The Commission: Dana Maltby

Dana Maltby is the rare artist who can sign his work using light. That’s because he specializes in a little-known arm of fine art photography in which light is “painted” onto an image using luminous tools and cameras set for ultra-slow exposure times. Amazingly, this so-called “light art performance photography” generally doesn’t employ post-production touchups. All Maltby used to create this otherworldly scene is, as he puts it, “the crappiest single-lens SLR you can get,” and light-up toys and manipulated Christmas lights. His main subject tends to be his own acrobatic silhouette, which he prefers to shoot in abandoned buildings or sewer tunnels in Minneapolis. “I’ve been telling people part of [my art] is being a little scared, out there by myself,” he says of his potentially treacherous shooting locales. “It wouldn’t be the same without the danger.” The recent grad of the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul says that he hopes this unique art form becomes more commonplace in the photography world, adding that, “it’s like anything—hip hop, skateboarding—the more people do it, the greater it grows.”

Camera: Canon EOS REBEL T1i; exposure: 99 seconds; aperture: f/5.0 ISO: 100; taken: 8/3/09

Notes on this article: I talked to Dana Maltby for about an hour. It turned out he was about my age, which made me feel under-accomplished. This interview actually has a long addition to it, which covers him dealing with a similar artist dying, although I'm not sure it ever went up on the website.

Artists We Love: Viet Do

Age: 39

Hails from: Vietnam

What brought him to Minneapolis: The appreciation of art and design in Minneapolis; seeing that a lot of the designers I admired were working in Minneapolis; the appeal of having seasons. I wanted to move somewhere completely new when I was young, because I knew it would be harder when I was older.

On designing for Target (he worked on a campaign that created a series of Target gift cards that doubled as rubber ducks, bubble wands and garden kits): It’s pretty cool working for a client like Target. They really “get” design. How many clients ask to be challenged with new ideas all the time? They are constantly moving, and as a designer, I still get new challenges every day.

Design versus art: Being a designer makes it harder for me to be an artist. I struggle with the need to always have a problem to solve. Sometimes I have to force myself to just start drawing, without a purpose or idea ahead of time.

Tips for teaching art to kids: I like to compliment my kids on the colors, textures or compositions of their work versus how well they actually drew something. I don’t want them to lose the joy of just creating. I am really jealous of a lot of their compositions; they usually have very strong and simple pieces that blow away the stuff that takes me hours to figure out.

Why he doesn't title and sign his work: I usually don’t sign my work because I am not used to that idea. In design, all of your work is anonymous. It's pretty rare for a designer to take credit for his work. Plus, I think my signature looks weird.

Notes: For this story, I wanted to profile a designer in advertising, because I think a lot of people don't even notice how jam-packed with impressive design the ads they see every day are. I called Little & Co. because they do a lot of the Target design, and they told me Viet Do was their up-and-comer. When he came into the studio, Do was very humble. He brought a set of watercolor brush-simulating black markers and drew on the background while I interviewed him. At the end, he didn't want to sign his name, which I thought was a refreshing lack of self-absorption for an artist.

Artists We Love: Marc Sijan

Resides: Milwaukee, Wis.

On his preferred style: I prefer realism. I think mankind has interpreted the human form since the beginning of time. Human anatomy is the most often-used subject matter. My thing was to develop realism on a three-dimensional scale.

On using his father as a model: The most popular piece I’ve ever done is my father. It’s a psychologically interesting probe: of all the sculptures, your father became the most important one.

On creating a Jesus sculpture: I did casting from sections of anatomy and I assembled it all like parts of a puzzle. Then I became a painter. I picked up my paints and magnifying glass and painted freckles, moles and age spots.

On inspiring a gastric bypass: This heavy-set guy came around to the studio all the time—he was turning into a groupie. He said, “If you ever need a real big guy [as a model], let me know.” One day I just said, “Let me do it.” Later, he walked in and stood in front of the sculpture (pictured at right) and he stared and stared and said, “Marc, I never realized I was that big.” He left in shock, called the doctor and scheduled a gastric bypass. He came back to the exhibit six months later. He was like a before-and-after shot.

On breathing into his sculptures: I was all by myself in the studio on a Friday night. My friends were out playing and I was working. I thought, “I want this to come to life, to flourish.” I don’t talk about this very often, but I put my mouth over the mouth of the sculpture to breathe life into it. It was corny. I felt uncomfortable with myself.

On his self-portrait in sculpture form: I rediscovered it in storage last year after 20 years. I realized in a heartbeat how fast 20 years went by.

Notes on this article:I first saw Marc Sijan's at The Uptown Art Fair and I was blown away. As a wanna-be artist myself, hyper-realistic art is one of my favorite genres, and his pieces all had a forlornness about them that seemed to reflect Sijan's personal universe. I talked to him twice for the interview while he was driving into Minneapolis for another Uptown Art Fair. When he came to the office for his photo shoot, he rolled in driving a big white van full of disembodied head sculptures and limbs in progress. He carried his sculpture in with the help of the art director, Bryan, and everyone in the office stopped and stared in horror at the stiff body we were shoving into the elevator. It was pretty funny.

A&E Recommends: Adam Green, Animal Collective, She & Him and more

Adam Green

ALBUM: Sixes & Sevens

LABEL: Rough Trade



It is possible that Adam Green's lyricist is actually a computer. His lyrics sound suspiciously like the sentences that a poetry simulation program spits out. Compare these two lines:

"My friend fiddles with purple sorrow. Will a sandwich dwell on my bike's abandonment?"

"They bought him a temple with children to play with. Now he sells his skunk blood and talks like a plaintiff."

