As J.D. Salinger's life changed dramatically due to the fame thrust upon him following 1951's "The Catcher In The Rye," his final works grew more personally puzzling and dazzling in their writing. In 1955's "Raise The Roof Beam High, Carpenters," we learn almost everything we need to know about Seymour Glass and (possibly) the paranoia that will consume Salinger. This is not to say that Salinger is Seymour (as one could posit and prove if needed,) these are the details of Salinger's life threaded through the complex familial organization of The Glass Family.
As "Raise The Roof Beam" opens, we can confirm that the second-oldest brother Buddy is the all-knowing narrator. Like his introduction to "Zooey," Buddy proves to be an unbiased reporter offering all of the facts with detached emotion. However, "Raise" is his story. So, it is not hard to sympathize when his sister Boo Boo basically orders him to go to Seymour's wedding because no one else in the Glass Family can. Like the author, the one thread Buddy runs through his entire story is that of "duty." It is 1942, and Buddy is on leave from WWII recuperating from pleurisy in Fort Benning, GA. With his three-day pass and wrapped in a mile of adhesive tape, his journey is clearly perilous even though he rarely acknowledges it (also comparable to the untold story of Seymour's trip to New York City for his nuptials.)
Upon his arrival at Penn Station, Buddy does not even have time to take his travel bags to his apartment as he must immediately grab a cab to this wedding. Before he has any time to even think, he finds the last folding chair in the brownstone functioning as a chapel and has to wait. In his mind, he is falling apart worried about hemorrhaging beneath his dress uniform. To the outside world, Buddy appears sympathetic and the proverbial "good listener."
Whether Salinger is playing it for comic relief, or just relief. Buddy's description of the wedding "going long" ("At twenty minutes past four - or, to put it another, blunter way, an hour and twenty minutes past what seemed to be all reasonable hope") reflects his exhaustion and patience disappearing in this assembled crowd. Salinger as Buddy provides such an elegant description that it mutes the impact of what is clearly a cataclysmic event.
If there was any even faintly lenitive aspect to the spectacle, the weather itself was responsible for it. The June sun was so hot and so glaring, of such multi-flashbulb-like mediacy, that the image of the bride, as she made her almost invalided way down the stone steps, tended to blur when blurring mattered most.
There you have the mastery of Salinger. Entering his character, yet allowing Buddy to stay in character. As "accidentally poetic" as his letter to Zooey and as Buddy describes their world, as "cinematic." This is Post-WWII American Literature at its essence, the lessons of the Modernists digested and stretched to their limits. As the Post War world suddenly looks to us as the dominant power, our culture falls under the microscope as well.
In hindsight, we as readers are not particularly sure that Salinger was ready for this level of scrutiny. As beautifully composed as his prose can be, and as thoughtfully as he can write, "Raise The Roof Beam" must stick to universality (much like "Franny" and "Zooey.") So, unlike Holden Caulfield who is still today characterized as precocious and bristly, Salinger as Buddy must be likable. So the conflict begins.
As Buddy goes about his "duty" again helping people into the limousines headed to the wedding feast uptown, we get the sense that he knows he is in over his head. So Salinger brilliantly devises a way to display this, comedic self-deprecation with a mirror turned on those reading it which reveals the truth.
I remember loading people into cars without any degree of competence whatever. On the contrary, I went about it with a certain disingenuous, cadetlike semblance of single-mindedness, of adherence to duty. After a few minutes, in fact, I became all too aware that I was catering to the needs of a predominantly older, shorter, fleshier generation.
Suddenly, these are no longer the exploits of child-star smart-kid sensations raised in cloistered upper-middle-class urban surroundings. Weddings and chivalry/courteousness are universal. The story can unfold from here to anyone from any culture, background, or most other nations and be perfectly understood. "Raise The Roof High, Carpenters" has a central conflict that can no longer be avoided and even recalls/revamps the cruxes from earlier prose writing.
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Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
NEW MUSIC This Week
HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER - Jump For Joy [LP/CD](Merge/AMPED)
RATBOYS - The Window [LP/CD/CS](Topshelf)
Having dulled his rootsy Van Morrison-esque sound down to a formula, M.C. Taylor broke out of it on the emotional "Quietly Blowing It." Still, that seems to be the pursuit since 2020's "Sanctuary" gave him a near Top 10 AAA hit. "20 Years and A Nickel" mixes biography with Psychedelic Country. "Shinbone" tries to find a midtempo 10,000 Maniacs danceable-yet-commercial sway to go with its sickly synth lines. Only "Nu-Grape" sounds like the rootsy/Gospel pull that made 2016's "Heart Like A Levee" such a gravity-shedding listen.
