largehearted boy: a boy, a girl, and his radio

May 7, 2012

Daily Downloads (Shake the Baron, Variety Lights, and more)

Every day, Daily Downloads offers 10 free and legal mp3 downloads, plus free and legal live sets from around the internet.

Every Sunday Daily Downloads features 10 performances that span a single artist's music career.

Today's free and legal mp3 downloads:

Arc in Round: "Hallowed" [mp3] from Arc in Round (out June 26th)
search for more Arc in Round posts at Largehearted Boy

Chiwawa: free and legal Element EP [mp3]
search for more Chiwawa posts at Largehearted Boy

The Corduroy Road: "Love You Can't Shake" [mp3] from Two Step Silhouette (out June 19th)
search for more The Corduroy Road posts at Largehearted Boy

Good Girls and Smokers: free and legal Arch Nemesis EP [mp3]
search for more Good Girls and Smokers posts at Largehearted Boy

Pandercakes: "Andre Breton" [mp3] from Paint By Numbers EP
search for more Pandercakes posts at Largehearted Boy

Shake the Baron: "Big Sur" [mp3] from Ghost Hits (out June 12th)
Shake the Baron: "Jones" [mp3] from Ghost Hits (out June 12th)
search for more Shake the Baron posts at Largehearted Boy

Variety Lights: "Oh Setting Sun" [mp3] from Central Flow (out June 12th)
search for more Variety Lights posts at Largehearted Boy

Various Artists: free and legal The Country Fried Rock Collection, Volume One compilation [mp3]

Various Artists: free and legal 8-track The Soliti Zip label compilation [mp3]

Free and legal live performances at other websites:

Shovels and Rope: 2012-04-18, Athens [mp3]
search for more Shovels and Rope posts at Largehearted Boy

also at Largehearted Boy:

other daily free and legal mp3 downloads
100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads

musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Shorties (daily music, books, and pop culture news and links)
Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film's soundtrack)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from the week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists

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May 6, 2012

LHB Weekly Wrap-Up - May 6th

A list of the past week's Largehearted Boy features:

Book Notes: (authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates to their book)

Brandon W. Jones for his novel All Woman and Springtime
Dylan Hicks for his novel Boarded Windows
Lisa Brackmann for her novel Getaway
Simon Mawer for his novel Trapeze

Interviews (musicians interview authors and vice versa)

Matthew Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces interviews author/musician Dylan Hicks

Contests:

Win Alison Bechdel's new graphic novel Are You My Mother? and a $100 Threadless Gift Certificate in this week's Largehearted Boy contest.

Weekly New Book Recommendations:

Atomic Books Comics Preview (recommended new comics and graphic novels)
Largehearted Word (recommended new books)

New Music Recommendations:

Try It Before You Buy It (full album streams and mp3s from this week's music releases)
The Week's Interesting Music Releases

New DVD recommendations:

The Week's Interesting DVD Releases

And of course, the daily music and news posts:

Daily Downloads (10 free and legal mp3 downloads every day, plus links to free live recordings online)
Shorties (news & links from the worlds of music, books, and pop culture)

also at Largehearted Boy:

100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
52 Books, 52 Weeks
Antiheroines
Atomic Books Comics Preview
Book Notes
Book Reviews
Contests / Giveaways
Daily Downloads
Largehearted Word
Lists
music & DVD release lists
musician/author Interviews
Note Books
Soundtracked
Try It Before You Buy It
Why Obama

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Shorties (Jonathan Lethem, Beth Ditto, and more)

At Underwire, Geeta Dayal interviews Jonathan Lethem about his 33 1/3 book on Talking Heads' Fear of Music album.

The Believer also interviews Lethem.

The Guardian profiles Beth Ditto of the Gossip, and streams the band's new album.

Mark Kurlansky talks to Weekend Edition about his new book, Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man.

The Lexington Herald-Leader profiles the Portland Cello Project.

The Project, which comes to Centre College's Norton Center for the Arts on Monday, brings an indie music sensibility to the instrument that is most commonly associated with strait-laced orchestral music. The group's repertoire spans classical masters such as Beethoven, modern composer Arvo Pärt and "music you wouldn't normally hear coming out of a cello," says the group's Web site, Portlandcelloproject.com. Those include cello-centric interpretations of music by Jay-Z and Britney Spears. The group's new album, Homage, is a collection of reinterpretations of hip-hop songs by artists including Kanye West and Lil' Wayne.

Jenny Lawson talks to the New York Times about her new memoir, Let's Pretend That Never Happened.

WXPN streams a recent performance by The Walkmen.

Three Percent lists the best translated books of 2011.

Singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten visits Sound Opinions for an interview and live performance.

Musician and publisher Ed Sanders talks to Weekend Edition about his new memoir, Fug You.

Singer-songwriter and author Dylan Hicks visits The Current studio for an interview and live performance.

Mother Jones interviews Kate Bornstein about her new memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger.

Louder Than War excerpts from Teddie Dahlin's forthcoming book A Vicious Love Story.

Win a copy of Alison Bechdel's new graphic novel Are You My Mother? and a $100 Threadless gift certificate in this month's Largehearted Boy contest.

Amazon MP3 has 100 digital albums on sale for $5.

Follow me on Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Stumbleupon for links (updated throughout the day) that don't make the daily "Shorties" columns.

also at Largehearted Boy:

previous Shorties posts (daily news and links from the worlds of music, books, and pop culture)

100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
Atomic Books Comics Preview (the week's best new comics & graphic novels)
daily mp3 downloads
Largehearted Word (the week's best new books)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists

Posted by david | permalink | post to del.icio.us

Daily Downloads (Ryan Adams and JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound)

Every day, Daily Downloads offers 10 free and legal mp3 downloads, plus free and legal live sets from around the internet.

Every Sunday Daily Downloads features 10 performances that span a single artist's music career.

Today's free and legal mp3 downloads:

Free and legal live performances at other websites:

JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound: Epitonic Saki session [mp3]
search for more JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound posts at Largehearted Boy

also at Largehearted Boy:

other daily free and legal mp3 downloads
100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads

Posted by david | permalink | post to del.icio.us

May 5, 2012

Contest - Win Alison Bechdel's Graphic Memoir Are You My Mother? and a $100 Threadless Gift Certificate

This week Alison Bechdel's new book, Are You My Mother? is in stores. I adored her previous book, Fun Home (one of my favorite graphic novels ever), this is one of my most anticipated books of the year.