The first paragraph is from "A Sunset's Knowledge," by a computer. The second is from the song "That Sounds Like a Pony," from Green's new album, "Sixes and Sevens." The computer's poem is a bit more of an existentialist piece, but otherwise the sublime sense of the random is uncannily present in both.

He's come a long way from his days with The Moldy Peaches, when he and Kimya Dawson lazily banged on cheap instruments and sang about the Greyhound Bus and Lucky Charms.

Dawson has gone on to keep their dreadlocked, low-fi city kid sound (getting picked up by the success train that was "Juno") while Green has wandered into the land of fancy production and sophisticated song structure.

"Getting Led" showcases his soft voice and backs it up with an angelic chorus of female voices, while "Grandma Shirley" is a family tale as bouncy and sweet as something you'd hear on Mr. Rogers.

"Sixes and Sevens" came out of left field. Suddenly this naughty indie kid, once famous for writing an ode to Jessica Simpson, has created a layered and intricate album without losing a smidgeon of his utter weirdness.

Gnarles Barkley

ALBUM: The Odd Couple

LABEL: Downtown/Warner

The self-declared Soul Man, Cee-lo Green, and his buddy DJ Dangermouse are almost predictably good at what they do. We know there are going to be some multi-layered beats and we'll all get mildly seduced by the singing. But we get greedy. We need that something else. Outkast brought it on when they had a marching band play on their last album, but what will their second album, "The Odd Couple," do to slap us into dance-mission?

If the most noticeable thing on the album is how elementary the rhyming is, then it's not going to break any barriers. Once, Mad TV made fun of Lenny Kravitz for rhyming like Dr. Seuss. That would be a compliment for these lyrics. It is highly doubtful that there is any actual meaning in the statement, "Anyone that needs what they want and doesn't want what they need/ I want nothing to do with/ I aim to do what I want and to do what I please/ it's first on my to do list." The first part leaves no logical possibilities for producing a person that he'd want something to do with. And come on, that's a lame to do list.

But don't get the idea that this album is bad. It's just as good as the last one. Tracks like "Open Book" use jungle noises and electronica to create a growling gospel about karma. "Blind Mary" is a bouncy ode to the Mary of Catholic lore, allowing Cee-lo to surrender himself to the infectious beat.

It's still worth your $10, or whatever CDs go for these days.

She&Him

ALBUM: Volume One

LABEL: Merge


Zooey Deschanel isn't quite as good at singing barefoot country tunes as she was at playing a two-headed alien's girlfriend in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." But she's not bad. On "Volume One," her collaboration with the windy-voiced guitar charmer M. Ward, she showcases the heart-on-the-sleeve pop tunes that she's been writing in her down time. The songs drip with classic pop radio charm, full of the sentiments of moon-eyed love.

In "You Got Me," she sings, "you don't know how I won your heart because I locked it," over slanty down-in-the-bayou guitars and her own sublime humming. Her voice is a bit harsh, sounding strained here and there, but the mellow tunes call for a voice that's got some character.

M. Ward keeps a subtle presence, mostly just adding layers of glittery tambourines and overdubs, which reach their epiphany on the track "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here."

They finally sing together on a cover of the Beatles "I Should Have Known Better," over a slow horse-gallop of a beat. The album ends up sounding a bit more "She" than "Him," showcasing Deschanel's song-writing ability, but could have benefited from using more of Ward's clear-voiced sense of the ethereal.

The Dodos

ALBUM: Visitor

LABEL: French Kiss

The Dodos are a shot of wheat grass for the indie scene. Gritty, pure, new and strange, and likely to make your insides feel good.

What makes the Dodos such a fresh dose of nature is the fact that their playroom of instruments remains unplugged. Mathematical speed drumming, acoustic guitar, tambourines and maybe a few sticks and stones make up a landscape that sounds like freak folk in sepia. The kaleidoscopes have retired for the day, and the acid rainbow of sonic noises is left behind. The result is a set of meandering tracks, each with their own subconscious layer of mysterious events happening below the surface.

"Red and Purple" is a reverberating, jingling track with George of the Jungle drums that floats through a reverie of cautious affection.

Things slow down on the charmingly titled "God?" a happy-go-lucky song/prayer that travels through dimensions of sound that create a spiritual sense of anticipation.

They lose a few points for ripping off Animal Collective's "We Tigers" in their song "Fool," but the Dodos are generally more lighthearted than the Collective. Speaking of…

Animal Collective

ALBUM: Water Curses EP

LABEL: Domino

Like every band that makes a living by diddling with knobs to somehow produce Kandinsky-like splash paintings of sound, Animal Collective can sometimes find themselves in long jam sessions that get a tad boring. Sure this beat with this distortion kind of sounds like toads in a swamp while it's raining, but what are the toads doing? Certainly not dancing.

These are the types of tracks that all too often end up on the EP. Animal Collective happen to be marketing geniuses, and know how to save all of the best tracks and make them into a firework show of an LP packaged into a piece of artistic/psychological/musical lore.

In this manner, "Water Curses" is no exception. Despite its haunting and poetic title, it is naught but a meager EP. The songs are long and textured, but just don't cross the threshold of synaptic glee that say, "Strawberry Jam" did.

The title track is the exception, finding a hook that merits it a spot on your weekly playlist. The sound of popping bubbles and a few R2D2-like machine coos manage to bang up a sound that would have excellently narrated one of the Little Mermaid's undersea bashes.

The Kills

ALBUM: Midnight Boom

LABEL: Domino


"I want you to be crazy because you're stupid when you're sane," singer Alison Mosshart sings over a skuzzy bass on the track "Cheap and Cheerful." That particular song is what Ashlee Simpson thinks she sounds like - Lolita sweet with an authentic punk edge.