Weirdly, Chicago's Ratboys kick off their sparkling rootsy album with the HGM-sounding "Morning Zoo" that successfully melds the breeziness of First Aid Kit with the bounce of Wilco. Working with the producer Chris Walla (ex-Death Cab For Cutie), Ratboys live up to their promise ("Space Blows" and "Go Outside" have been in rotation since 2021). They do not switch styles like one switches channels. You actually hear a little of the country sway in Julia Steiner's "oohs" on the driving, near Punky "Crossed That Line." Steiner's vocals and Dave Sagan's guitar are the core for great songwriting (the Miracle Legion-esque title track). Given their attention to the songs fitting together, Walla and the rest of the band can only add to this jangling/heart-tugging radio-ready album.
ALLEGRA KRIEGER - I Keep My Feet On The Fragile Plane [LP](Double Double Whammy)
BECCA MANCARI - Left Hand [LP/CD(Captured Tracks)
Here in two albums, the female singer/songwriter in the most prototypical states. New Yorker Krieger has already released three albums of stellar fracture Folk/Pop to almost no true acclaim. Working with Luke Temple on number four here frees Krieger to explore lyrically and musically without pushing that is an "exploratory" album. "I Keep My Feet" is challenging you to listen closely. Her beguiling voice and minimal instrumentation give Krieger space to unpack emotions into streams of color. "I Keep My Feet" is defiantly not another "love story" album. Instead, it strives to be poetic (the lilting "A Place For It To Land") and brutally honest ("I Wanted To Be" which Krieger describes as an "ouroboros" with a thrilling, atypical ending where the song "eats itself"). "I Keep My Feet" is not initially comforting. However, her style of singing grows on you. In the end, the beauty must simply reveal itself.
Becca Mancari moved to Nashville ten years ago to pursue her dream of being an artist. On her third album, she emerges from the dark period documented on 2020's "The Hardest Part" with a record that celebrates living. With incandescent dance beats subtlety pulsating in the background, Mancari constructs her own Indie Pop. "Homesick Honeybee" could be a Boygenius song bursting with crisp harmonies and a minimal chorus that speaks volumes. Like all good Pop records, Mancari has enlisted Brittany Howard ("Don't Even Worry") and Julien Baker ("Over and Over" with its true Pop chart-ready chorus). With Boygenius and the other fantastic females ruling the charts now, Mancari surely cannot be far behind.
JAIMIE BRANCH - Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world War)) [LP/CD](International Anthem/Redeye)
We lost trumpeter Jaimie Branch last year just after her legacy of music truly caught fire. Branch plays with such joy. Listen to how she both lightens and gives the heft of melody to "Baba Louie." While the nine minutes roll over a beat fit for dancing, most of the instruments contribute subtlety. However, Branch blows hard and fiercely melodic, pushing the song along even while playing whole notes with the chord changes. Branch attended the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music and then simply found her own way into organizing, recording and even engineering Jazz/Experimental music. Hampered by addiction (as so many Jazz musicians have tragically been), Branch was the central figure in drawing together numerous musicians in Chicago for a new Jazz scene like those first in London and now thriving in Los Angeles. On her third "Fly or Die" album, Branch is again willing to experiment with almost any sound (Jason Ajeiman's bowed bass lines on "The Mountain" erupt in both notes and harmonics before they sing together it like a Folk song), but it rarely sounds too experimental for consumption. "Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world War))" is both a fitting epitaph and leaves you sad that there will be no more from this promising artist.
VARIOUS ARTISTS - Raks Raks Raks: 17 Golden Garage Psych Nuggets from Iran [LP](Survival Research)
Rich in oil revenues, the Sixties in Iran saw dramatic changes as diplomatic relations with the West led to their absorption of some American interests. With the government struggling with an autocratic Shah and factions pulling Iran in their own way, youth culture blossomed around a hybridized Middle Eastern music mixed with the thrust and simplicity of American Garage. Groups like The Littles traded the Bo Diddley beats for more martial rhythms ("4 x 8 Jadeed") and used a plucky bass line and tambourine to make the folky "Fatemah Sultan" driving. Group Takhala La borrows from the Animals on "Dokthar-E Darya," while The Flowers get weirdly Psychedelic with a fluttering organ and haunting background vocals on "Meekshi Manoo." While bands like The Rebels update The Shadows and a Merseybeat or Beat sound for young Iranians to dance to, Googoosh finds a way to make Otis Redding/Aretha Franklin's "Respect" even more funky. While these groups get two or sometimes three tracks on here (many are pulled from a two-part "Pebbles" anthology installment from 2015 - if you get more intrepid), their depth is surprising as well as their ability to keep it sounding like the music they grew up on.