To enter this week's contest, name the person (from your own life or historical) you would most like to read a cartoon memoir about. I am holding out for a graphic memoir on the life of Lenin.

One winner, chosen randomly from the commenters, will receive the following prizes:

Alison Bechdel's graphic novel Are You My Mother?

A $100 Threadless gift certificate to buy book-related t-shirts like A Voyage of Discovery, A Book Lover, November Was a Good Month, Brainy Rainbow, or Word!, music-related t-shirts like The Official Guide to Music, Boom Box, Sound of the Dark, or anything else that catches your fancy.

If you have already seen the film or it doesn't interest you, I am happy to substitute a second $100 Threadless gift certificate for the DVD.

The winner will be chosen randomly at midnight ET Friday evening (May 11th).

also at Largehearted Boy:

previous and ongoing contests at Largehearted Boy

100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
52 Books, 52 Weeks (my yearly reading series)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (highlights of the week's new comics)
Book Notes (authors create playlists for their book)
Daily Downloads (daily free and legal music downloads)
guest book reviews
Largehearted Word (highlights of the week's book releases)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Shorties (daily links from the worlds of music, literature, and pop culture)

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Shorties (Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, Hilary Mantel, and more)

Tablet remembers Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys.

Margaret Atwood reviews Hilary Mantel's new novel Bring Up the Bodies in the Guardian.

Mantel talks to Weekend Edition about the book.

Rocks Off lists the five worst music careers by professional boxers.

Library Journal lists the best new magazines launched in 2011.

Paste lists five bands you should follow on Instagram.

Vanity Fair interviews Augusten Burroughs about his new book This Is How: Help for the Self.

On sale for $4.99 today at Amazon MP3: The Ramones' Rocket to Russia album.

The Toronto Star profiles author John Irving.

"Regardless of the process, which is familiar to me now, and perhaps because I write all my drafts in longhand, I’m always acutely aware that the page knows nothing of me and my previous work, and that every new sentence has to stand on its own. I like the anonymity of that encounter. It always feels like the first time."

Rolling Stone interviews Japandroids guitarist Brian King about the duo's forthcoming album, Celebration Rock (out June 5th).

The Christian Science Monitor recommends 10 books by and about Keith Haring.

Amazon MP3 has 100 digital albums on sale for $5.

Follow me on Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Stumbleupon for links (updated throughout the day) that don't make the daily "Shorties" columns.

also at Largehearted Boy:

previous Shorties posts (daily news and links from the worlds of music, books, and pop culture)

Posted by david | permalink | post to del.icio.us

Daily Downloads (Laura Gibson, Joe Pug, and more)

Every day, Daily Downloads offers 10 free and legal mp3 downloads, plus free and legal live sets from around the internet.

Today's free and legal mp3 downloads:

Alabama Shakes: 2012-04-07, Baltimore [mp3,ogg,flac]
Alabama Shakes: "How Many More Times" [mp3]
search for more Alabama Shakes posts at Largehearted Boy

Alejandro Escovedo: 2012-04-28, Norman [mp3,ogg,flac]
Alejandro Escovedo: "Anchor" [mp3]
search for more Alejandro Escovedo posts at Largehearted Boy

Arbouretum: 2012-04-22, Schorndorf [mp3,ogg,flac]
Arbouretum: "The White Bird" [mp3]
search for more Arbouretum posts at Largehearted Boy

Drive-By Truckers: 2012-04-20, Wilmington [mp3,ogg,flac]
Drive-By Truckers: "The Weight (The Band cover with Megafaun)" [mp3]
search for more Drive-By Truckers posts at Largehearted Boy

Godspeed You Black Emperor!: 2012-04-20, San Francisco [mp3,ogg,flac]
Godspeed You Black Emperor!: "Moya" [mp3]
search for more Godspeed You Black Emperor! posts at Largehearted Boy

Golden Bloom: 2012-05-02, New Haven [mp3,ogg,flac]
Golden Bloom: "The Mob Song (Philistines Jr. cover)" [mp3]
search for more Golden Bloom posts at Largehearted Boy

Joe Pug: 2012-05-01, San Francisco [mp3,ogg,flac]
Joe Pug: "Speak Plainly Diana" [mp3]
search for more Joe Pug posts at Largehearted Boy

Local H: 2003-04-08, Indianapolis [mp3,ogg,flac]
Local H: "Smothered in Hugs (Guided By Voices cover)" [mp3]
search for more Local H posts at Largehearted Boy

Patterson Hood: 2012-04-28, Oxford [mp3,ogg,flac]
Patterson Hood: "Back of a Bible" [mp3]
search for more Patterson Hood posts at Largehearted Boy

Retribution Gospel Choir: 2011-07-15, Duluth [mp3,ogg,flac]
Retribution Gospel Choir: "Take Your Time" [mp3]
search for more Retribution Gospel Choir posts at Largehearted Boy

Free and legal live performances at other websites:

Fort Frances: Halfway House session [mp3]
search for more Fort Frances posts at Largehearted Boy

Laura Gibson: Epitonic Saki session [mp3]
search for more Laura Gibson posts at Largehearted Boy

The Spinto Band: Key Studio session [mp3]
search for more Spinto Band posts at Largehearted Boy

also at Largehearted Boy:

other daily free and legal mp3 downloads
100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads

Posted by david | permalink | post to del.icio.us

May 4, 2012

Book Notes - Dylan Hicks "Boarded Windows"

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.

Previous contributors include Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Christensen, Kevin Brockmeier, George Pelecanos, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, David Peace, Myla Goldberg, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.

Boarded Windows is a stirring and contemplative novel about identity, love, and loss, one of the year's strongest debuts.

Dylan Hicks also recorded a companion album for the novel, which is available as a free download with the book's purchase.

Dylan Hicks will be reading from the novel and performing at Largehearted Lit on May 22nd at Brooklyn's WORD bookstore.

Sam Lipsyte wrote of the book:

"Do yourself a favor and read this smart, tender book. The characters will haunt you with their longing, and inspire you with their sweet, caustic wit. Dylan Hicks knows his music and his prose is a song in itself. He's given light to the shuttered and boarded parts of life."

Stream a Spotify playlist of these tunes. If you don't have Spotify yet, sign up for the free service.