The Kills are like a female counterpart to The Black Keys. Both are two sets, both are simple and dirty, and both ooze style.

"Hook in Line" is a chugalugging blues stomper that lets Mosshart's voice travel from seductive to rough and vindictive.

In "U.R.A. Fever," a tangible chemistry between Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince as they trade off lines that are very possibly underscored by clouds of cigarette smoke.

Sorry Ashlee, "Midnight Boom" just gave your "I am Me" a black eye.

Cover girl gone carnivorous in "Jennifer's Body"

Published: 09/15/2009
By Rebecca Lang

“Jennifer’s Body”

DIRECTEDY BY: Karyn Kusama

STARRING: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody

RATED: R

SHOWING: Area Theaters

The trailers for "Jennifer's Body" were slightly misleading. Sure they got across the fact that it's a movie full of succubus-style man-eating, lesbian stuff and cat eye contact lenses, but it also failed to warn viewers that this film, above all things, is supposed to be funny. Powered by "Transformers'" Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried ("Mama Mia!" and the dumbest "Mean Girl") and Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody, "Jennifer's Body" is undeniably fun and, like "Mean Girls" a cathartic exposé of female friendships.

It could be that "Juno" left Cody more connected than she'd like to the pro-life movement, so she decided to cut ties by writing a film full of ritual sacrifice, homicide and scavenging forest animals. But it's more likely that "Jennifer's Body" is a response to the obsession with dark mythology that has suddenly exploded in pop-culture. Finding herself somewhere between the vampire beloved by teenyboppers and the zombie championed by the ironic indie set, Cody has penned Jennifer, a high school girl who finds herself turned into an offshoot of a succubus, a creature who - excuse the rough definition - seduces men in their dreams and then eats them. Meanwhile, her "Jan Brady" best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried) suspects foul play but is conflicted by her desire to "play boyfriend girlfriend" with Jennifer. Here, sex doesn't result in pregnancy, but it does result in carnage.

Unlike other human-eating-centered media, "Jennifer's Body" takes the pop culture that surrounds this trend fully into account. Cody's mythology, wherein Satan is more than happy to help out struggling indie bands, playfully jabs at the others, with a research montage clearly mocking "Twilight" and a setting in a town cheekily called "Devil's Kettle."

The illusion of reality is fully laid-down by the presence of science class experiments and discussions of "for her pleasure" condoms, and when the surreal stuff kicks in - hovering women, hell-fluid vomit - the film doesn't fully commit, keeping one foot in the realm of parody. When Jennifer propels herself above a pool as if she's wearing a jet pack, Needy points out, unimpressed, that she's not flying, she's just "hovering." It’s clear that “Jennifer’s Body” isn’t sure whether it’s just a horror movie or whether it's intellectually superior to a horror movie. At times that makes the film seem wishy-washy, but usually those moments of self-awareness are just funny.

Humor is central to the dialogue in this Diablo Cody-an universe. Like “Juno,” “Jennifer’s Body” is full of slang too witty to exist in actual spontaneous conversation. Characters say things like, "You're totally jello [jealous]," "Where's it at, Monistat?" and "tragedy boner." These cooked-up dialogue bombs sounded quirky coming out of Ellen Page's mouth in "Juno," but they feel slightly odd coming out of Megan Fox's Jennifer, a slightly "socially relevant" high school girl dressed in white parkas and heart-dotted zip-ups.

“Jennifer’s Body” isn’t necessarily scary; there are few moments of undigestable gore or tense foreshadowing. Instead, the real horrors here are the tackiness of today’s high school culture and the modern incarnation of the “whore” archetype in the form of an absolutely evil best friend.

As for the tackiness, every aspect of this film forces viewers to revel in it. Not only does a sell-out indie band dominate the plot, but the soundtrack is full of emo punk bands like Cobra Starship and Panic! at the Disco. During a chase scene, a car starts up and blares a song by the film’s faux band Low Shoulder, only to be turned off and have the spooky score tangibly shoulder its way back to its rightful place.

The most satisfying aspect of this pop carnivore-fest, however, is the toxic friendship between Needy and Jennifer. Who better to portray the evil popular girl taken to the most literal, hyperbolic level possible than Megan Fox, with her machete-sharp eyebrows and Maxim-cover good-looks?

If anything can be taken from “Jennifer’s Body,” it’s that any girl who’s ever had a toxic friendship will find the violence of the film to be, admit it or not, emotionally gratifying. And for those who’ve never suffered through said passage of teenage girlhood … there’s lesbian stuff.

'Half-Blood Prince' not half-bad

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”

DIRECTED BY: David Yates

STARRING: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson

RATED: PG

SHOWING: Area theaters

The helmsmen at Warner Bros. have finally found a formula for dealing with the challenges of translating a Harry Potter book into film, among them slicing the brick-sized novels into sizeable film doses, dealing with puberty in a tasteful manner and – finally – cramming in as much jaw-dropping CGI as possible without getting tacky. Fans can sigh with relief knowing that these risky waters were waded adeptly in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

The fact that the series is on a successful streak is most likely because of director David Yates entering the scene in the last film, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” and things seemed to go smoothly enough that he was signed to man the next three projects as well (book seven will be split into two films). The series was starting to seem schizophrenic when it switched to its fourth director, possibly because Chris Columbus’ take on the first two was a bit precious, Alfonso Cuarón’s interpretation too dark (although arguably the most artful) and Mike Newell’s use of sloppy but over-the-top graphics distracted from the old-fashioned exquisiteness of the magical universe.

“The Half-Blood Prince” carries on Yates’ trademark style of visual drama by opening with a highly saturated scene, where impending doom is evident in the overly deep reds and blues of the scenery, topped off with a distant thudding that enters in many of the film’s pulse-quickening moments. As a London bridge is unhinged by dark, ink-like beings, the series feels for the first time truly apocalyptic, and that sense sticks around.

