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Let It Fly by The Choir

As an adolescent I became enamored with the Contemporary Christian Music Scene. It was the late 90s and I was riding the last traces of its hey day. On a family trip out of state I found a CD in a bargain bin called “Let it Fly” by an early, fringe, Christian alternative band called The Choir. I knew little about the band but had heard of them through my connection to CCM. I bought the CD despite my unfamiliarity with their catalogue, because it was only two dollars. This was at the height of price gouging of CDs by the music industry, on the eve of Napster. Albums with only one hit radio song on it would sell for twenty dollars, which was a significant amount of money at the time.

Sitting in the back of our family van I listened to it on a portable CD player, mesmerized despite brief interruptions from the anti skip feature not always working.

I was still in my nascent stages of appreciating interesting music, but even then, at that time, I knew I had stumbled upon something special. Now I can better understand what this album is. It’s not just another Christian rock album, or just a greatest hits collection, or just a live album. It is primarily a love album.

The warning in the liner notes says it all. “This album is intended to be listened to in moving vehicles with the windows down and at least one speaker blown. Headphones are advised against. These are live recordings and in the spirit of honesty (and laziness) we did no studio overdubbing whatsoever.” Further down it says of the tour “We lost money, but we had a good time.”

The first track is called Circle Slide/Sled Dog. You hit play and instead of a song you are treated with a guy stumbling through an introduction to the band and informing the audience that they would be recording for a live album. He forgets the name of The Choir’s new studio album. You can hear some chatter in the background, maybe fifteen people clapping, and three or four people cheering. Then the track is over.

On track two labeled Yellow Skies, an up tempo version of The Choir’s song Circle Slide unfolds. It is a long trippy track, interrupted briefly with Sled Dog. Then there is a pause and out of nowhere Circle Slide resumes. The track is haunted with the eerie sound of a saxophone wailing, the sax player just jamming through out the song.

The mislabeling of the tracks continues through out the album, as well as the subpar sound quality, the strained banter from the band, and the meager audience responses. One love song after another unfolds, from the aptly titled track “Sentimental Song,” “let your tears fall into my hands,” to the faster but just as melancholy track “About Love,” “go on laugh go on cry, it’s alright.” In “Sad Face,” the lyrics, “a sad face is good for the heart,” is lifted from Ecclesiastes. A lyric from “Yellow Skies,” sums it up, “sometimes love is really sad.”

The next song, the penultimate song on the album, “Beautiful Scandalous Night,” has a title that tricked me into thinking it would be about illicit romantic love. The lyrics go, “At the wonderful tragic mysterious tree On that beautiful scandalous night you and me Were atoned by his blood and forever washed white On that beautiful scandalous night.” This seems like a good place to end the album, but there is more.

A long raucous final song, “Restore My Soul,” commences and at the end the Mac Davis track “I Believe in Music,” plays though the speakers as people begin to shuffle out. As Davis sings “I believe in music, I believe in love,” the MC reminds the audience of the time for the church service the next morning. Setting copyright violations aside, this is a perfect coda to this messy album. In its own strange way, it makes perfect sense.

The first lyrics sung on the album, the beginning of Circle Slide, asks us to “imagine one perfect circle above the stratosphere, where lovers hide away and children cheer.” The irony is that the imperfect circle below the stratosphere, where lovers express themselves openly and honestly, where children cry and cheer, is far more authentic, far more stunning, and far more fascinating than any heaven described by the band, as illustrated by this flawed, poignant, and hopelessly romantic CD. This is where the magic is.

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The White Songbook by Joy Electric

A struggle for me in writing this review is to avoid slipping into fanboy, effusive praise, territory. I like Joy Electric, but I love this album. For me it is Ronnie Martin's (who is Joy Electric) masterpiece and cements him as a genius. "The White Songbook" is Joy Electric's softest, hardest, richest, most layered, most complex, most heavy, most delicate album. Ronnie goes all out and it somehow works. I am going to go all out on this review, embrace my excessive enthusiasm, and hope that, ultimately, it works too.