In his own words, here is Dylan Hicks's Book Notes music playlist for his debut novel, Boarded Windows:

"Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" – Waylon Jennings

My novel originated from a hazy boyhood memory of being taken to a Waylon Jennings concert at the Minot Municipal Auditorium in what was probably 1978. I wanted to write about a certain provincial bohemianism, and the scene seemed a good starting point, though I guess I wound up writing more about a different provincial bohemianism. By '78, the outlaw aspect of Jennings's expansive music had grown perfunctory—accordingly, some of his best songs from the late '70s are expressions of exhaustion and skepticism—but this tune's from a few years earlier, when the stance's mixture of self-deprecation and self-satisfaction was still fresh, its change-from-within rebellion still urgent. Much like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder had done in Detroit, Jennings had kicked over the traces in Nashville, winning creative autonomy from the division-of-labor industrialists at RCA. "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" is a call for change that hardly ever does, chugging from B to E over and over again in a rhythm at once steady and wobbly, as if the song were both the rutted Nashville establishment and its sweaty, pie-eyed disruption. At least for three insistent minutes, Jennings makes any song with more than two chords seem inefficient and rococo.

"Ain't No Future in Yo' Frontin' " – M.C. Breed and the DFC

The novel's unnamed narrator explains that, during the early '90s, he worked "in downtown Minneapolis at an unhip record store, a shabby, not terribly profitable branch of a locally based national chain, now shuttered." As it happens, during the same period I too worked at a Minneapolis record store that could be described in almost identical terms. Through the summer and into the fall of 1991—just before and during the principal time frame of my novel—this single by Flint, Michigan's M.C. Breed (later MC Breed, without the periods) was one of our biggest sellers, almost impossible to keep in stock in the then-dominant cassingle format. The track samples Zapp's perdurable "More Bounce to the Ounce" and a microtonal synth line from the Ohio Players' "Funky Worm," over which Breed raps with laid-back, amiable toughness about "pickin' suckers like a four-leaf clover" and meeting "your homeboy Marty at a B.O.B. party." It was closest in spirit to EPMD, but especially with that snaky synth it also looked toward the pacesetting gangsta-funk found on Above the Law's 1990 debut. The radio never really caught on, but it was such a car-stereo staple that, at least until it got cold, you could hear it often enough just by going outside.

"That's the Way Love Is" – Ten City

There's a scene in the book in which the main characters throw a little dance party to celebrate the narrator's twenty-first birthday. The narrator refuses to cite any of the records played at the party, but I hope they got to this transcendent Chicago house single, the ultimate showcase for Byron Stingily's supple tenor and remarkably powerful falsetto.

"Boarded Windows" – Bolling Greene

Bolling Greene is a secondary character in my book, an admirable also-ran from a movement closely modeled on outlaw country. According to the book, this is a song he wrote in the late '60s for the great and nonfictional country singer Porter Wagoner, though Greene also recorded his own, less intensely sung version. As a companion to my novel, my band and I recorded an album called Dylan Hicks Sings Bolling Greene, in which I perform loose interpretations of Greene's imaginary songs, as well as songs drawn in other ways from the book. I don't imagine that Greene's rendition includes our long outro of simple vocal harmonies, which I meant to evoke John Sebastian's "Welcome Back." (But maybe I'm wrong.) There are a few problems with the title. One is that I actually sing "boarded window," though I picture this singular window as one of several if not thousands. Still, it's as if Charlie Rich, in his conjugal hit "Behind Closed Doors," in fact sang "behind closed door." Another problem is that it's customary to say boarded-up window; somehow that extra syllable seemed destructive.

"Christianlands" – Tricky

This swirls in the background during a somewhat triste tryst in one of the novel's Chicago sections. I tried to listen to it while revising the scene, but I kept getting up to dance, moodily.

"Coyote" – Joni Mitchell

The novel centers on a visit its narrator receives in the early '90s from Wade Salem, a father figure for the narrator, whose parentage is either unknown or disputed. Wade is a drug dealer and journeyman musician who, among other things, supposedly had one interaction with Jaco Pastorius, who plays the harmonics-heavy bass on this rueful, then funny, road song. For me and many people around my age, Mitchell's music is indelibly tied to motherhood, if only because it was music our mothers listened to a lot, and despite the fact that her '70s lyrics often thoughtfully reject domesticity and draw much of their power and interest by tracking an autonomous, drifting existence. Since this book is in part about maternity, about someone who doesn't know precisely who his mother is, Mitchell seemed like an apt central figure for the soundtrack. "Coyote" isn't specifically mentioned in the novel, but its titular rogue is akin to the Wade character.

"Amanda Ruth" – Rank and File

In the late '70s and part of the '80s, Wade plays bass with Bolling Greene and cowrites Greene's '83 single, a slow-selling indie release produced by Tony Kinman of the excellent country rockers (or, if you must, "cowpunks") Rank and File. I'm sort of hoping mine is the first novel to mention Tony Kinman, but considering how many novels are published, probably even this is too much to hope for.

"The Poor Orphan Child" – The Carter Family

This gospel number was issued as the Carter Family's debut record in late 1927, and recurs throughout my novel. The narrator—very lonely, often self-pitying—clings to his complicated orphan status, and though he's not religious, he'd surely want someone or something to lead him to "that glittering strand."

"Something for Kenny" – Elmo Hope Trio

At one point the narrator describes buying a (fictitious) album by (the actual) jazz pianist Elmo Hope, whose often troubled life ended young. Hope was frequently compared to childhood friend Bud Powell, and like Powell he played with head-turning fluidity and pulled inventively from rangy, blues-to-Bach sources. He was also an able composer. This isn't one of his most memorable melodies, but it has a seductively capricious arrangement and great playing all around, especially from drummer Frank Butler, who knocks and taps out the second half of his solo with his hands.

"I Haven't Learned a Thing" – Porter Wagoner

What if age brings no increase in wisdom or contentment but only compulsively repeated mistakes and ongoing bewilderment? Wagoner's songs can be among the bleakest in all of country music, a genre historically friendly to defeatism, and as such they mirror my narrator's lowest moments. Like Wagoner, though, he's at least "still looking for the answer," if not in the most sensible places.