Rowling’s tale gets dark and stays dark with the sixth installation, as Lord Voldemort’s return leaves the realm of rumor and enters into the muggle world in the form of increasingly frequent natural disasters. Dumbledore charges Harry with the responsibility of helping him fight and his arch-nemesis Draco Malfoy is given a private, but highly burdening, responsibility of his own.

The cast has also settled into place by this point, with exceptional performances by Helena Bonham Carter as the sultry, pathological Bellatrix Lestrange and Tom Felton’s Draco Malfoy losing his arrogant swagger for a troubled, on-the-verge-of-collapse look that is positively heroin chic – smart suits, skinny limbs and pallid skin. Radcliffe should also get credit for playing a scene of luck potion-ingestion as if he were on a mild hallucinogen.

While rocket-fast quidditch, walls of fire and elaborate crystal landscaping are subtle but powerful images and there are plenty of clever quips about teenage romance, the film instead concentrates on the psychological and the suspenseful. Unlike its predecessors, “The Half-Blood Prince” has few elaborate-to-the-point-of-being-cheesy demonstrations of magic (i.e. CGI for the sake of CGI). Instead the focus is on purposeful foreshadowings and long close-up shots as several characters lose their guarded façades.

Most of the book’s key elements and scenes were in place, although Rowling’s grueling effort to explain the transformation of Tom Riddle into Voldemort is almost completely cut out. Without a further exploration into his psyche, the film shortchanges the novel’s attempt to introduce shades of gray into the battle between good and evil.

The PG-rating, fortunately, does not indicate the series’ passage into more family-friendly territory. Things are as dismal and chaotic as ever in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” making it even harder to wait for the arrival of the next two installations.

Soda Superposition

There was a girl in my English class—a loud, flirtatious girl who volunteered to be my high school’s fur-suited mascot, possibly out of her love of doing somersaults—who had recently come to America from Romania. “When I first got to America,” she said, “my family went to Cub Foods.” Something about the way she said it made me listen from across the room. Maybe because I had never heard anyone call it “Cub Foods.” To us, it was just Cub. Cub, in some way, meant food. “I could not believe how huge Cub Foods was!”

I pictured what a grocery store in Romania might look like: small, cramped, a tall counter full of pieces of meat wrapped up in white paper. The idea depressed me. What’s the fun of going to buy breakfast when you can’t pass by the row of economy-size Malt-O-Meal bags, consider saving a dollar, and then decide not to?

I had forgotten about the whole idea until I heard about Mountain Dew’s new “Dewmocracy” campaign from my boyfriend, Josh, who probably gets about half of his calories just from pop. (In Minnesota, we call it “pop,” mostly because we aren’t very good at saying “soda” and not sounding Norwegian.) Josh often talks about how there was just “something about Mountain Dew that makes it the best,” and he and his roommates were all in the thick of the Dewmocracy craze, buying the three new flavors: Supernova (strawberry and melon), Voltage (raspberry and citrus), and Revolution (the ambiguous wildberry).

Josh has a catalogue-like memory for different kinds of products. He has long kept track of all obscure flavors of soda, running to Taco Bell to get Mountain Dew Baja Blast (available only at Taco Bell) and reminiscing about the days of Pepsi Blue. He could handle it if Mountain Dew added three new flavors.

But the premise of the Dewmocracy suggests that most consumers can’t. For a certain, sure-to-cause-future-nostalgia amount of time, all three flavors will be in trial mode. Dew enthusiasts will have time to work them into their new daily routines, to chase vodka with them, to substitute them for real food. But after that trial period, the flavor that gets the most votes on their website is the one that will stick around. *

Some of Josh’s friends think they should keep all the flavors, but I wonder how many flavors a company can sustain economically. Assuming that Mountain Dew’s spending habits are the best indicator, they can probably only spend enough to throw one more flavor in the mix and see a return, at least in the long term. Already, there are Mountain Dew Code Red, Mountain Dew Live Wire, Mountain Dew Baja Blast, and diet versions. (And also Amp energy drink, which basically is Mountain Dew, but with more caffeine, and a taller, uglier can. I think it is for drinkers, as it is a competitor of Red Bull and Rock Star energy drink.)

Even if the company could afford to make everything from Mountain Dew Cinnamon Roll to Mountain Dew Lavender (and generate enough vending machines to sell it all), the marketers have a symbolic issue to worry about. It is the simple principle of consistency. You see a logo one place; you see it somewhere else. After awhile, you get a concept of a brand, a totality that is somehow infinitely reproducible no matter if you are in a high school hallway in Kentucky or a doctor’s office in Seattle. There’s got to be a point where Mountain Dew splits into so many variations that what exactly Mountain Dew is becomes unclear. Another example of this is the introduction of the new Mango Mojito cooler from Bacardi Silver. (That product confused me, because I was under the impression that a mojito was a lime and mint drink, and that introducing a mango into the mix would make it something other than a mojito.)

The essentials of Mountain Dew, to me, are that Mountain Dew is yellow, citrusy, and has more caffeine than the regular soda. So I can understand adding other fruit flavors, and the color changes that they cause. But Mountain Dew will always be less, let’s say, flavor-soluble than a cola, because it has to maintain its status as citrusy, whereas a cola can adapt to more from-the-bakery flavors, like Vanilla Coke Zero or Diet Chocolate Cherry Dr. Pepper. Admittedly, Pepsi Blue seems like a contradiction of all of this.