The first thing one notices about the album is its range. It is the only electro synth pop album that I know of that has a few downright head bangers on it ("A New Pirate Traditional," and "We are Rock"). “We are Rock,”  would be the perfect anthem for the underground, for the marginalized by the music industry, but by their very definition, they can’t have anthems.  

It is impossible to tell what Ronnie's intentions were, but I read "The White Songbook" as a critique of the music industry, specifically the contemporary Christian music industry. In the mainstream experimental artists have it tough, but there was even less openness in the Christian music scene that Ronnie was emmeshed in at the time. Ronnie’s music just sounds different. It is upsetting but not surprising that his music was never commercially viable. 

"The White Song Book" has a lot working against it. The album features fairy-taleish lyrics that lack an obvious meaning, he uses only analogue synthesizers to create a bleepy bloopy sound, and his singing has a melancholic, wistful tone to it. Ronnie coats the songs with a wonderful but eccentric syrup using gorgeous synthesizers and sugary vocals. Underneath all the interesting instrumentation however, they are, at their core, damn well written songs. 

From its lush instrumentation to its fantasy-world lyrics, Joy Electric creates a sound unpalatable for most. Too pretty for the indie kids, but too ornate for pop radio, and add to that the Christian music dimension, and Joy Electric falls into the no mans land of contemporary popular music.  

The less careful listeners may call The White Songbook weird. The too careful listeners may say the album collapses under the weight of its own ambition. But anyone who approaches the album in an honest straightforward manner will encounter magic. Even though a common theme in the lyrics is a wintery setting, the album is a scorcher. 

This album is a testament to the human spirit, that someone could take such alienation and spin that into a masterpiece. A candle stands out most when it is placed in the darkest corner, a torch burns brightest at night. By facing, instead of turning away from his pain, Ronnie generates not festive colorful lights, but a wild natural fire lit light. When it is winter, we don’t deny its winter. The only way to make it though a winter night is to create something that can keep us warm, and therefore alive. The White Songbook is a light in a dark place not because it is upbeat, because it’s not, not because it is brilliant, even though it is, but because it is beautiful.

The climax of the album is the pen ultimate song, "The Heritage Bough". The climax of "The Heritage Bough" and thus the whole album, is the cryptic, distorted voice, spoken text Ronnie recites near the end of the track, that ends with, “ice it spreads while longing lingers.” Then it concludes with the last song, a softer song, although rage still bubbles up from beneath the surface. The song is titled, “The Songbook Tells All.” Fitting for an album that ends it’s first song with the question, “from here, where are we to go?”

From the frustration of standing in front of an audience and trying to perform your music even though the sound person keeps the volume low, even though there are only ten people at your show and only three even know the songs and the rest were dragged along with their youth group and came only out of boredom, even though you had such low sales that you are kept on a record label more for appreciation for your talent than as a profit driver, even though everything was going against you, you were uncompromising, and you were rock. And because you were rock we could be rock together. "We are rock forever."

“And so the heritage bough will grow,” indeed.

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American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes

For some time now I have wanted to review Terrance Hayes poetry collection American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin. I wasn’t sure how. The answer was in the book itself, in the poem American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin when Hayes writes that, “our sermon today concerns the dialectic Blessings in transgression & transcendence.”

My concern was that as a white male, “the blind protagonist,” I was unqualified to review this book. When reading a work critical of you, the reader, there are two paths one can follow. You can become defensive, which is so obviously a bad idea that I don’t feel like I need to even say why. 

The other option is more complicated, but just as fraught. That is too agree with the criticism leveled at white people, and in particular white surpremecy. How does one do that, without sliding into virtue signaling and the pagentry of solidarity? How should a white person approach these poems, respond to these poems, and understand these poems? I believe there is only one way: to find common ground with the other side. Many would say this is impossible, but I respectfully disagree. I believe that any white person can relate to any black person because they share a common enemy.