Dylan Hicks and Boarded Windows links:

the author's website

Hazel and Wren review
Minneapolis Star Tribune review
Publishers Weekly review

Local Current Blog review
Minnesota Daily profile of the author
Minnesota Monthly interview with the author
Minnesota Reads interview with the author
Twin Cities Metro interview with the author

also at Largehearted Boy:

other Book Notes playlists (authors create music playlists for their book)
my 11 favorite Book Notes playlists

100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
52 Books, 52 Weeks (weekly book reviews)
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (weekly comics highlights)
Daily Downloads (free and legal daily mp3 downloads)
guest book reviews
Largehearted Word (weekly new book highlights)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Shorties (daily music, literature, and pop culture links)
Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film's soundtracks)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from the week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists

Posted by david | permalink | post to del.icio.us

Matthew Friedberger Interviews Dylan Hicks

In the "Largehearted Boy Cross-Media Cultural Exchange Program" series (thanks to Jami Attenberg for the title), authors interview musicians (and vice versa).

Matthew Friedberger is a musician, his most recent solo album is Arrested on Charges of Unemployment. He is also a member of the Fiery Furnaces.

Dylan Hicks is an author and musician, his debut novel Boarded Windows was published earlier this month, and includes a companion album, Sings Bolling Greene.

Musician Matthew Friedberger interviews author/musician Dylan Hicks:

Matthew Friedberger: I know you've said that the record [Dylan Hicks Sings Bolling Greene] isn't a compilation of illustrative examples of the musical world of the book, even though some of the song titles are mentioned in the book. "West Texas Winds" and "My Red Ideal"—obviously they're countryish songs, but listening to the record, I didn't imagine that these were actually the songs.

Dylan Hicks: Yeah, they're meant to be free interpretations. I was trying to avoid pastiche, so I kind of imagined myself in a remote place where I had a copy of Bolling Greene's Greatest Hits but no turntable, and was trying to play the songs from distant memory.

MF: Did you worry that by recording some of these songs you might inhibit the reader's ability to imagine the music as described in the book?

DH: Maybe a little.

MF: I don't think that examples ever really limit people's imaginings of things like that; I think it gives them something to play off, either positively or negatively.

DH: I suppose it'd be great if they listened to the record as its liner notes kind of advise. The notes suggest that the original music remains elusive, because these are covers, perhaps even grasping or inferior covers of things that are still unknown.

MF: How much have you been writing songs the last ten years?

DH: Not very much at all. My last record was in 2001. The songs I wrote in the year after that felt like songs I'd written before, so I stopped. After that I was doing journalism, sometimes music journalism, and I didn't want to be playing and writing about music at the same time.

MF: In another interview, the interviewer read the book as a Minneapolis novel. Not being a Minnesotan, I didn't take it that way; it seemed to me an environs book, a book about a region. And the narrator talks very much about having a car, not having a car, the car's broken, borrowing a car … How much does driving around make an old-fashioned city book not really relevant? I didn't get a sense of a city, I got a sense of people moving a lot. Do you think of it as a regional book? Is the depiction of the locales in which the book takes place important to you?

DH: Originally I was attracted to this idea of writing something about an isolated bohemia in north-central North Dakota. I had these hazy memories from my childhood of something resembling that. By the time I was remembering things it was the middle and late '70s, so the '60s counterculture was, by the standard historical argument, dead, but of course it lingers, on top of which I was remembering a place quite removed from the epicenters of bohemian activity. I wanted a romanticized version of that. But I ended up writing a different version of the book, and relocated much of the action. The Minneapolis stuff came without much planning, just from remembering and trying to describe the world of things.

MF: To me the most impressive description of place was the "In the Ditch, In the Ditch …" chapter, which is about walking. Almost the tone changes. I imagine that if you read that chapter at a reading, it would get laughs. When I first saw that you had a book with an album, I thought, Oh, that's nice, when he does readings, he doesn't have to read, he can play a song. Because there's nothing more dispiriting than people sitting around—not that you would be nervous—but sitting around listening to a nervous writer. And if the writer isn't nervous, it's even worse. Who wants to see a slick writer? I assume you have plans to perform the songs in some way as part of promoting the book.

DH: Yeah, I'll probably play a song or two at some of the readings, especially if there's a keyboard handy. And then we have separate band shows.

MF: Now I might remember this wrong, but I remember you saying to me that when you decided to think of yourself as a writer, you were relieved to be doing something where all you had to worry about was whether it was good or not—you were trying to make art, and it was as simple as that, even if that's quite complicated. You were happy to be out of the performance requirements of rock music in its various forms.

DH: That was probably sincere at the time.

MF: The other thing I thought when I saw you had a record, was, Ah, people just can't give it up.

DH: Yeah.

MF: Once you make a rock record, you can't stop doing it. Anyone will use any excuse to make one. I don't know if I have any of that right, but did you feel that you had to move to a literary culture from the rock-music culture to do work you were satisfied with?

DH: Well, it's always convenient to say that whatever you're doing right now makes the most sense. I started playing music when I was really young, as kind of a lark, but then later I started to have ambitions to do it professionally, to make it … not exactly a career, maybe not even earn poverty-level wages, but to turn it into something like a job. When that didn't work out, and I felt like I was repeating myself, I got disheartened. It felt like I was giving up this dream, and the only way I could that was to not do that at all.

MF: But the dream wasn't about making a just little bit of money. You don't have to be as modest about it as that. I mean, you wanted to do something you thought was good.

DH: In order to do it, though, I felt like I needed to put a fair amount of time into it, and I couldn't justify that at a loss year after year. Either economically I couldn't do that, or, at the time at least, it was difficult for me psychologically. You're right that it really wasn't about the money. It was just a point in my life where I hadn't figured out a way to make a living, or what I wanted to do. I was working uninteresting jobs.

MF: But you're never in a vacuum in that situation. Like you say, the impetus for your book was about little bohemian scenes, and you were part of a complex of scenes. Did you feel that you weren't supported, did you feel bored by it? You express it very nicely, because a lot of people don't talk about: I couldn't do it anymore. They'll say, My friends wanted to give up and get married, and have a lawn, and everybody started liking that other shit music that I refused to go in for. Now you're obviously more mature than that, so you're not saying those things, but I wonder how interested you were in the context you were working in. Now you're published by a Minneapolis press. You've switched support staffs, so to speak. I don't mean that to sound mechanical, but did any of those considerations come into play for you? Did it have anything to do with the environment you were in, or was it completely your own evolution?