What makes the Dewmocracy important is that it openly acknowledges that Mountain Dew has reached its saturation point. Consider almost any product that you buy—most have some subdivision, and that subdivision is further subdivided. Take Nabisco’s Oreo cookie: when Oreos were introduced, there were lemon meringue and cream flavors. Cream was more popular, and lemon was cut out. Today, there are Double Stuf, Golden, Mini, White Fudge Covered, Halloween Orange, Pure Mint Chocolate, Spring Purple Crème, Banana Split, and limited edition Strawberry Milkshake. That list doesn’t count variations like organic, low-fat, or slight deviations like the Oreo Cakester.

Consider that the average American grocery store must accommodate not only several brands but also a generic no-ad brand. It’s no wonder that someone from a different country would think Cub Foods was the strangest thing they’ve ever seen. Every time we go to buy food, we encounter several choices of the same thing. What obvious point is there to stocking five different versions of the same product?

Mountain Dew can be forgiven for creating the obnoxious and tacky word “Dewmocracy.” At least once our food aisles reach the point where they can’t fit any more variations, we might get a say in what stays and what goes. Strawberry? Wildberry? Revolution!


*This may seem like a ploy to get kids to go to their website, and it might be. But the website is oddly free from outside advertising, being so much an ad for itself that the Dewmocracy would simply be taking people who already drink Dew, having them go online and look at pictures of Dew, and make them want to drink some more. It probably costs a lot to run.

Animal Collective's New Instant Classic

PHOTO COURTESY DOMINO

With the release of Animal Collective’s last LP Strawberry Jam, it had become apparent that a group that had once been regarded as avant-garde experimental freak-folkers had actually become pretty good at marketing themselves. Emerging from the gritty and miraculous lore of their former releases Feels and Sung Tongs, Strawberry Jam was a highly engaging, far more accessible record. The title was a tongue-in-cheek admission that they’re a “jam band” inspired by a revelation of how “synthetic” and “sweet, almost in an aggressive way” the PB&J staple was. The album came packaged in a crisp white case filled with images of spoiled fruit covered in blotches of bright paint—a photographic concept so interesting in itself that it could have stood alone. After launching a beloved album that proved the band had mastered their psychedelic essence, it seemed unlikely that Animal Collective’s next LP could ever measure up. Luckily for all those who iTunes classifies as a “freak-alt-folk” fan, it does.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is to Animal Collective what Rubber Soul was to the Beatles: the album that not only proves that a band is capable of maintaining an identity while making ever-morphing sounds, but also establishes that the band has the power to define a season on the charts, and the sound of a decade.

At first glance, Merriweather doesn’t have quite the unified totality that made Strawberry Jam so iconic. Named after a mainstream concert venue in suburban Maryland, the title doesn’t help to clear up any associations between Animal Collective and artsy pretentiousness. The cover art is an awkward purple-green combination of a leaf pattern that looks like a nerdy 1990s screensaver at first glance… but should a fan embark on staring at it in a drug-induced haze, they would be pleased to find that it is an ever-morphing optical illusion that ripples back and forth.

Despite the lackluster packaging, Merriweather produces an all-new flavor. Serene harmonies invade almost every track, along with thudding, danceable bass lines and plenty of sonic explosions tweaked and stretched to the point of revelation. From the first track “In the Flowers,” which starts with whispers and bursts into a nostalgic epiphany as layered as a wedding cake, to the final track “Brothersport,” their particular brand of magic is everywhere. One of the best tracks is “Summertime Clothes,” which begins with a dirty, back-and-forth beat and howling vocals and later turns into a jaunty warm-weather dance song. “Taste” is another standout track, with scattering bubble sounds and stilted industrial noises that lead to a catchy chorus where the band asks, “Am I really all the things that are outside of me?”

While all of Animal Collective’s previous work has captured an adolescent frustration by means of complex lyrics and clashes between sonic beauty and disturbing shouts, Merriweather Post Pavilion embarks into themes of adulthood. Gone are the obtuse lyrics of Water Curses and Strawberry Jam; this album centers on women—most specifically mothers and children. This new inspiration is likely due to Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) and his experience with his daughter Nadja, as well as other band members settling down into married life.

The lack of tension on the album is disconcerting at first, but with the expertise of long-time artists, the band quickly settles down into their new themes and proves that they can just as poignantly and beautifully explore the idea of fatherhood. “My Girls,” the album’s first single that is already a hit on the blogosphere, is a twinkling declaration that chants, “Is it much to admit I need/a solid soul and the blood I bleed/with a little girl and by my spouse/all I want’s a proper house.” “Daily Routine” also deals with fatherhood, singing about the tasks and dangers of helping a child get to school, all amongst stretching vocals and a trickle of rhythms struggling to find themselves.

Even though the ethereal Merriweather Post Pavilion is a departure from Animal Collective’s initial fascination with the emotional value of ugliness, this album proves that the band will never lose their ability to evoke the most private of life’s moments. “My bed is a pool and the wall’s on fire/soak my head in the sink for a while/it chills my neck and it makes me smile/but my bones gotta move and my skin’s gotta breathe,” the band sings in “Summertime Clothes.” In their uncanny method of working poetry out of a bunch of samplers, this century’s most interesting act proves they’re still here, and eminently so.
http://splicetoday.com/music/animal-collective-s-ne

Interview: Haruki Murakami's translator, Jay Rubin

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Original article



Haruki Murakami, despite being one of the biggest cultural cross-over novelists of our generation, not to mention a freelance journalist, a translator, and a marathon runner, doesn’t have many pretensions.

He once reflected, “With nothing but my writing, I had made a number of human beings want to drink beer. You have no idea how happy this made me.”

His books are full of mysterious metaphors – wells, zoo animals, catalyst-forming toilet paper – that take immense chances by combining fantasy, mystery and existential … drinking.

