(till human voices wake us and we drown)

Good News!

clayton1220 — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:16:32 +0000

My poem ‘[2] MONSTER’ was accepted (in excerpted form) by Alice Blue for their upcoming issue 17. That’s four of the five little monsters who have found a home; I hope that bodes well for the full manuscript…

All Quiet on the Poetry Front

clayton1220 — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:10:49 +0000

So I haven’t done any poetry-related updates to this blog in I don’t even know how long. The reason is simple; I’m not writing. At all. I finished MONSTER in July and haven’t really seen the muse since. On the one hand, it isn’t that surprising. A friend who has read the entire manuscript described MONSTER as a ‘poetic enema,’ and I think she was right–I’ve been pretty empty for the last 5+ months.

And it’s starting to get to me.

I have an idea for what I want to do next, and a working title for it. The thing about the MONSTER poems is that they’re all really long and gleefully obscene. I want to write shorter, quieter poems now–something more like Watermark, but bleaker. The working title is This is the Way We Communicate When We Have Nothing to Say. The poems are going to start coming again any day now…

What I’m listening to–Best of 2011

clayton1220 — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:00:03 +0000

Lots of great music this year. I usually don’t go beyond just a best-of metal list, but I’ve been listening to an awful lot of music from across all genres this year, so here’s my best-of in each general category.

Best of 2011 – Hip-hop

1. Hail Mary Mallon – Are You Going to Eat That?
2. The Roots - Undun
3. Blu – Open
4. Pharoahe Monch – W.A.R. (We Are Renegades)
5. Saigon – The Greatest Story Never Told
6. Pusha T – Fear of God II: Let Us Pray
7. Smif-N-Wessun & Pete Rock - Monumental
8. Mellow Hype - BlackenedWhite
9. Shabazz Palaces - Black Up
10 Kendrick Lamar – Section.80

Best of 2011 – Non-Metal

1. Thrice – Major/Minor
2. Tommy Stinson – One Man Mutiny
3. Mount Moriah – Mount Moriah
4. Feist – Metals
5. The Decemberists - The King Is Dead & Long Live The King
6. Los Campesinos! - Hello Sadness
7. Polar Bear Club - Clash Battle Guilt Pride
8. EMA - Past Life Martyred Saint
9. Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost
10. Tie: Zola Jesus – Conatus & Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know

Best of 2011 – Metal

1. Subrosa – No Help For the Mighty Ones
2. Deafheaven – Roads to Judah
3. 40 Watt Sun – The Inside Room
4. Liturgy - Aesthetica
5. Ulcerate - The Destroyers of All
6. Maruta - Forward Into Regression
7. Batillus – Furnace
8. Title Fight - Shed
9. Obscura - Omnivium
10. Anaal Nathrakh - Passion

Grateful Dead stuff…

clayton1220 — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 04:14:06 +0000

I decided to move all my Grateful Dead-related posts to a new blog–they were starting to overwhelm the poetry-related posts, which are the whole purpose of this blog. So for anyone who is looking for my Europe ’72 reviews, those are now located at gratefuldeadtotheworld.wordpress.com.

More Good News!

clayton1220 — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:12:00 +0000

I woke up this morning to a very nice email from the good folks at apt, accepting ’[4] MONSTER’ for publication. The issue should be out in January.

Good news!

clayton1220 — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:27:12 +0000

Yesterday my poem ‘[3] MONSTER’ was accepted by a really nifty little web journal called LIES/ISLE. Not certain when the issue is coming out, but I’m guessing within the next month or so.

First thoughts on the new Mastodon album

clayton1220 — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:29:48 +0000

- If Mastodon had somehow not broken into the mainstream with Crack the Skye, this is album that will do it. It’s a slickly produced affair, with shorter, more melodic, more accessible songs that (at least on the surface) don’t appear to have anything to do with time travel or wormholes or mythical forest creatures or whatever the fuck Crack the Skye and/or Blood Mountain were about.