DH: Mm, I don't know. A lot of it was my own change. I did well in English classes, but I wasn't a literary intellectual as a teenager or in my twenties. I was almost singled-mindedly focused on music.

MF: When did you become one?

DH: Well, I don't know if I really qualify at this point.

MF: Oh, come on! Why don't you qualify?

DH: I probably do.

 MF: Probably? Who does, if you don't? I mean, I understand modesty. I understand that everyone has huge holes in their education, wherever they got their education from, from themselves or institutions, but come on.

DH: I don't know. There's a line in that Padgett Powell book The interrogative Mood. It's a book in questions, and one of the questions is "Do you know any bona fide intellectuals"? I guess I don't feel bona fide. I'm essentially monolingual, and I don't feel like a person of great ideas; I feel like a person who likes to read and who's pretty intelligent—

MF: There's a difference between being an intellectual and being a scholar. Monolingual, I mean, in pseudointellectual 101 you learn that the Greeks were a monolingual culture. If they weren't intellectual, who was? I think what you're talking about is cultural—

DH: Yeah, this may be a regional thing.

MF: You mentioned this in your author statement. You say that "talking this way is intolerable to my midwestern …"—I'm quoting you incorrectly, but you say "midwestern" and "intolerable." I know someone—he may even be related to me—who has written quite a few novels. I heard an interview with him on the radio in Chicago, and he said, "I don't think of myself as a novelist, I'm just a humorist." This guy has had his books translated across the world, but he wouldn't even call himself a novelist. Too pretentious to call yourself a novelist! Whatever his secret hopes and dreams are, he thinks it's a matter of politeness, intellectual politeness, to present yourself—not as unlearned as possible, but as if you're a bumpkin. So it's this midwestern reticence.

DH: Well, you've called me on something. Part of this is partly personal. I have intellectual insecurities, and then, as you imply to some extent, there's that risk of partaking in a kind of modesty that is in fact hubris, and I hope I'm not doing that.

MF: No.

DH: I feel confident about my abilities in—wait, at?—writing sentences and doing creative work, and less confident about generating original-seeming ideas. Maybe I think of an intellectual as a very rarified person whose way of seeing is much different than that of most of us, whereas I know that in conventional usage it's a lot less strict. In the Midwest—not just here, of course—but here there's a modesty and a lack of pretension that I like and would probably miss if I weren't here. But that can quickly drift into anti-intellectualism.

MF: I had a friend from Michigan say that in Detroit you get made fun of for making an effort, for working. In Chicago, you're meant to work hard, but if you take yourself seriously, you're made fun of. That's not quite right, because you can't be humorous about it in Chicago, you have to be very grim about it. But if you shift from the tone of the Chicago sections of Kenneth Rexroth's autobiographical novel—do you know that book?

DH: No.

MF: Everyone's an intellectual in that book, especially the prostitutes. And there's a big shift from that to the kind of writerly pose you get from Nelson Algren, where you're so much a working person that any trappings of being an artist disqualifies you from being an artist. That kind of attitude is important in the bohemian culture in general, and it was important in the rock culture. And all that stuff has a lot to do with masculinity. Being an intellectual is seen as not masculine, and if you're not masculine, you're not serious.

DH: In this book, too, the Wade character represents a bohemian ideal that rejects credentials and bourgeois status, and the narrator struggles with that.

MF: Yes. Wade has no shame about—he wants to make himself up, and he has no difficulty with that process, and the narrator does. But let me ask you some questions about actual writing. I was struck with the beginning, straight off on the first page, with you not writing "Etch A Sketch." Instead you write "our magnetic drawing toys." Later, you write "American hatchback," as opposed to Ford Escort or whatever. The Etch A Sketch thing was impressive, because Etch A Sketch is almost one of those names, like Kleenex or Vaseline, that describes the object. It's not a brand name anymore. In another part of the book, you have—it's like a line from a country song—"My Coke was a Pepsi." But in general you don't use brand names, you'll say "regional brand," "preparing my toasted sub sandwich." For the "magnetic drawing toys," I assume you chose the phrase, and that was more important than avoiding the brand name.

DH: In that case, there was another toy that you erased differently, you erased it by sliding a bar, whereas the Etch A Sketch you erase by shaking it, right? And the Etch A Sketch you operated with those two knobs, whereas I'm thinking of the one where you write with a little stylus. The only reason that's important—

MF: It's very important.

DH: —is that wanted the idea that Wade was "erased" from the car window in that sliding way, although the toy erased things horizontally not vertically. I looked up what that other toy is called, but I've forgotten it.

MF: Well, I completely misread it. But I never had an Etch A Sketch. I didn't know there was another one.

DH: They're of the same family.

MF: There's another phrase: "pretentiously named Nixon-era Apartment building." A lot of writers might come up with some ridiculously glib name for the apartment. But especially in the beginning, you didn't do that. It was very descriptive as opposed to going in for something big, loud, and catchy.

DH: I like it when there's a joke there, but you haven't really told it. Then the reader is invited to say, well, what might that apartment have been called?

MF: Exactly. My experience of the opening of the book was that you were very much inviting the reader to describe along.

DH: I don't have a policy about product names, but I dislike it when I read contemporary fiction that seems full of product placement for which the artist wasn't even compensated.

MF: Of course, there are lots of times, especially if you're dealing with American subject matter, where you can't shy away from brand names or things that sound like brand names.

DH: Yeah. There's some Annie Dillard line against the use of all product names. That seems austere.

MF: One of the most striking sentences to me in the book is a description of an erection, or not an erection. You write, "She said she'd love to see me, said so with a mellow yet frank enthusiasm that made my penis creep tinglingly away from my slightly tacky testicular skin." You must have been proud of that sentence—it's one of the least invigorated descriptions of getting an erection I've ever read. I assume that was the intention.

DH: Mainly I was trying to describe a real feeling.

MF: Let me ask you just in general about the masculinity of the narrator. He describes himself: "My unusual handsomeness (really, alas, it's a kind of electric cuteness) …" It's not only emasculating—"cute" as opposed to "handsome." But you use "electric," and I read that as making him a thing instead of an animal. It made him tool-like.

DH: That was a funny part of writing of the book. It came to me in the middle of writing it that this guy is probably quite good-looking, because—

MF: Because I'm quite good-looking?