Many fans wonder exactly what makes the Murakami machine work, and lucky for them, one of the chief operators– his translator, Jay Rubin– has written a chronicle of his career called Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words.

After consulting Murakami, hashing through the nuances of his writing, and being a fan of his work in general, Rubin has produced countless insights into the author’s life and style. Brave New Traveler was able to catch a moment of the translator and Harvard professor’s time to discuss the task of translating Murakami’s most recent works.

(BNT) What made you decide to write Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words and what was your approach to discussing translation with an audience of fiction readers?

I foolishly thought I could help introduce Murakami to an English-speaking audience by compiling a number of his short stories with commentary.
Translating is the closest reading anyone could ever do, and near the end of a work it can give you a megalomaniac sense of the truth of your own reading.

No one, including Haruki– and eventually me– liked this plan, and the more I worked on the book, the more the commentary – and the factual information – grew, and the use of quoted passages shrank.

Eventually it became quite obvious that Murakami didn’t need any help getting read by foreign audiences.

I’m not sure who bothers to read my book, but I’m pleased that UK Vintage values it enough to have printed two updated versions (the latest just a few months ago, including a discussion of After Dark).

What sort of creative writing do you do, and how does it contribute to your method of translation?

Years of translating have been a marvelous workshop for teaching myself English style, which has in turn improved my translating, but I don’t do my own creative writing.

Haruki Murakami uses many non-traditional (to a Western perspective at least) symbols in his works alongside of frequent cultural references. How much does translating these artifacts to a Western target language change the content?

In other words, what differences would someone who was fluent in both Japanese and English notice when examining both versions of a Murakami work?

Murakami’s most frequent cultural references are Western, so translation almost never involves such changes. He certainly invents a lot of unusual similes, and he has his own pet symbols (wells, corridors), but these strike a Japanese reader as unusual and fresh as they do a Western reader. There is very little difference.

What brought you to Haruki Murakami?

An American publisher asked me to evaluate Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World for possible translation. I told them it was an amazing book that they should by all means publish and volunteered to translate it, but they ignored my advice.

A couple of years later, Alfred Birnbaum’s translation came out from Kodansha International. Reading that one book hooked me.

Many translation theorists believe that translations are most beneficial if they leave elements of the original language in the translation, while others believe this results in a text obviously written in a type of “translatorese.”

Japanese is an especially interesting example, because sentences avoid mentioning subjects so that in a first-person narrative, the “I” is much less present than Americans are used to. How did you decide to deal with that difference?


I hope I’ve given some idea in my appendices on translation how hopeless it is to try to produce a literal translation of a Japanese text. The absence of subjects in Japanese sentences, however, is no more of a problem than the absence of a name in the sentence: “He ate a peanut butter sandwich.” Who is “he”?

How can speakers of English possibly know what “he” stands for? It’s so mysterious! Please read my Making Sense of Japanese (Kodansha International) if you want to learn more about the myth of the subject-less sentence in Japanese.

Describe your process of translation. Where do you do your work? How long do you work for? What particular methods do you use?

I work at my desk at home on a computer for about four hours at a time, beginning after breakfast and ending when my brain turns to mush. I’m not good for much of anything after lunch.

I try to do as finished a job as possible in the first draft, and I always keep the original text close by when working on later drafts. Some people translate first into a kind of literal mishmash and then polish it without much reference to the original, but I’ve never been able to work that way. I try to capture all the nuances right off the bat.

Does translating Japanese make you hyper-aware of other translations you encounter? What is the worst translation that you have ever found in mass-circulation?

I do find myself reading “through” other translations, guessing what the original might be. It can be annoying. I often refer my students to the translation of Natsume Saseki’s Light and Darkness as an example of how wrong you can go when you translate grammar instead of ideas and images.

Do you think your experience as a translator could apply to translating from one medium to another (intersemiotically)? How would you translate Kafka on the Shore into a film?

Translating is the closest reading anyone could ever do, and near the end of a work it can give you a megalomaniac sense of the truth of your own reading. If you asked me this question at such a time, I would probably say that ONLY a translator could do what you are suggesting.

Fortunately, I’m in a calmer state of mind at the moment, and can only reply, “Huh?”

Does being a translator make Murakami aware of the potential for his works to be translated?

Yes, aware, but not obsessed. He is not writing primarily to be translated.

Interview: A.V. Club's Nathan Rabin

Author Nathan Rabin doesn’t write for the satirical section of The Onion , but that doesn’t mean the head writer of the publication's A.V. Club isn’t funny. In his new memoir, “The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture ,” he writes, “I’ve not only trademarked the phrase ‘heartwarming tale of triumph over adversity™’; I’ve also trademarked the concept of triumphing over adversity in a heartwarming fashion.”

He does so while snickering at earning the nickname “Rude Boy” and feeling oddly accomplished by being labeled “The Angriest Guy in the mental hospital circuit.” His teen angst, unlike the faux Nirvana fans discussed in his book, was brought on by real life hardships, including broken homes, abortions and name brand snack cherishing poverty. But Rabin’s rare talent for self-distance combined with his culture junky knack for detail make him one of the only writers whose description of an admittedly false suicide attempt makes sure to point out that icy grape Kool-Aid was involved.

Rabin’s chapters each describe a period in his life by relating it to its reflection in pop culture. The first chapter connects his Jewish upbringing to the entertainment industry by not so subtly suggesting Jews “famously run the media,” using Hasidic rapper Matisyahu as the phenomenon’s bizarro precipitation point. Sometimes it works, sometimes coming back to the pop object in question in the last sentence of a chapter starts to feel a bit canned.

