool (as you all are) and remain engaged -- which you have to be, face it, to be cool these days. There's no checking out any more. What I love about Badly Drawn Boy is how he plays the groove between emotion and cynicism, understanding how hard it is to commit to lyrical impulse these days. This is a very narrow sector of the listening audience, I appreciate that. But hell, I'm there, and I'm hoping you are too.

Something To Talk About sample

"The World'll Be Okay" /
Teenage Fanclub

Finally I get it.

I've had these guys on my iTunes for a couple years, but somehow I never really listened to them. They never come up in my shuffle, which I guess isn't surprising -- I only have 10 of their songs on there, compared to the complete works of Nick Lowe (if someone made a bootleg of Nick gargling in the morning I'd probably put it on my iTunes); it's no contest who surfaces more often on the shuffle. If they do cycle up, I probably think it's Big Star and pay no attention. I was mystified, to tell you the truth. How could Nick Hornby have steered me wrong?

So I made a concerted effort to listen to Teenage Fanclub, on the advice of a couple fansters whose taste I totally trust, but I couldn't get past the power-pop surface (at least The Romantics and the Knack have irresistible hooks to pull you in). It might have helped if I'd listened to Teenage Fanclub when I was in college -- there's something indelible about the music you loved in college. (No other explanation for my ABBA fanship.) But they weren't around when I was in college; this album, Songs From Northern Britain, came out in 1997, though it feels a lot more vintage than that.

But I recently organized my iPod into loads of fresh playlists (new dog, lots of walking in the park -- the iPod is my new best friend) and I put "The World'll Be Okay" on a playlist of songs with the words "all right" or "okay" in the titles. I know, it sounds hokey, but it happens to work as a playlist. And now every time that song comes up I'm grooving totally.

What I've finally figured out is that Teenage Fanclub isn't about hooks (except for "What You Do To Me" -- now that one is pure homage to Big Star). They're about texture, and that's a whole 'nuther thing. The guitar line weaves a psychedelic spell that gradually mesmerizes you, but ONLY if you're not "listening." Do I imagine a trace of the Byrds in there, like "Eight Miles High"?

This song is drenched with angst over a long-distance relationship -- "I talk to you by satellite / I hope before they reach you, space will make the words sound right" -- and that's a song topic that always hits home for me. It's more wistful than Franz Ferdinand's "Eleanor Get Your Boots On" but more disoriented than Simon and Garfunkel's "Kathy's Song" . . . hmmm, I feel a new playlist coming on.

But the perspective definitely gets trippy, like when the singer (Raymond McGinness on this one) says, "I don't know where to draw the line / The flat horizon stretches out between your world and mine / And where I go will follow no design." That insistently repeated refrain, "you know the world'll be okay," has a melancholy ring that deepens the more he repeats it. Because this guy doesn't believe the world will be okay; he's lonely, and he needs that girl -- he needs her to be with him right now.

Eventually the lyrics get pretentious: "I waste my time with magazines / The pages live life for you when your needs don't match your means / But your cares will suppress my selfish genes." Sorry guys, but after Robyn Hitchcock my standards for vague nonsense are set pretty darn high, and that softly earnest vocal leaves no room for irony. But I'll forgive them, just because of those lush harmonies, like a big pillow you can sink into.

Well, I'm relieved, that's all I can say. And now I have hope -- maybe someday I'll even figure out what the big deal is about Joy Division.

The World'll Be Okay sample