DH: That was the problem, that it would seem to the reader like a wish-fulfillment thing.

MF: Would that be a problem?

DH: Maybe not. The book's autobiographical elements are to me kind of superficial. I realize that by not naming the narrator I'm inviting the reader to conflate the narrator and the author.

MF: You're trapping the reader to do so.

DH: Yeah, and there are a lot of biographical, geographic, and demographic parallels.

MF: There was something in it that I thought you actually said it to me. It was about being sober.

DH: Undoubtedly. I put many of my own thoughts into his head, like a lot of writers do, as well as thoughts I don't share, or only shared while writing this.

MF: I read somewhere that in some coming-of-age books, whether presented as fiction or not, the central character or narrator is a version of the author, and in others, the narrator or central character is played by the author. In other words, as opposed to the character being an ideally good or bad or indifferent self-description of the writer, the details of the character are filled out with details from the author. And those are the best kind of coming-of-age books, because the writer is forming the character out of their own traits, along with the fictional incidents and the actions and reactions forming the character in the book.

DH: All of the more substantial material that the narrator's working with—these issues of paternity and maternity, his isolation and extreme loneliness—all of those are invented. I mean, of course I've dealt with loneliness, but all of that more substantial stuff is made up.

MF: Right, right, but getting back to his relative deprecation of his own masculinity: it was so consistent in the book as to draw it into question. He didn't necessarily think of himself in these terms.

DH: A lot of the stuff he's dealing with is contrasting himself with the Wade character, who is at once more conventionally masculine and probably more—well, Wade would probably say "polymorphously perverse."

MF: He wouldn't give a description of himself having an orgasm by saying, "all these qualifications are tiring even me," as the narrator does. To some extent, the narrator thinks of Wade as someone who has the power to fashion himself however he likes, and the narrator doesn't give himself that ability. Does the book present that as a generational thing?

DH: I'm not sure. I'd originally tried to write this thing in the close third person from Wade's perspective. That was useful, but I found later that Wade had be pretty mysterious, and I couldn't have him be too self-aware. It ruined it when I tried to introduce more interiority to that character.

MF: Well, that's very interesting. I mean, he doesn't think twice.

DH: Yeah, right. The Wade character, even though he's troubling character and unlikable in many ways, he's that fantasy of being—not unselfconscious, but not nearly as self-conscious as the narrator, who's constantly apologizing and equivocating.

MF: But one thing he doesn't apologize for is saying mean things about the Maggie Tollefsrud character, who's introduced as a "failed singer-songwriter." She's not just a singer-songwriter, she's a failed singer-songwriter.

DH: Yeah, the narrator is kind of a jerk, and at least can be. I hope the reader will have some sympathy for him, but he's not a man of the highest moral or ethical standards, and he's something of an opportunist and a sponge.

MF: Do you worry about people having to empathize or identify with your characters? Or do you take pleasure in putting them off?

DH: I tend to be wary around really ingratiating narrators, where I start to feel that the writer is desperate to be liked, and wants to do that by having his or her narrator be charming and funny and clever, but also down-to-earth and essentially good, able to learn from mistakes, and so on. I often see that as another irritating love-me device. But then there's that other mode of depicting darkness and ugliness, and hoping that people will applaud you for that, as if that's really so unusual or brave. Hopefully there's a balance here between those poles. I haven't gotten a lot of responses to the characters, since the book isn't out yet, but some seem to find them really unlikable.

MF: I'm surprised by people's tendency to not like characters. But maybe when I read a book, I don't expect to like the people. I saw a film—one of the great movies, The Roaring Twenties—I saw it in a movie theater not long ago. A guy got up at the end of it and said, "I didn't like anybody in this movie! What a terrible movie!" And I was shocked that he didn't like anybody in the movie. They're nearly all likable in that movie, except maybe the Bogart character—I don't know if you know that movie.

DH: No.

MF: It's a Cagney movie. But even the Bogart character is understandable. So first of all that was a shock. And second of all, what has that got to do with it? This was in the sort of movie theater where people aren't supposed to say things like that. These were supposed to be clever, very self-regarding people who wouldn't be quick to say things other people might find stupid.

DH: As a reader, I tend to think more about the writer's decisions. I do imagine the characters as actual individuals, and I can get drawn into a the drama, but I'm usually more focused on the writer's decisions.

MF: Well, that's the thing. When you read something or watch something and you get interested in the writer's or director's or musician's decisions, it draws you into the material more; it doesn't alienate you from the material. Even if you are alienated by the characters—or the writer's treatment of the material in general. That kind of thing is more entertaining than likability. Don't you think, Dylan?

DH: I tend to think so. As a reader I'm usually hoping to develop some sense of intimacy with the writer. Of course sometimes that comes about because the writing displays wit, magnanimity, intelligence, and other qualities I'd associate with likability in regular life. But often it's about honesty, and in most cases it's hard be honest and remain "likable" in that test-audience way we're talking about. I'll sometimes read about a book whose characters are said be so lifelike, it's as if they "walk right off the page," and I'll look at the book, and think, Yeah, they're walking right off the page and onto the set of a sitcom.

Dylan Hicks links:

Dylan Hicks's website
Dylan Hicks's Largehearted Boy Book Notes music playlist essay for Boarded Windows

Matthew Friedberger links:

Matthew Friedberger's Wikipedia entry
Matthew Friedberger's MySpace page
Fiery Furnaces website

also at Largehearted Boy:

other musician/author interviews

Antiheroines (Jami Attenberg interviews comics artists)
Book Notes (authors create playlists for their book)
guest book reviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Soundtracked (directors and composers discuss their film's soundtracks)

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Shorties (Punch Brothers, Alison Bechdel, and more)

PopMatters interviews Chris Thile of Punch Brothers.

You were recently out on the road with Paul Simon, contributed a song to The Hunger Games soundtrack, and then the documentary will be released soon. Considering that trajectory of success, is it impossible to think of the Punch Brothers playing an arena—what scale is the cap for a group with your style and instrumentation?

I'll tell you what, man. I certainly wouldn't turn it down. [laughs] If that all wanted to happen I'd say, "Bring it on." I am certainly not expecting it. I'm thrilled that we’re seemingly on the up and up after really kind of just maintaining for a couple years there as we struggled to find our identity as a quintet and struggled how to find out how to communicate with the people that were interested in listening. I feel like all of the sudden it's getting a lot easier. I think that that's both that we have a much have a much clearer picture of what we're about now and I think we're getting better at communicating that to the people that are interested—and there's more people that are interested now. It all feels really, really good. I can't really see us selling out arenas but if it happens, it'd really be lovely.