Rabin’s prose is anything but minimalistic. Packing pop culture references into the corners of as many clauses as possible and a “Simpsons” reference into every chapter, anyone who has grown up in America or just plain known someone crazy will find something in which to relate.

A&E chatted with Rabin in eager hopes of bonding over pop culture journalism nerddom.

Do you get called “the next Chuck Klosterman ” a lot?

My editor is Chuck Klosterman’s editor and my agent is Chuck Klosterman’s agent and my publisher is Chuck Klosterman’s publisher. There is a definite connection there. I think people wanted to read this [his memoir] because Klosterman proved there was a market for this kind of book; he created a niche, the pop culture memoir. Pop culture is a very communal thing and a common language people share and a way of bonding and affirming your identity and finding like minded souls. I don't think it’d be fair to call me the next Klosterman though. Mr. Klosterman is still relevant himself.

I think if he’s the low-culture pioneer, your story has taken that to the next level. Your whole story, in a way, symbolizes that the high-culture low-culture divide is a thing of the past.

I think a lot of it has to do with technology and the fact that DVDs make everything available on the internet. It creates a culture where everything is on similar footing. When I was writing this I was a little, ‘Yeah it’s a pop culture memoir and people are expecting half cultural criticism, half memoir.’ It’s a context and a framework, a jumping off point. My education was going to movies and working at a video store. There was not this delineation between high art and low art.

How did you transform from “the angriest man in the mental hospital circuit” into the “moderately likeable gay everyman” [his description by focus groups]?

When I was in the mental hospital, I was so angry there came a point where my spirit was broken. I thought, “I need to get out of this place and if that entails following rules and being part of the system, I’m willing to make that sacrifice.” I thought of it as the compromise of adulthood, that you swallow your anger and swallow your rage. I grew up very poor, with nothing. I never had the luxury of being a dick or an asshole after a certain point.

Also, I had a certain amount of success and I felt comfortable and safe and secure. There was a passage when I was talking about the mental hospital and I wrote that I was thinking very vividly when showering and crying, “Anything that I accomplish from this point on will mean more because it came from this personal abyss, this nadir.”

You seem to describe a lot of people in your life with an absence of judgment, like Noah, the kid who “boffed the wall” at night. Do you think writing helps you find empathy for people?

Totally. The memoirs that I’ve read when people hold grudges or they’re bitter, it seems like it diminishes the writer more than the person they’re writing about. When they’re writing mockingly and belittlingly and about a co-worker, I just start empathizing with the co-worker. I think a lot of it is I’m worried that people will judge me and a lot of people do. I’m a big believer in forgiving and empathizing. The older I get, the more I understand where people are coming from. I love all the people I write about — Noah, we were all fucked up kids and we had all these traumas. We did these creepy acting out sorts of things.

Did you invent the word “romasochist?”

I did. That’s another thing, when I was writing this book I didn’t know if I’d have an opportunity to write another, so I wanted to put everything in there. I erred on the side of excessive with length and got a little cutesy sometimes. Yeah, a lot of people have that idea that they’re going to come through on the other side but it ends badly. But you have this hope and this sense of romanticism and masochism.

As a film critic, do you ever think that the majority of films have simply become impossible to criticize, just because they take so few chances?

I find something really interesting about every film I see, even if it’s formulaic. I think formulas and clichés are interesting in themselves. There was a great Onion article a while back where a studio sadistically threatens to make “Coyote Ugly 2,” “We’re going to put a dump truck of money in, until you can’t say no.”

Why did The Onion’s Decider websites suddenly get re-branded as A.V. Club? Was the Decider name not working out?

It is hard to launch a new product in this market, which is terrible. I guess eight or nine years ago there was an effort to establish The Onion and A.V. Club as separate brands. I remember thinking at the time, “That’s [expletive] insane. We’re going to try and distance ourselves?”

It reminded me of 2000, when Al Gore was like, “I don’t want to be associated with Bill Clinton .” It backfired and he lost.

They realized we have something strong with the A.V. Club and we were separating ourselves from that to launch something at a scary time.

For more film and literary talk with Rabin, check out the A&E blog.

Interview: Helado Negro

Helado Negro

ALBUM: “Awe Owe”

LABEL: Asthmatic Kitty

There’s always a lot of word-play when Helado Negro is involved. The first thing people think is, “What is helado negro?” Upon finding out that it means “black ice cream,” they think, “What’s black ice cream?” Turns out it’s raspberry ice cream, but then, what does his album title “Awe Owe” mean?

A&E tried to answer these and many more questions about Helado Negro, AKA Roberto Carlos Lange. The son of Ecuadorian immigrants , he began producing his own music in his Florida home and Brooklyn apartment, his diverse background serving as his launch pad into various projects and collaborations.

His album as Helado Negro is complex, melodic folk with quirky production touches and layered harmonies that make it sound like early Sufjan Stevens or the experimental days of Grizzly Bear.

Lange called A&E to talk about hip-hop, partying and the Germanic origin of the last name Lange.

What does your album title mean?

[To be] in awe of something and just caught in that state and it kind of told the story [about] a lot of the record, what I did, things I was just impressed with, experiences that I was impressed with. And “owe” is just the concept of humbleness and remembering I owe other people my life.

I could say maybe some of it is like a subconscious inspiration from my friend David that I work with. He used a lot of letters when he worked in a visual work, like murals on the street. In a way, a lot of graffiti writers truncate words to make them shorter words. You got to put your idea across. In a way I take from that too, getting an idea across in the simplest means, using the things I have around me. That was the biggest thing about this album: doing what I can with what I got — my ambitions, and to inspire as many people as I can.

You have many projects, including the hip-hop oriented Epstein. Do you rap?