The next question is how could this possibly be true? As Hayes writes, “I carry a flag bearing a different nation on each side.” The American flag represents two starkly different America’s, each foreign to the other. The lived experiences of a person of color’s America and a white person’s are so disprate it may seem impossible to bridge the gap between these two nations. 

Admittedly, this gap will never be completely bridged. If this sounds like afro pessimism, it is. That raises more questions though. “What business does a white person have discussing afro pessimism? What authority does he have in entering into dialogue with these sonnets? What is this common enemy?

The common enemy is the white supremacist thoughts found in that particular white person, in this case, me. Even though it manifests in me as an internal battle within me, and for Terrance Hayes as an external battle against my racism as an outside force, we are still battling the same thing. 

This works on a collective and institutional level as well. If a traditionally white supremicist institution, say, the US court system, begins to reckon with its racism and racist past (and to avoid confronting a racist past is to be racist in the present), it finds itself battling itself, the same institution black people have been battling all along. 

Even if it manifests itself in a different form, having the same enemy can create a small but significant spark. If people have the same enemy, they develop a common mission, which can create solidarity, even camaraderie. There is a problem with this. Any sense of solidarity dissipates as soon as the enemy is gone.

Think about world war two, when two nations at odds with each other, based on two radically opposing ideologies, the United States and the Soviet Union, worked together to defeat Nazi Germany. After the war, however, the tension that existed between them before the war did not just come back, the tension actually deepened.

Optimism perversely comes in when I realize that my racist tendencies will never be completely eradicated. This gives me an internal enemy that I am going to battle, although hopefully in reduced and lesser forms, throughout my life. This is not a good thing, but it does give me common ground with the people of color that are also battling against my racism. Paradoxically we need the evil we are fighting against together in order to make progress against it. Therein lies the dialectic. 

In my own personal journey I laughed at awful jokes in middle school. In high school I cringed on remembering that but read awful magazine articles in conservative magazines about personal responsibility and found myself nodding in agreement. I cringed in college when I remembered that but found myself opposing affirmative action. I cringed at my opposition to affirmative action after college but found myself opposing reparations. Now I cringe at my opposition to reparations... To reduce white supremacy within oneself one needs to be aware of its permanent persistence inside oneself. It’s a continuous process. 

That is the only way that a white person can relate to a black person’s struggle against oppression. That is the only common ground we can have, the only way white people can enter these sonnets and begin to understand them.  

Much like America itself, the white establishment needs to recognize the impossibility of eradicating its shortcomings in order to reduce those shortcomings. For all its flaws, for as badly as it was poisoned by racist compromises, and for all the impracticability it offers centuries later, our constitution took a significant step when the men who framed it made it amendable. It seems small but it was a departure from the hubris that had plagued western culture since its origins.  

The question remains, how does a white person approach these poems? First they sit down in the pew and they listen to the sermon. If they really listen they will soon realize it is not a sermon but a sonnet about a sermon. When they hear the song they can be awed by its beauty. Maybe after some time they can even join in and sing along. 

In other words, they approach these poems like any human being, with any background, history, or experience, does, whether a person of color or a person of privilege. They appreciate Terrance Hayes work by appreciating the sheer force of its aesthetic value. The flag the poet carries bears a different nation on each side, but it is ultimately, still, just one flag.

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NIGHT SKY WITH EXIT WOUNDS BY OCEAN VUONG

It has been over a decade since I’ve read the Bible all the way through and I miss it. Even though I can no longer accept it as the Truth, it is still true, at least in its own quirky way. 

The Bible is beautiful not despite its tragic beginning, or its oppressive ending, or the violence threaded through the entire volume, it is beautiful because of those things. It still seems to me to be more than a random collection of proverbs, letters, records, laws, accounts, and narratives strung together by chance. It has structural integrity, even if it isn’t logical enough to derive a consistent belief system from. 

Maybe the Bible seems important solely because of its place in history, because of the way it has shaped our world, making it richer and poorer, for better or for worse. Maybe it only seems powerful to me because it has been so influential for a thousand years. But, then again, maybe not. Maybe it’s because of some deeper reason.

