Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom

Free­dom will be remem­bered as a sto­ry that cap­tures a very strange chap­ter in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. It’s hard to put a fin­ger on it, but the mood of the last decade is some­thing Franzen nails. His char­ac­ters rep­re­sent the amoral fugue state we drift­ed off into col­lec­tive­ly after 2003. I’m not even sure his hol­lowed out char­ac­ters could real­is­ti­cal­ly course cor­rect, yet they do, and for that rea­son I was some­what dis­ap­point­ed in the novel.

Equal­ly ter­ri­fy­ing, alt-coun­try act Wal­nut Sur­prise rep­re­sent­ed one of the worst musi­cal move­ments of the decade. We have only our­selves to blame.

Woebot’s 100 Lost Rock Albums From the 1970s

Matthew Ingram’s fan­tas­tic Woe­bot blog was an inspi­ra­tion to me as a crit­ic. His vora­cious appetite for and catholic taste in music pushed me to expand my palate and lis­ten to music oth­ers may have dis­missed as less­er works. In short, Woe­bot had big ears and it did­n’t hurt that he could write. 

I’m final­ly read­ing his ebook, 100 Lost Rock Albums from the 1970s and it’s bring­ing back lots of mem­o­ries. This is the music I fell in love with around the time Stephen Malk­mus released Pig Lib and even name checked the Ground­hogs on tour. Some of the ground Ingram cov­ers is famil­iar, but what makes the book so reward­ing are the impos­si­ble to find albums that rekin­dle my love for crate digging. 

If you’re look­ing for a place to begin, check out this com­pan­ion playlist on Spo­ti­fy.

Christopher Owens – Lysandre

If you’ve read the reviews of Christo­pher Owens’ Lysan­dre, you’ll find quite a few crit­ics who wished he’d nev­er left Girls. His solo debut may have under­whelmed most crit­ics, but it’s a charm­ing col­lec­tion of pais­ley melan­cho­lia. I can’t get enough.

But don’t take my word for it. Read Aquar­i­um Drunk­ard’s even­hand­ed take here.

The Flaming Lips — The Terror

The Flam­ing Lips are one of those bands that releas­es a stun­ning album like The Soft Bul­letin, fol­lows up with a hit record like Yoshi­mi…, los­es the thread with At War With the Mys­tics then returns to form ten years lat­er with the painful­ly under­rat­ed Embry­on­ic. Need­less to say I’m very excit­ed for The Ter­ror. Love a band that finds ways to chal­lenge themselves—and their fans—after all these years.