Here's a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/books/review/Moore.t.html?ex=1178078400&en=2bb63399bfcd77ee&ei=5070"> link</a> to a recent review I did for the New York Times Book Review. The book is called The Art of Losing. It's pretty depressing and claustraphobic in places, but moves along at a snappy and massively compelling pace.
I have never considered until this moment how full of life the autumn is. Perhaps it is the cumulative experience of too many London autumns, excessively rainy and windy as they are, collars up and eyes down, the leaf mulch squelching brown underfoot, a sodden mass, coaxed into giving up their colours far too soon. Giving up, I should say, what little colour they had, for, and I know not why, the colours of the fall back home have none of the explosive reds and fiery oranges of the New England fall, showing, perhaps, a glimmer of the famed British reserve. But here, the colours are remarkable. No acquiescence or quiet surrender here in the face of winter but instead some sort of parting shot on behalf of life.
The yellow Hickory leaves on the ground beneath me are slick like Wellington boots from the previous evenings rain, some waving a little in the breeze as if to say, Im still here! if only just. The sunlight falls on autumns spoils in jigsaw-shaped patches. The Hickory tree itself is quite a specimen a Shagbark Hickory with a whiteish-grey bark that runs almost in rivulets, crisscrossing here, straightening there, spilling downwards, it seems, to the base of the tree. It has an almost corrugated feel to it and strips of the bark peel here and there, lifting and curling at the ends, no doubt lending the tree its shaggy name. There is a greenish lichen growing around the base, a very light, dusty sort, roughly the colour of Eau de Nile, that travels up the bark no more than a couple of feet off the ground.
There are still plenty of flies around, it seems several bluebottles are warming themselves on the Hickory bark. Every now and then a smaller sort of fly lands on my page. He is not easily dissuaded from stopping. The white of the paper throws him into sharp relief, his strange, staccato movements making me feel as though he and I arent even sharing the same time but rather that he is a stop-motion creation superimposed on this world. My world, I suppose. He rubs his front feelers together obsequiously, rather like Uriah Heep, and then takes off without warning.
The wind has a dry, raspy voice, constant, rising and falling conversationally. The other noise here has a similar tone, if lower in pitch its the unmistakable hum of cars on the Arborway, somewhere on the other side of the park. I find it difficult sometimes to not hear man-made things in nature itself, the occasional bursts of insect noise sounding like the buzz of a refrigerator or the whir of an air conditioning unit. Ive lived in a city all my life; I suppose its unavoidable.
Found some strange rotten messes of what I assume was once fruit under a group of Black Walnuts presumably unrelated. They have a rough, almost lemony skin, mottled and bruised, revealing a matted, spongy, fibrous core, oozing a shiny black liquid, like oil, from deep within. They remind me somewhat of the long lost tennis balls my brother and I found at the bottom of the garden when we were young and are slightly springy underfoot.
Stumbled across a very serious and sombre Norwegian Spruce with its branches curving downwards, giving it a hangdog aspect. Its as if the tree were suffering patiently these last excesses and frivolities of his rowdy neighbours, this last pageant of summer, desperately looking forward to the winter fast.
Spotted some small berries clinging to the fencing on the way out of the park surely poisonous all purple and teal, the colour of welts, slightly opalescent and speckled all over with tiny, darkish spots. They danced merrily in the breeze, ugly and beautiful all at the same time.
After death, comes the remix project. Never were Messrs Shakur and Wallace quite so prolific in life as they are now in their bargain bin purgatory. So we all know what happens to the great and the good of hip hop, but what about the fate of indie bands when they pass over to the other side? And what about the indie bands who just happen to be big fans of Biggie Smalls?
Like the good man himself, the Unicorns were in the business of foreseeing their own demise. I predict I die in a plane crash/I see it now I die in a car on tour, Nick Diamonds crooned ever so sweetly on 2004s pop-tart classic Who Will Cut Our Hair When Youre Gone. In fact death looms large on the record, with more ghosts including that of Biggie buzzing around than in a frenzied game of Pacman. Eschewing traditional pop song-writing structure, the whole glorious, Technicolor LP sounded permanently on the verge of meltdown one chorus collapsing into another, styles and sounds tossed around in anarchic glee. It was fresh, funny and too perfect to last. The news dropped in early 2005 that the Unicorns were no more. Tour pressures and strained personal relationships within the band had taken their toll. Alden Ginger, guitarist and co-singer, went his own way, Nick and drummer Jaime Tambeur, another.