When I open the volume of poetry by Ocean Vuong, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, I don’t see the assassinated president, I see Jackie’s “one white glove glistening pink-- with all our American dreams.” When I look up at the night sky I don’t just see stars anymore, I see “the exit wounds of every misfired word.” I don’t experience the beginning of the last poem but I do experience the ending to the first poem. “I lost it all with my eyes wide open.”

When “the lights go out,” I can’t see love (or sometimes its absence) and all its messy categories running together. Instead, I see her running “silently toward her god.” 

When I open Night Sky With Exit Wounds, I see what I have known I have always wanted to see, the entire world torn down, then rebuilt with poetry. I cannot say with authority that this volume will still be read one thousand years from now, but I can say with authority that it is my hope that it is.

When I open Night Sky With Exit Wounds, I don’t notice that the nun is on fire. Instead, I notice the miracle: that when he says Open, “She opens.”

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[A→B] Life by Mewithoutyou

If most of the screamo bands of the early aughts were livejournal accounts of angsty teenagers set to thrashing music, then [A→B] Life was one too. But, unlike most albums of the era, this wasn’t your average angsty teenager, this was an angsty teenager who stays home and reads a Kurt Vonnegut novel on prom night, who can paraphrase from memory a John Donne poem not assigned in class because he has read it so often on his own. This is a teenager who is expanding his mind, reading anything he can get his hands on, learning everything he can about the multifaceted world he lives in. But his nascent intellectualism can’t elevate him above the guilt, the melodrama, and the turmoil a young man experiences with early salvos into romantic love. He may be ahead of his peers in learning about how complex the world, and life, is but he is still young, still green, and still fucking everything up.

The record is a chaotic mess of misunderstandings, self doubt, and abrasive post punk infused anguish. To a wreck of a twenty one year old man it sounded glorious. This is admittedly not the most nuanced album but at a certain point in my life nothing rang more true. It remains my favorite album. If it’s not for you then I don’t know, I guess you just had to be there.

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Swan Feast by Natalie Eilbert

In the poetry collection Swan Feast Natalie Eilbert writes that “The Venus of Willendorf limped from a dirt ocean / in 1908 into the hands of one Dr. Josef Szombathy.” Josef Szombathy was one of the male archaeologists conducting the excavation where the small prehistoric sculpture of a nude woman with exaggerated features, what became known as the Venus of Willendorf, was “discovered.”

Upon reading Swan Feast for the first time the many questions phrased in the poems caught my attention. In the first poem in the book the speaker asks “I have my very own origin story would you like to hear it.” In a later poem Eilbert writes “men will pick at rock / until your gifts are found and named, but I don’t / want to hear it.” The speaker asks in “The Death and Life of the Venus City,” “Can I speak for the Venus,” and answers several lines down, “I will speak for her as I spoke / for myself.” In “Consider a Landscape” the speaker asks, “Who can speak of this world.” The second time I read Swan Feast I noticed that there were rarely any question marks following the many questions in the volume. That is when I realized, these aren’t questions.

In Swan Feast Eilbert is erudite without being dry. The themes are varied, interconnected, and overlapping. Certain references (to the Venus, the city, the lake) and entire phrases appear repeatedly throughout the poems, providing the collection with continuity, despite shifts in form and perspective. Even though these poems have depth, you can still easily witness the force of personal experience, the rush of imaginative language, coruscating from the pages.

The poems are reference rich and have multiple layers of meaning, yet they remain open to the casual reader. An example is in the poem “Dr. Szombathy Receives Our Letter” when, during a sexual encounter V speaks mid thrust, saying “The death and life of great American cities is about negotiating influences and the impressions of citizens.” (This is not the first time this phrase appears in Swan Feast). We can infer a metaphor, as if it were that simple, when the speaker says “Strangers enter me / and I respond with silence, but V she’s an anti-city / no man can enter her.”

