There will be a whirl of debates regarding this novel from the late Cormac McCarthy. As they try to adapt it into a film, it will again emerge from the pack as a candidate for the vaunted moniker of the "Great American Novel." Its brutal violence and unsettling vision of a lonely teenager tramping through the harsh landscape of 1850s America can make it a hard read to some and a "beautiful nightmare" to others. One facet is certain, McCarthy's whiplash prose remains unmatched. At one moment, McCarthy can ignite the tension of an altercation without all the unnecessary omniscient narration and description (think Hemingway.) Then the next, pivot to using the bravest and least natural adjectives to describe nature around his characters in the most illuminating yet frightening sense of reality.
"Blood Meridian" differs from other Westerns in that it trades the implied majesty of the Old West for its continuous feeling like Hell on Earth. McCarthy reduces his character descriptions (typically) to the bare minimum. Our protagonist is a teenager sent away from home known only as "The Kid." Like "Pilgrim's Progress," McCarthy's use of "The Kid" as a focal point could lead some to consider "Blood Meridian" to function as a kind of allegory. However, this representation might be a stretch since most characters seem to have no moral compass. Instead, the anonymity of scenes and situations is to impart that these misadventures could happen to any of us. "The Kid" is not needlessly drifting through life, he has not yet figured out what he is looking for.
One of McCarthy's best touches is to describe events and cultures that are foreign in simple terms that echo The Kid's feeling of foreignness and echo his inability to describe them to you.
There was a team of dancers out in the street and they wore gaudy costumes and called out in Spanish. He and the mule stood at the edge of the lights and watched. Old men sat along the tavern wall and children played in the dust. They wore strange costumes all, the men in dark flatcrowned hats, white nightshirt, trousers that buttoned up the outside leg, and the girls with garish painted faces and tortoiseshell combs in their blueblack hair.
Like Faulkner's "Go Down Moses," this is a perilous journey where every inch travels like a mile. However, unlike Faulkner, we have no idea where we are going. In addition, every encounter is rife with the possibility of injury, death, and/or abandonment. In Faulkner, his families were in peril. "The Kid" has no family and has no choice but to put the sliver of trust he has earned on this hellacious earth in the hands of another. (It leads you to wonder if "The Kid" was possibly brought up like Jackson Fentry in Faulkner's short story "Tomorrow" living in one ramshackle room sequestered from everyone else.)
The path to fighting as a method of communication is what nearly every fisticuff is about. As McCarthy slices his prose down to only action and reaction, he is working your mind as to what the opponents are thinking of each other. Shortly after the passage quoted above, the four-day mule ride into this foreign place results in a short-tempered battle of wits with no real words exchanged.
The Kid lays his terms out immediately, out of exhaustion and desperation. "Tell him I'll work for a drink. I ain't got no money." However, the dance that unfolds mixes the loss of communication with simmering American imperialist resentment. With the dialogue reduced to miming tasks, it's hard to tell who is eager to be heard, and who knows that this is really making the other into a clown. Either way, the scene is so potboiler-packed, that you might read it three times to extract everything from it. (And forget about explaining it to a friend, it takes three times as long than letting them read it.)
That language of violence is universal. There is no glory in it. McCarthy writes it to almost seem feudal. In addition to this, Death is everywhere and is yet another fight that these characters are forced to have . Borrowing from Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" (a common literary allusion noted by critics for years,) McCarthy introduces a "Prophet"-like/Tiresias-ish soothsayer to let The Kid know that he has joined the wrong "family" of ex-U.S.Army/now filibusters. Similar to the hubris of Greek tragedy, at the moment where The Kid is finally cleaned up and comfortably assimilated into a possible positive movement - The Mennonite appears to shake his head and offer this prescient warning.
The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell ain't half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs.
—
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
New MUSIC this Week
LAINEY WILSON - Whirlwind [TAN LP/CD](BBR) • Louisiana-raised Lainey Wilson finally clawed her way into the Country Radio fortress with the time-tested "backwoods good ol' girl" routine that made Loretta a household name. But for all the toughness of "Bell Bottom Country," Wilson takes fewer chances here. "Good Horses," a duet with former go-to gal Miranda Lambert, is dangerously underwritten despite having its central sentiment announced in its title. At least, Wilson warms up with the romantic "4x4xU" and shouts out "Neon Moon" on "Country's Cool Again." In large part, one can guess that all her success and touring made this - as its title announces - rushed.
GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS - Woodland [CLEAR LP/CD](Acony/Q Prime) • Now officially a duo and studio owners, Gillian and David channel the last seven years of frustration with beating the industry and being beaten by a tornado with an album that stretches their palette into Seventies California Country. You came for the Folky twang and sweet harmonies of "Empty Trainload of Sky," which has one of their best verses ever ("Well it hit me and hurt me/Made my good humor desert me/For a moment I was tempted to fly/To the Devil or the Lord/And it hung there like a sword.") However, now that they control everything, Rawlings adds strings to "What We Had" and "Hashtag," while horns even made their return as well.
ILLUMINATI HOTTIES - Power [BLUE LP/CD](Hopeless) • Sarah Tudzin/Illuminati Hotties should really be signed by now. The writing is/has been consistent, even as the labels backing them sadly have not. Already on the map with one of 2024's best singles in "Can't Be Still," "Power" is packed with the same level of bittersweet/bratty Pop. "The L" has a jangly chorus ready for syncs, made even more palatable by Tudzin's crisp production (she also co-produced the Grammy-winning Boygenius album.) Again, they prove they turn a phrase as simple as "OK. OK. OK" into both an exclamation and a whisper in the same song.
MAGDALENA BAY - Imaginal Disk [WHITE LP/CD](Mom + Pop/Redeye) • On their 2021 debut "Mercurial World," Florida SynthPop duo Magdalena Bay revealed a better understanding of how Disco, Electronica, and even Dance Music fits well into Pop ("Secrets (Your Fire.)") Three years later Mica and Matt attack these 15 songs as if they are not meant to fit together, but will. "Tunnel Vision" needs to launch into overload as a counterpoint to Mica's sweet whisper. "Death and Romance" might as well be dialed in from 1975 as Mica pushes the driving chorus beautifully. However, the true single this time out is the sublime Disco-infused EDM of the swooping "Image." Perhaps their most original track yet, it never sounds retro instead cementing the idea that the dance music of the future will only echo the best facets of the past.
PORTER ROBINSON - SMILE D: [PINK LP/CD](Mom + Pop/Redeye) • Separating himself from his highly successful time exclusively in EDM, Porter Robinson is on the leading edge of artists who can dazzle with production ideas - even if the songs are a little too simple in writing. With his chip-tune melodies, answering machine messages, and warm keyboard chords, "SMILE D:" is futuristic Pop. "Knock Yourself Out" and "Cheerleader" boast huge choruses and hooks, while "Russian Roulette" is sugar-high music combined with Robinson grappling with life. "Year of The Cup" dives even more into dealing with loss, introducing a swaying acoustic guitar and Green Day-like adenoidal sweetness into the mix. The sentiments are changing over the course of the album as Robinson, in spite of his gaming partnerships and fast-selling EDM extravaganzas, manages to make his emotions fit into his music - without purposely tugging the heartstrings too much.
"Kitsune Maison Freestyle" is an astonishingly catchy banger with a bumpin' rolling beat. However, Robinson is singing about "everybody's just trying to look good/Trying not to feel bad." A reductive statement about the dichotomy about everyone wanting to listen to you - but never truly being heard ("every cliche is true.") While that might be expected from angst-ridden young artists, Robinson brings in a scattered phone message that resembles a late-night confession after all the synapses have been firing for a while. Its most touching and daring portion is after all the gobbledygook about "Estee Lauder Night Serum" and "new outfits," the voice says "I like, I got my, like, teeth fixed, and I regret it so much, man/like the I can't, I can't get the teeth that my mom gave me back in my mouth." A powerful and original boiling down to the real point of all this madness.
Next, Robinson rolls out a ballad. "Easier To Love You" where he outdoes most others. Unlike "Kitsune," Robinson lets the music drift and harmonies enter to make a statement about how he is/was not alone in his wishes. Then, he continues his contention with duality with a Steve Lacy/Kevin Abstract-ish bridge that admits "Please be disappointed in me/Isn't it obvious I wasn't who you think?" It is a free moment that almost does not fit into his song, but its power is not lost as Robinson's chiptune melody outro puts it all back together again. Thank goodness the merry Frost Children show up and put the squiggles in the wiggly Eighties Pop "Mona Lisa."
Robinson is sifting through a wealth of emotion here and spinning it into gold. Just not the Gold everyone is used to hearing from him. Learning to balance his highly original production ideas with how he expresses himself lyrically/vocally is now his true future promise. The level of honesty entering into EDM/Pop this year is so necessary. "SMILE D:" is all over the place, because well..life is all over the place.