Speakeasy interviews Alison Bechdel about her new graphic memoir Are You My Mother?.

Bechdel also talks to the National Post about the book.

Slate reviews the book.

In response to Umphrey McGee's new tourist anthem for the city, the A.V. Club Chicago lists songs about Chicago that are actually good by Chicago bands.

The Age profiles John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats.

At TIME, Benjamin Percy profiles author John Irving.

At Rocks Off, Zahira Guiterrez of Wild Moccasins lists her 10 favorite New Wave songs.

Y.A. for Grownups is a weekly feature at The Atlantic Wire that discusses young adult books.

American Songwriter examines the legacy of Gram Parsons.

At the Guardian, Cory Doctorow explains why e-books with no DRM are good for readers, writers, and publishers.

The Atlantic reconsiders Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album, which was released 10 years ago.

A big part of the band's genius here was in translating Tweedy's lyrical conceit into sound. Wilco's first three albums had proven that its members could write catchy, complicated folk-pop songs—the same kind of songs that make up Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. But as the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart showed, the band took those unvarnished tracks and reverse-engineered them to be weird: to float along uneasily on "Radio Cures," to sputter maniacally as in "I'm the Man Who Loves You," to disintegrate and rebuild as on "Pot Kettle Black." The fuzziness of how people relate to one another was in that weirdness; the reasons people bother trying to relate in the first place was in the pop.

Chris Ware lists his favorite "old school" New Yorker covers.

Drowned in Sound interviews singer-songwriter FOE.

The Tulsa World profiles an Oklahoma University professor using a graphic novel in lieu of a textbook for his business course.

Billboard lists 20 famous music feuds.

SF Signal lists five science fiction stories that push the envelope of storytelling.

Win a DVD of James Franco's Hart Crane biopic The Broken Tower and a $100 Threadless gift certificate in this week's Largehearted Boy contest.

Amazon MP3 has 100 digital albums on sale for $5.

Follow me on Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Stumbleupon for links (updated throughout the day) that don't make the daily "Shorties" columns.

also at Largehearted Boy:

previous Shorties posts (daily news and links from the worlds of music, books, and pop culture)

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Daily Downloads (Hunx, Lower Dens, and more)

Every day, Daily Downloads offers 10 free and legal mp3 downloads, plus free and legal live sets from around the internet.

Today's free and legal mp3 downloads:

Bosco: "Joker" [mp3] from Let Go Of Me
search for more Bosco posts at Largehearted Boy

Cookies: four free and legal singles [mp3]
search for more v posts at Largehearted Boy

Drew Barefoot: free and legal What's in Your Heart album [mp3]
search for more Drew Barefoot posts at Largehearted Boy

Hunx: "Let Me In" [mp3] from Hairdresser Blues
search for more Hunx posts at Largehearted Boy

Jeffers Win: free and legal Jeffers Win EP [mp3]
search for more Jeffers Win posts at Largehearted Boy

Kyle Adem: "Brother Follow" [mp3] from Armour (out July 24th)
search for more Kyle Adem posts at Largehearted Boy

The Mowgli's: "I've Been Around" [mp3] from Sound the Drum
search for more Mowgli's posts at Largehearted Boy

Tu Fawning: "Anchor" [mp3] from A Monument (out May 15th)
search for more Tu Fawning posts at Largehearted Boy

Various Artists: free and legal Made in Iceland V compilation [mp3]

White Blush: "Without You" [mp3]
search for more White Blush posts at Largehearted Boy

Free and legal live performances at other websites:

Lower Dens: 2012-05-02, Brooklyn [mp3]
search for more Lower Dens posts at Largehearted Boy

also at Largehearted Boy:

other daily free and legal mp3 downloads
100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads

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May 3, 2012

Book Notes - Lisa Brackmann "Getaway"

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.

Previous contributors include Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Christensen, Kevin Brockmeier, George Pelecanos, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, David Peace, Myla Goldberg, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.

Lisa Brackmann's Getaway is a fast-paced, literary thriller set among the American expatriate community of Puerto Vallarta.

Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:

"Puerto Vallarta provides a lush backdrop for Brackmann’s richly drawn ex-pat world, which is as eccentric as it is dangerous."

Stream a Spotify playlist of these tunes. If you don't have Spotify yet, sign up for the free service.

In her own words, here is Lisa Brackmann's Book Notes music playlist for her novel, Getaway:

Getaway is my second novel. I'm here to tell you that everything people say about writing second novels is true. I thought I was going to write a fun little noir thriller. It ended up being one of the hardest things I've ever done. Creatively, it was tough, my first experience trying to produce something new as a published author. The feeling of having something to live up to, of having people who depended on me to do a good job, of not really knowing if I could write another book, all of that felt at times like a physical weight. Plus, I had a lot of other things going on that I hadn't expected to deal with. For one, my job evaporated, along with my so-called career. I was looking at an economic future that didn't seem terribly promising. The book, with its main character that lost everything during the economic crash through an act of very intimate betrayal, took on personal resonances that I was more comfortable pushing away than confronting. A major theme of the book is systemic corruption and how societies determine who is valuable and who is disposable, and I was starting to feel like I was more on the "disposable" end of things.*

Finally, like my protagonist, I decided I'd better suck it up and solve my problems, at least the problems involved in writing this book.

This song list is a bit of a hybrid. Some of the songs are referenced in Getaway. Others are part of the life soundtrack that I listened to at the time. I tried to choose songs that in some way relate to the book rather than, say, expound on my love of Ethiopian jazz/rock, Javanese gamelan, and Chinese pipa music (all of which is awesome stuff. Trust me!).

*Disclaimer: I am not however being menaced by drug runners, spooks or corrupt financiers, at least not to my knowledge

"Rikki Don't Lose That Number" — Steely Dan

When protagonist Michelle walks into an expat beach bar, Steely Dan is playing. Steely Dan is always playing in a Vallarta expat bar, somewhere. I can't think of a better band to illustrate the older burned-out expat crowd, the beach bars, the druggy cynicism and depiction of losers and hard cases and people on the shady side of the law. I considered "Do it Again" for its self-destructive, malign and secretive cross-border vibe, and "Kid Charlemagne" for the drug dealing hero turned outcast, but "Rikki" won for its doomed relationship and missed connections, and also, because it's a warning not to lose that phone number, even if the relationship is maybe not so good for you, which in light of Michelle's predicament at the beginning of the book, is too damn funny to pass up.

