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More reading.

Books I've read in the last couple of weeks:

The Blind Side made me sort of confused in an inspired way; Norwegian Wood made me sort of depressed; Feeding a Yen & The Soul of a Chef both made me hungry & want to cook and then eat some fucking food right now; and The Ghost Map made me think, which isn't an adjective like the others, but oh well.

The Ghost Map--which is just generally brilliant stuff about maps, and cities, and diseases, and technology, and science, &c.--contained a passage I really liked, from p.96 in the hardcover:

There is a lovely symmetry that comes from telling the story this way, because a city and a bacterium are each situated at the very extreme boundaries of the shapes that life takes on earth. ... In a city like Victorian London, unchallenged by military threats and bursting with new forms of capital and energy, microbes were the primary force reigning in the city's otherwise runaway growth, precisely because London had offered Vibrio cholerae ... precisely what it had offered stockbrockers and coffeehouse proprietors and sewer-hunters: a whole new way of making a living.

I approve of all of these books.

"My guitar is missing a string..."

The Day I Turned To Glass

I think Honeycut's The Day I Turned to Glass [1] may be one of my favorite albums of the year. It's just so clean, so impeccable, so very white soul, so Scritti Politti/Phoenix/George Michael/late-period Orange Juice/ABC. As a point of reference, my favorite moments on the album remind me a lot of Phoenix's Alphabetical, one of the best albums of the past couple of years.

And there are so many great moments to choose from! The effete Scritti-esque ballads, like "Butter Room" and "Silky"; the playful funk groove of "Crowded Avenue"; the very Spandau Ballet-esque "Exodus Honey"; &c. Every day I get another couple of seconds of song stuck in my head, and it's always a different song. And every time, that little song snippet makes me happy.

[1] via Krissy, who mentioned it when she was on Live 105.

"You could throw a party..."

I saw Scritti Politti live tonight, which is amazing in & of itself, as it's something I didn't ever think I'd be able to say. The funny/sad thing is that I completely forgot about the show--thanks to Harold for reminding me!

Green was sick, I guess, and so he mentioned that they skipped a couple of songs. That's too bad, but the show was still fantastic & fun & full of energy, and Green's voice sounded amazing. They played a bunch of the new tracks from White Bread, Black Beer, but also some older representative stuff, like "The Word Girl", "Wood Beez", "Die Alone", "The Sweetest Girl", and "Brushed with Oil, Dusted with Powder" (which was gorgeous).

My only wish was that they'd have played one of the older ballads: I'd have taken any or all of "A Little Knowledge" (probably my favorite Scritti song of all time), "Overnite", or "Oh Patti (...)". But that's okay.

From White Bread, Black Beer, "The Boom Boom Bap" was bass-thumping beauty--it's the best ballad ever written about hip-hop, or so I'm saying. And as good as the album is, everything sounded even better, more energetic, with a live band. Green's usual multitracked vocals were accomplished with between one & three backup singers per song.

Anyway, I feel like there's more I could say about the show, but I'm not sure what it is, except that watching Green--who, before early this year, hadn't performed for over 20 years, and who'd never toured in the US--perform is truly a thrill, and that you should go to see Scritti Politti in concert--or, at the very least, listen to the new album. It's fantastic.