Okay, here we go, fourth post; I am making a really concerted effort to keep this up.
I was going to try to keep this for books only and avoid my passion for indie rock, but fuck it, I've got nothing really to say about Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I found it sitting around my house at the beginning of the summer and started reading it now-- and when I say now I mean probably a solid month ago-- because it is a long book and I thought I was going to have to give it back. Turns out a former resident of the house somehow acquired a "free-for-all box" of books, so it's come with me to Chicago, moved to a new house, and I'm still only about two-thirds through it. It's approaching the point where I'll have put it down for too long to pick it up again, which is nowhere close to a verdict on the quality of the book-- same thing happened with The Idiot last summer, and not only is that Dostoevsky and so practically Scripture, but I genuinely loved it, with the sort of emotional attachment that gets increasingly rare the more time and money one spends Studying Literature.
Anyway. I really am enjoying the book, but have not put the effort into reading it what with road trips, friends leaving and moving; plus, I still don't have much of an idea what is going on, philosophically, yet, at page 367 out of about 600 (so two-thirds was maybe a generous guess)-- I don't really have an idea to hold on to and so I'm just wandering sort of aimlessly through the book. Which is maybe fair enough; I feel a lot like protagonist Toru Okada, who is wandering through a sort of bizarre dreamworld without any idea what's going on. Who knows.
More thought-provoking, in terms of pop culture, for me, has been the release of Arcade Fire's third full-length album The Suburbs, which came out on August 3rd, just before our big road trip to Minneapolis to see The National and Chicago to participate in a day of Lollapalooza crazy. It is getting generally great reviews; the most interesting thing I have read, probably in the Pitchfork review or a column somewhere on the site, is that, whereas Neon Bible was a little too bleak, a little too accusatory, The Suburbs maintains an awareness of our inevitable complicity in the structures we criticise-- consumer culture, religion, whatever. My favourite lyric on the album is in City With No Children: "Never trust a millionaire who will quote the Sermon on the Mount/I used to think I was not like them, but I'm beginning to have my doubts/have my doubts about it." And this idea comes up again and again. I was a little nervous when I heard the title for the album and early comments because I am pretty disinterested in taking cheap shots at hipsters and yuppies; it's too easy, it's boring, and there are definitely moments on the album where this happens-- Rococo is a great song, musically, and it is really fun to sing "rococo" over and over along with Win Butler, but the lyrics are a little too accusatory and condescending to be interesting on its own, so thank goodness it gets balanced by the more sensitive and nuanced moments on the album. I was arguing about this with a couple friends last night, but to be honest, there was free wine and I can't quite remember if we came to any sort of conclusion about that particular song.
As a side note, I was listening to The A.V. Club's August Music Wrap-Up, which of course was mostly a discussion of The Suburbs, in which Steven Hyden (I think) pointed out potentially my biggest problem with Arcade Fire, in general, which is that they are pretty humourless-- those guys take themselves pretty friggin seriously, which is generally something I can't stand. But, I think their over-the-top, super-emotional musical arrangements really save their lyrics from being completely unbearable-- I find their larger-than-life musical pretentiousness entertaining enough to balance the more thought-provoking pretentiousness of their lyrics.
This entry is pretty scattered, but I guess I will just say that I've succumbed to writing about indie rock, not because I am an aspiring music journalist (boy, am I ever not), but just because I am interested in literature as a sub-category of popular culture; I want to study and think critically about what people are watching, reading, listening to-- the cultural canon, maybe. Obviously I am not as dedicated as I could be to this, because it is pretty easy for me to forget that the vast majority of people are pretty happy to consume shit, but I think there are a lot-- a lot-- of people interested in producing and consuming really quality "popular" media, and I think one of the places where this is happening is in the world of indie rock, pop, whatever. There is also a lot of garbage there, but bands like Arcade Fire and The National are making some really important cultural statements. So I will be there.