Nick and Jaime left Montreal for LA and picked up work on ThCornn Gang, a hip hop remix project (See! I TOLD you!) that had begun as an offshoot of the Unicorns, with LA-based rappers Subtitle and Busdriver. Culminating in one gig and several remixes, kids has just begun to get all het up about it before news of another ventured was Pitchforked. Its name? Islands.
Speaking to Nick and Jaime from a payphone over the sea, at the end of the world (and on its last legs by the sound of it), they explained that the first shows Islands really played were as opening act on a tour with Beck at the end of last year. It was weird because they were our first shows and we were playing to like 10,000 people, explained Nick. Some people knew who we were just based on the fact of the other band that Jaime and I were in. It was just such a new thing. No one had heard anything yet. But it was cool though, it was definitely jumping in and getting right into it.
Nick and Jaime had already laid down Islands debut Return to the Sea in Montreal in mid-2005, calling on a close-knit group of friends and collaborators, including members of Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade. But most of the current Islands line-up hadnt played on the record because we didnt know who they were yet. They had already hooked up with bass player Patrice Agbokou, a Togo-born musician whose individual style is, Jaime admits, a key element of the albums sound. His bass playing really cements a lot of the songs and took them to a different place.
The new record employs elements of afropop and calypso and with a line-up that now includes clarinet and a string section, amongst other things, its clear that Islands is much more than just a continuation of the Unicorns. I think we think of ourselves as more of a pop band, says Jaime.
Return to the Seas opening track Swans (Life After Death) sets the scene like Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels) on Arcade Fires Funeral. Curling guitar lines, woozy, warped synth flurries and gentle, peach fuzz drums lay the foundation for Nicks soaring, swooning vocals, singing of a glorious island afterlife where its still warm after the sun has gone. Its a near-perfect pop song. Theres still a little playfulness, as found in the track title Dont Call Me Whitney, Bobby, but its the grown-up pop tracks like Swans, Rough Gem, the mantra-like, minimal, throb of Ones, that really stand out.
The album also has serious, poignant lyrical themes threaded through it death, loss, human frailty things are not quite as throwaway this time round. I think a lot of it deals with the stuff that came up right after we broke up. We had really put our whole lives into [the Unicorns] Nick and I both thought of it as being a lot more long-term. When [the breakup] first happened we werent sure if wed be able to get back into it. Once you start having any kind of success it all seems like youve just won the lottery or something. Which makes it twice as hard to pick up and start over.
Despite a hectic tour schedule, Islands are clearly enjoying themselves right now. Whats really cool about this band is that were really fast and quick and weve basically got another albums worth of material says Jaime. And with the album ready to drop on April 4th in the UK, the band will definitely be trekking out here for some shows.
Have you heard the rumour about Tupac? That he didnt die and hes hanging out on an island paradise somewhere? Well, I reckon Nick and Jaime know where hes at.
<b>Appeared in the April/May issue of Stool Pigeon</b>
David Mitchell has made a name for himself writing impossibly elaborate novels that skip voices, time zones, even lifetimes in the space of a sentence or two. In fact, his last work, the superbly sprawling Cloud Atlas, employed a structure that could compete with the great Victorian engineering projects for girth and ingenuity. His latest novel is a very different sort of book. Black Swan Green is an intricate and beautiful study of life in rural Worcestershire in the early 1980s told from a single viewpoint, that of a thirteen year-old boy.
Mitchells previous novels have dealt very little with England, choosing instead to escape, very much like the author himself did in his mid-twenties, to Japan, the Pacific Rim and beyond. Black Swan Green is, however, rooted firmly in one place and a dismal one at that. Mitchell himself cant quite believe the international interest in the work.