I never emceed on any of that stuff. A lot of them are just friends or people associated the label, Arepaz . No I don’t rap. It’s more hip-hop based, only because a lot of that was birthed with me getting my MPC for the first time and buying records, being like, “Oh sh-t, this is boogy down production.”

Is your record primarily organic instruments or a mixture of samples?

It’s not 100 percent samples. I think sampling is a part of our culture. Sampling is an art form. People disregard it, “You’re not playing instruments.” What if I didn’t have arms or legs, and I made this music? People would be like, “He’s a genius.”

People get so bent out of shape about things being non-musical, but samples can still be informative musically. I know I’m kind of repeating something someone’s already said a million times in a million interviews in the 20-30 years of hip-hop. It’s a part of me and it crossed over to my music.

What was your musical education like? I read that your hard partying parents were influences.

My parents always had music in the house and parties on the weekends. A lot of times during the early part of the party, 9-3, there were a lot of people just dancing conga, merengue — typical Latin American music. I think for a lot of times, late night it would roll into folk sing-alongs, where everybody’s had a few drinks, and they would go late in the morning, singing and playing guitar or whatever instruments you’d bring. My mom would go to sleep around 2 or 3. They would have karaoke machines and record themselves I think that gave me an interest for things like that. I started recording myself, kind of mimicking.

I played guitar in middle school because my uncle gave me a Spanish guitar. Later I went to an art school.

I was always growing up peripheral to that whole culture of Ecuadorian influences. I was also inspired by electronic music and hip-hop. Those two things have always been the biggest. In high school I wanted to make beats. I had a friend who was an emcee so I made beats. In college I bought an MPC sampler sequencer, and I’d sample, make a beat send it to my friends.

You studied art in college. Do you like working with visual artists, or is your music influenced by visual art?

It’s not so much that it influences it, but it’s just that together we make a better whole. Sometimes things just come out of you that move people and they’re the most important things to focus on. Me working with someone else does something naturally that affects people visually. Together we make this “super thing.” I think it just keeps building from there. People need to keep coming together with other people to see what we can make together, to make something bigger.

Trends of the 2000s

PHOTO COURTESY DARA KUSHNER/INF



1. Commercialized angst

In the ’90s, angst was somewhat sincere. Kurt Cobain's music made it cool, and his tragic death made it all too real. Then at the end of the decade, “American Beauty” proved that rich white people could feel bad for themselves and be taken seriously for it. But once Good Charlotte began spinning on everyone's Walkman and Hot Topic (now a successful public stock with the ticker HOTT ) opened its doors, suddenly kids in all 50 states were cutting themselves and wearing ironic Rainbow Brite wristbands to hide the wounds.

2. Food yuppieness

When Americans have to solve a problem, we think, “How can I solve this by eating?” Thus, the green movement led to localvores, pesticide-phobics and worshippers of the organic. But before subscribing to the religion of yuppie eating, keep in mind what activist Raj Patel told GQ: “Our snobbery makes us think that low-income people can’t possibly enjoy food the way we do, as if their taste buds have been ruined by McDonald’s.”

3. The end of privacy

When “South Park” depicted Britney Spears as a beheaded camel toe killed by paparazzi, it became disturbingly evident that privacy was dead. Celebrities might hate being captured in poses “Just like us!” but our generation has found benefits to sacrificing privacy. Twitter and Facebook may get a few athletes busted for dishing their weekend antics, but as Facebook exec Mark Zuckerberg pointed out, social networking creates a more accepting society that's willing to confront reality.

4. Hot aging: Rise of the cougar

There is hope for the world: It's possible to age and still be hot. No longer do women need to turn 40 and chop off their hair and move their social life to craft sales. Now they can take Capoeira and date Justin Timberlake.

5. Quirkiness

Wes Anderson (see best films) is this decade's priest in the path of the quirk, with his legions of films featuring plenty of well-detailed and styled oddballs, colorful Futura fonts and plenty of charming neuroses. Then there was Diablo Cody's “Juno “ and her brand of slang-filled Cody-speak and Kimya Dawson (see best albums) story-singing soundtrack. But hey, in the land of 10 million McDonalds, a little idiosyncrasy doesn't hurt.

6. Nostalgia 2.0

Nostalgia literally means “homesickness ,” but in our culture it means, “You liked ‘Recess’ too? Let's be best friends and reminisce.” Now that the Internet is archiving every facet of culture that can be digitally captured, all the media from our childhoods will soon be streaming from sites like Fancast.com, and no episode of “Beverly Hills, 90210” will be forgotten.

7. Product placement

The invention of TiVo got advertisers nervous that commercials would be fast-forwarded through, and a shot of Beyoncé (see hot list) talking about hair dye might be missed. Content slowly packed up and moved into shows. Then “30 Rock” was born to make fun of product placement while still cashing in on it.

8. The “regular guy”

Thanks, Seth Rogen ; it's now cool to eat too many Hostess products and smoke pot all the time. Judd Apatow, the man who penned everything from “Funny People” to “Knocked Up” (see best films) is probably the real superhero of the “regular guy.” The acceptance of how men are beneath their James Bond gallant exteriors is most likely also connected to trend No. 3.


9. Prescription drugs

Listen closely children. There used to be something called a personality. Some people were moody, some angry, some studious, some hyper. Attention deficit disorder used to be called boredom, and happiness used to be found by fulfillment rather than selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Imagine the barbarism! For more info, watch “Garden State.”

10. “Reality”

Despite all post-enlightenment philosophers who question the idea of shared experience or concrete meanings, it took shitty television for the word “reality” to gain the quotes that surround it. Hopefully this trend won't carry into the next decade now that the Internet allows for selective watching, as opposed to the passive tuning into whatever's on. Let's not bring Bret Michaels into the next decade.