Dear science
David Foster Wallace is gone. That’s heartbreaking. Have you ever read anything that he wrote? He was this wonderful beautiful genius that dug deep into the human mind and came out with something that looked and smelled just like our intricate and interwoven thoughts. Scattered and chaotic and bubbling and incomprehensible.
The world is melting down. These are the things it seems like. Financial markets cratering. Money leaving the system. The economy shrinking. We’re left with confusion. Less money. And maybe the emergence of some new kind of creative energy. Struck raw with humility and an earnest groove. You know we can hope these things.
I’m writing this on the train between New York City and Washington, DC. We’re going to go meet with Congress to discuss the ‘situation’ and reach an effective resolution thereto and hertofore against which we all emerge victorious. I have some contacts at the Pentagon. No. But I’m thinking of the city landscape and I’m thinking of a soft fall rain and I’m thinking that maybe the city will get a little quieter and I’ll hear less about Gwyneth Paltrow. You know what I mean? Like maybe we can all get more real and get to the heart of this living thing. It’s all in your own head. We’ve always known that. Mindfulness meditation. Prayer. Etc.
A very roundabout way to hold up something that is real. I know that Dave Sitek produced the new Scarlett Johannsson record and this undermines my broader point (perhaps) but she did do a Tom Waits-cover album so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been and truthfully I haven’t bothered to take a listen. She’s got enough good things going on. She doesn’t need my patronage. And neither do TV on the Radio. But they get it.
I’m listening on my headphones for the third time and I’m on the train (as I mentioned) and this is one of those times. It’s nice to have them. Other times (for me) include staring at these big Polk speakers that Mike had in our apartment the first time I heard the first disc of Being There and clapping at the end of Hotel Arizona. That was almost ten years ago. But you know what I mean? When a music gets to you. It kind of sits down next to you in your head and your heart at the same time and awakens a possibility and feels like the beginning of something new. That’s how I feel about ‘Dear Science’.
Skittish polyrhythm. Beautiful melodies. Headphone pop with the right use of horns and strings and handclaps and gorgeous backing vocals and the propulsive beats that were always present in the best TVOTR but absent from the worst. Little noodles of jazzy guitar licks in my right ear. Strings in the upper left part of the aurosphere. This is the harmony of a producer with a vision and a group of musicians supple enough to bend themselves to that vwill. The thing it feels most like is Bowie and Eno and Byrne and New York in the late 70′s and also in the early 80′s.
This is an album in that sense of the word. It’s own sense of the word. It captures this time quite eloquently Now. And I feel and believe that maybe it marks a beginning point of something real and important and maybe the city is getting back to its roots. Or not. But maybe I’m getting back to mine.
Have I told you lately that I like the funky beats?