Its sold in different countries to a surprising degree. Im really genuinely surprised how Americans have responded to it. Its a provincial little local book and Im not hamming up the Brideshead Revisited side either, he chuckles, Its just a kind of grey, 80s, Nowheresville.
Black Swan Green is the sort of place where the village shop is almost permanently shut, everyones indoors because Moonraker is on the telly and the fun fair is the high point of the social calendar. Theres something rather damp, faintly depressing and very British about the place.
Perhaps everyone is from nowhere though. Maybe thats it, Mitchell puzzles, And if you do portray nowhere in its genuine lack of frills and lack of glory, then people respond to it. Whichever particular nowhere theyre from, they recognise mine.
And it is his. In fact, Black Swan Green seems like a dangerously autobiographical book. The central character, Jason Taylor, is a boy with a crippling stammer and hidden poetic ambitions. The setting and era directly correspond with the authors own teenage years. Indeed, the process of writing the novel was less about research and more about memory.
I wanted a rest from research, he explains. Or, at least, any research I couldnt achieve simply by having a meal with some mates from that time and brainstorming.
That and, of course, the Friends Reunited website.
I wouldnt go on and register to save my life but I used a fake name and had a look around, he laughs.
Being able to dip into his own teen era was useful for Mitchell, but the transitional period of the early 1980s in Britain also provides a compelling backdrop for Jasons own transition from childhood.
The Falklands was a narrative gift, of course. It was a very strong argument in my mind for setting it in 1982. Also it was the end of agrarian England. It was about the last year when there more farmers and people who worked on the land living in English villages than architects and medical specialists and accountants.
Mitchell returned briefly to live in the area where the fictional Black Swan Green is situated while he and his wife prepared for the birth of their first child. There were, he explains, changes everywhere:
The pub was revamped. It used to be this mythical, murky, smoky place that youd glimpse motorbikes outside it had new paint and you couldnt recognise it really.</i>
Things hadnt just changed physically either.
The imaginative spaces of the village, like the graveyard and the nameless woods that kids would name, kids just dont do them anymore. Its X-boxes, Playstations, a fear that theres a paedophile hiding behind every tree stump, I think.
Mitchell has vivid memories of his own school days although, unlike Jasons experiences, they werent especially traumatic.
Nothing that bad happened to me I had no Stephen King experiences! But all of those years are very formative and rich archaeological ground for fiction as well.
Jason is a very different sort of hero from the oftentimes monumental figures that haunt the bildungsroman, however. As Mitchell points out,
The thing is with Holden Caulfield and with [Augustin] Meaulnes is that theyre basically sorted. Theyve got these Robocop personalities that just blast through everything.
Jason doesnt have this armour. But he does have a budding literary talent. The most rewarding sections of the book is his encounter with an elderly Eva Crommelynk, plucked from the pages of Cloud Atlas and dropped in Jasons path. Eva teaches him that, in order to become an artist, one has to learn to tell the truth.
She shows Jason that art is an oxygen tent; its a life belt. However shite the world is, its a place to go. Its always there.
Mitchell was inspired to use Jason as his narrator for the novel back in 2003 when he supplied Granta with a short story entitled The January Man. It not only featured a fully formed Jason, it also sketched out the beginnings of what became Black Swan Green itself. Mitchell fell in love with the voice.
Ive concocted this theory of accidental poetry. That thirteen year-olds can accidentally create wholly fresh similes and metaphors because they dont know the rules you need to make stale ones.
Mitchells interest in exploring the growth of intellect coincides with him becoming a father for the second time. Having young children means less time to work but it brings with it other useful tools for an author.
I think it was Cyril Connelly who quipped that the pram in the hallway is the enemy of literary promise. Its witty but I dont think he meant it, he pauses for a moment. Plus I think Ill learn a bit more about human nature too.
<b>Appeared in Time Out May 3-10 2006</b>
The Lazarus performance I saw at the Garage when he supported Explosions in the Sky was some of the saddest sadsack shit I have ever seen. It was also kind of breathtaking. I reviewed it for <a href="http://www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/6907">Drowned In Sound</a> a while back.
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