- That being said, however, this may actually be Mastodon’s most challenging album to date. I think that’s at least partly due to the more accessible song lengths and structures–I get the feeling that this is one of those albums that’s going to unfold slowly, over several listens. I think the casual listener will get wrapped up in the shiny surface of the album, but I think the patient listener will be rewarded with additional layers beneath the sheen.

- This is a damn good album, but, critical hyperbole aside, it isn’t the best metal album of the year (or, for that matter, the best metal album to come out this week). It isn’t even Mastodon’s best album.

- Speaking of critical hyperbole, the idea that this album is going to ‘save’ metal is utter bullshit. First, metal doesn’t need saving–there are so many solid metal bands out there right now and there have been so many fantastic albums released this year that only someone who doesn’t know the first thing about modern metal would make such a claim.

First thoughts on the new Machine Head album

clayton1220 — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:37:33 +0000

- They will never top The Blackening. That album was a masterpiece not only by Machine Head’s standards, but it may well be the best album by an American heavy metal band in the last decade. Comparing Unto the Locust to The Blackening would be totally unfair.

- What is up with that album cover? If I didn’t already know that MH were awesome, that cover would likely have scared me away.

- It’s pretty well known that MH worships at the altar of Metallica. Metallica wishes they were still making albums half as good as this. The album itself is fantastic–it’s the kind of epic thrash that Metallica helped pioneer, chock full of killer riffs, sudden mood swings, and to top it all off, Flynn’s vocal performance might be the best of his career.

- Lyrically, I don’t think the album is quite as angry as some of MH’s past work. There’s no ‘Aesthetics of Hate’ or ‘Left Unfinished’ on this album. In fact, ‘Be Still and Know’ is almost uplifting.

- This album solidifies MH’s place as one of the premier American heavy metal bands of the new millennium.

First thoughts on the new Tori Amos album…

clayton1220 — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:59:11 +0000

- I know I generally only talk metal on this blog (or the Dead), but I listen to a lot of different stuff. Tori and I go way back–I love her first four or five albums–but I have to admit that I quit following her after Strange Little Girls. That album just didn’t work for me, and while ‘A Sorta Fairy Tale’ had a cool video, it didn’t make me want to listen to Scarlet’s Walk. After that, I pretty much lost track of what she was up to.

- Um, how airbrushed is that cover photo? Anyway…

- The story behind this album is what made me give it a listen. From the Allmusic.com review: Night of Hunters was created because of a commission by Deutsche Grammophon, to create a 21st century song cycle that took into account classical works from the last 400 years. She built it around 14 songs from variations on Bach, Debussy, Granados, Alkan, Satie, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Mussorgsky, and Gregorian chant.

- So, given the genesis of the album, I figured it would either be a refreshing change of pace or the most pretentious thing ever recorded. Thankfully, it’s very much the former–this is a really good album. It’s also a really warm sounding album, recorded entirely on acoustic instruments–Tori and her piano, plus string, reed and brass sections. She is in fine voice throughout the album, and her piano playing is beautiful.

- Also of interest is the fact that her daughter provides vocals on several tracks, playing some kind of fox character (maybe? I don’t have the full thread of the plot yet). Her daughter has a fine voice as well, and their two voices blend quite nicely.

First thoughts on the new Opeth album…

clayton1220 — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:29:50 +0000

- After two listens, I’m ready to declare Heritage to be Opeth’s masterpiece. Yes, even better than Blackwater Park, though that might not be a fair comparison for either album since Heritage is so different from anything Opeth has ever done, yet at the same time it seems a very logical progression for the band.

- After two listens, I’m also ready to declare this the front-runner for my album of the year.

- I don’t miss the death growls at all. I think that Akerfeldt has a fine, expressive singing voice and pulls off the clean vocals well. After Damnation, that shouldn’t be a surprise. And the absence of death vocals allows the band to stretch out into many new, exciting musical directions. I think this may be the most musically complex album Opeth has ever made; it’s certainly the most demanding of the listener.

- I don’t know if I would call Opeth a metal band anymore after this album–the label has always seemed reductive for a band like Opeth, but now it seems so more than ever. There are still some metallic elements, but more than anything this is a 70s prog-rock album, and a damn fine one at that.

- I cannot wait to hear how these songs sound live.