"Pretty Fly" — the Offspring

This is one of several songs referenced in Getaway – it's a ringtone on "is he a good guy or is he a bad guy?" Daniel's phone. We never find out if it's a ringtone to identify the annoying hanger-on Ned or if it's Danny's deprecating reference to himself, but it fits with his deliberate "I'm a fun guy—really!" persona.

"Ring of Fire" — Johnny Cash

Another ring tone, this one used by the manipulative and unsettling Gary. Gary also thinks of himself as one funny guy. This song, with its festive mariachi horns meets sinister lyrics of obsessive love gone very wrong, is just the kind of thing he likes.

"Backdrifts" — Radiohead

For various reasons I made a lot of long drives while I was writing Getaway. I often used those road trips to problem-solve. I seemed to get a lot of inspiration driving on dark roads at night, listening to Radiohead. During one particular long road-trip, taking Highway 1 from San Francisco to Venice, I didn't have a lot of music with me and listened to Radiohead's Hail to the Thief enough times that I will always associate it with a particular dark stretch of Highway 1, just south of Big Sur.

"Backdrifts (Honeymoon is over)" fits the emotional mood of the book perfectly. A love song? Maybe? Maybe not? People who are "damaged goods," who fall into "our arms" because they've got "nothing left to lose."

"All the evidence has been buried. All the tapes have been erased."

"They" — Jem

Catchy tune about conformity, ignorance, surveillance and regrets. In heavy car rotation when I wrote Getaway, for some odd reason…

"Why do we live like this?" Good question.

"Milonga del Angel" — Astor Piazzolla

I used to play in a band, oh so many years ago, and I rarely listen to music as background when writing. It's just too distracting. If I do, I almost always choose music that is either instrumental or doesn't have English lyrics.

One of my favorites is Argentinean Astor Piazzolla, who pioneered a modern form of tango. His album, Tango: Zero Hour, is the perfect surrealist soundtrack for late night drives, the songs by turns creepy, romantic and unsettling. "Milonga del Angel" is on the romantic end of the spectrum, in a melancholy, longing kind of way, infused with the sense that love can't last, and maybe it's an illusion, but whatever is there, is enough for the moment. Or will have to do, anyway.

"Three-Five-Zero-Zero" – Hair soundtrack

Another bad thing that happened while I was writing this book — my father passed away.

There's a character in Getaway who is an older man, ex-military, who did some bad things and has regrets about them. I wasn't exactly thinking of my dad when I created this character. But though he'd served in the military, had worked in aerospace and "paramilitary electronics" and had become quite conservative politically, one of my father's favorite albums when I was a kid was the soundtrack to Hair — the Broadway musical about a bunch of hippies dropping acid, making love and protesting Vietnam.

After he died, I made my own "Dad" song-list of some of his favorites – Blood Sweat and Tears, Brazil 66, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Johnny Cash, and yeah, I bought the soundtrack to Hair and listened to it in my car while on some of those nighttime road-trips. Probably a bad idea, because the album made me cry, every time, and driving while teary is not wise. "Three-Five-Zero-Zero" was the song I kept coming back to, about bullets ripping into flesh, about body counts, about "dirty little wars."

"Kiko and the Lavendar Moon" — Los Lobos

Los Lobos, I love them! A band from East Los Angeles that combines working class rock and roll, traditional Mexican folk and at times psychedelic grooves. Los Lobos is another band that was in constant rotation during those long car trips I took while writing Getaway, and their cross-border character made them a perfect soundtrack. I almost went traditional with a selection from Acoustic En Vivo but decided on the title track from the ambitious and experimental Kiko, with its creepy "Three Blind Mice" motif—an appropriately eerie choice for Michelle's misadventures.

"Close Behind" — Calexico

Continuing with the cross-border theme, Calexico's Feast of Wire was another album I listened to over and over in my car while I was writing this book (pre-mp3 player in car, the CDs I had with me got a workout). I'm going to go with the mariachi-meets-Ennio-Morricone-vibe instrumental "Close Behind" because it turned into the most persistent earworm from an album that bred many.

"La Llorona" — Lila Downs and Mariachi Juvenil de Tecalitlan

I'm not generally a big fan of soundtracks (Hair aside), but someone gave me the soundtrack for Frida, a film I never saw, and it's got a lot of songs I like, including this interpretation of the classic Mexican folksong, "La Llorena," "the Crying Woman," by Lila Downs. I'm a sucker for cheerful-sounding tunes about tragedy, and this one, about a woman who either drowned her children or was out of the house when someone else did, certainly fits the bill.

"Maria Lando" — Susana Baca

I've always been a huge Talking Heads fan, and I also give David Byrne a lot of credit for his compilations of South American music, including "The Soul of Black Peru," which is where I came across this song and artist. The lyrics are about a servant girl for whom there is no time, "no moon," only work—"Solo trabaja." When I went and visited the old Puerto Vallarta dump and saw the gleaners there, sorting through piles of garbage by hand in the heat and the humidity, for what barely qualified as poverty wages, it was a reminder of the reality that supports the beautiful resorts and the mansions of the wealthy, and I don't just mean in Mexico.

"All Apologies" — Nirvana

The struggle to figure out who you really are. Of having too many regrets. Trying to at least take comfort in the warmth and light of the sun, in the knowledge that we're all connected beneath it. But if you've done bad things, or even if you haven't done enough good things, if you believe "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," then how comforting is that connection?

None of us gets a free pass.

Lisa Brackmann and Getaway links:

the author's website
excerpt from the book

Cerebral Girl in a Redneck World review
Indelible Inc review
International Noir review
Kirkus Reviews review
Night Owl Suspense review
Publishers Weekly review
Sia Mckye's Over Coffee review
Tzer Island review

Murder Is Everywhere guest post by the author
Poptimal interview with the author
Welcome to Literary Ashland interview with the author

also at Largehearted Boy:

other Book Notes playlists (authors create music playlists for their book)
my 11 favorite Book Notes playlists