Loquat; Murakami

Posted by Matt

I had just written this entry when Firefox mysteriously crashed and I lost it. Part of it was an attempt at an excuse for not writing lately, in the form of uninteresting mumbling about what I've been up to. So anyhow, to the content:

Via SomaFM's "Indie Pop Rocks" radio station, I learned of a band called Loquat. I think it was their cover of the Smiths song "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" that first caught my attention, because now when that song gets stuck in my head, it's always the Loquat version. They're a pop band from San Francisco, apparently with electronic roots. I don't know exactly what to compare them to, but I like them. (I've seen the word "trip-pop" used to describe their sound somewhere on the web, but I don't quite see what it means.) Kylee Swenson's vocals are pleasant, and the band's sound is upbeat and pop-py in a good way. They have some MP3s available on their website, as well as at download.com. Listen (start with "Swingset Chain," probably). Read this article about them, in which they talk about mapping out songs on a whiteboard "like physics equations." (Charming, no? Maybe it's just me.) Anyhow, they apparently have a full length album, It's Yours to Keep, being released on April 19. I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

Also, last weekend while taking the bus to New York (where I wandered a bit on the way to and from a friend's birthday party in New Haven), I read Haruki Murakami's after the quake, which made good bus reading. It's a nice book of short stories, some of which are rather surreal, and some of which are just nice little vignettes with an attention to detail and to realistic interactions that I like. I'm not a very frequent reader of short stories, but for some reason good short stories always seem very similar to me, even when they're different in style and substance. Why is that? It's like there's some platonic ideal of literary short stories that people try to write, so that anything that gets within epsilon of it feels familiar even if they approach it from different directions. Or maybe I'm just not making sense. I think I would have to revisit various stories to articulate what this sense of commonality really is, and I'm not sure I'll get around to that anytime soon, so I'll just throw that idea out there.