I have never read The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, but despite my ignorance of the context of this reference V’s words still resonate. The reference probably works on other, perhaps more robust levels, if you are familiar with Jacob’s book, but you don’t have to have read it to appreciate the weight of V’s words.

Trying to track what a work of poetry means is always a fraught endeavor but this is especially true with Swan Feast because of its sheer density. Swan Feast is a difficult book to write about, until you realize that even if you interpret some things incorrectly, no one is ever going to interpret the book one hundred percent correctly anyway. The attributes that makes these poems challenging are the same attributes that make these poems strong; there is so much to miss, even after many readings.

There are four poems titled “Epithalamium” in Swan Feast. In the second one the speaker says “What good is a lake if a boy doesn’t / drown swimming to a girl on the other side.” In the first one, the speaker says “what lake would have us now.” In fourth one the speaker says, “Too often the poem tells us to find a lake.” In the third one a lake is not mentioned at all. I had to look up the word epithalamium. It means a song or poem celebrating a marriage.

The deeper I dig, the more I uncover. Even though with every reading of these poems I excavate more I will never reach a sufficient depth to extract the stone wife from the dirt and feel her figure in my hands. Despite how much I unearth, these poems remain in some way unknowable. Part of what makes a masterpiece a masterpiece is that it instantly welcomes you in but no matter how long you choose to visit with it, it will never be fully understood.

When reading Swan Feast I “discovered” the elusive lake the poems never told me to find. It was not in an epithalamium poem but in the poem “With Dead Brother in the Venus Landscape,” where Eilbert writes “An act / was done to my brother at the edge of a lake: blow air / through a reed long enough and he will go to you, believing.” The magic here is that even though we don’t know exactly what Eilbert means, we still know what she means.

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WUNDERKAMMER BY CYNTHIA CRUZ

Cynthia Cruz’s poetry collection Wunderkammer is like a dark German fairy tale that has been Americanized, not in a polished Disney happily ever after sense, but in a gritty “Greyhound / station bathroom” and “trash-carrying barges” on the East River sense. The aesthetic qualities of the fantastical old world combined with the drab utility of the pragmatic new world create a “Junk Garden,” “That strange blasted Eden.”  

There are distinct descriptions of material items (“quadruple- / Layered raspberry cream cakes,” “black Balenciaga three-inch heels,” ”obsolete maps strung on the walls”) and of the inner workings of a strained psychology (“anesthesia- / Laced nostalgia,” “green ocean of terror,” “symptoms of trauma”). It would be pointless, however, to compartmentalize the physical from the psychological in these poems. They work symbiotically as one unit to, paradoxically, render the unspeakable in vivid language. Cruz achieves this not by constructing a narrative, but by creating an atmosphere. She does this indirectly through fragments of precise, effective observations connected by tone, not structure. Mood does not subvert meaning, the mood is the meaning. Not despite, but because of the concrete details, this poetry is impressionistic.

In Wunderkammer Cruz blurs the lines between a next world (Nebenwelt) and this world. We can identity objects in the poems that are familiar, but they are described with an otherworldly aura. The result is hypnotic as the unreal becomes more real than the real and the real becomes more unreal than the unreal. Perhaps this book is not about this world or about the next world so much as about the “Zwischenwelt” (German for Between World) where “worlds / Are lapping, one flooding over / The other.” A dichotomy is broken.

Cruz acts as a curator for the Wunderkammer (chamber of wonders) and I don’t assume all or even any of the experiences she gathers for this collection are necessarily her own experience. But even if the I’s are fictive or meant to be someone else, these are still Cruz’s poems. I like to imagine Cruz is writing about herself in the final lines of the book, that says “Every time I open my mouth / To speak, just these terrible / Blue diamonds fall out.”

This is formidable poetry, poetry that proves you can be traumatized but still enchanted, poetry that proves you can be distraught but still strong, poetry that proves you can be bewildered but still articulate. As you open the book to read through this collection expect Cruz’s rare, extravagant poems to fall out.