We have read quite a few historical/literary accounts of lean times. Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" encompasses the continuous movement as almost a distraction from having nothing. The papers of John Smith and other explorers point at a decision making process that quickly assesses how well one's instincts can evaluate cost/benefit analysis. Modern writer/environmentalist Paul Kingsnorth places you in the mind of a survivor. "Beast" feeds you almost every waking thought and recollection that character Buckmaster has. Unlike Smith or Steinbeck (and in modern literary terms,) the work is held together by moments where you do not know if his protagonist will survive.
So much of Literature depends upon the suspension of disbelief. Holding a work in your hands where the protagonist is thrown into peril at the beginning must engage you to the point that you fail to lose focus of the story and respond mathematically to the number of pages remaining. Kingsnorth is mostly that level of literary magician. "Beast" places Buckmaster out in the natural beauty of the Moors in England where he lives in complete solitude. Leaving behind technology and its growing hold on the people around him (an ongoing theme for Kingsnorth and a completely different story,) Buckmaster learns to make do in a rundown house with enough free time to appeal to his wish for a more ascetic lifestyle.
For every moment of spectral beauty in the natural skies above him, there are probably three times as many endless days and nights of bleak, stormy weather. The tourists around him have departed, and Kingsnorth characterizes the land around him as "a place where when I leave a footprint in the yard it stays for weeks." However, Buckmaster is growing into a veteran of these squalls ("five seasons.") Everything he lacks in preparation (or general repair,) he makes up for in momentary ingenuity. Until the storm that is like no other.
Kingsnorth slowly brings the storm into focus as water seems to shoot inside the house ("the rain is horizontal, it blows in..as if it has been arrowed in from the Atlantic.") The house simply cannot withstand the volume or force of this fluid attack. Left to ponder the size and severity, Buckmaster compares it to a previous storm that left the road out looking "as if something had attacked it." With the water coming in and the storm slowly drawing closer, we wonder if the roof, much less this house, will hold up even as Buckmaster seeks answers from his recent passel of weird dreams. The water is collecting on the floor "like a stain," and we are left to consider that St. Anthony once lived in the desert on only "salt, bread and water." The latter grows in abundance around to the point it "hisses" as it hits the stovetop and has him thinking he should have returned to civilization before the "thirteenth month."
For all the wishes and second thoughts (which any of us would do therefore eschewing predictability for our personification,) Buckmaster/Kingsnorth experience a crystalline philosophical moment: "that this can only be seen when everything else, including our minds, especially our minds, has been dropped or been sheared away."
this thing, this mystery, this void, this truth, this God.
With that the storm gets violently worse and his faith grows stronger. In a brilliant literary device, Kingsnorth cuts him off mid-sentence and we even lose the next two pages to blank space. When we pick back up, Buckmaster is coming to in silence, with blood on his face and wrestling with the first waking sensations of pain everywhere in a completely different place. We know he survived the storm. We do not know how he is going to survive a still-unknown level of injury in a place where he has no earthly idea where he is or how he got there.
St. Cuthbert was called to be hermit on Lindisfarne. This was more than a thousand years ago. There were only small wooden huts there then, and the wind and the wild sea and everything that lived in the wild sea. Cuthbert went out there to the monastery, but the monastery was not far enough and he was called out further. He rowed to an empty island, where he ate onions and the eggs of seabirds and stood in the sea and prayed while sea otters swam around his ankles. He lived there alone for years, but then he was called back.
NEW MUSIC THIS WEEK
BEATLES - Anthology 1/2/3/4 (NEW) [LP/CD](Capitol)
Released in the CD era, the first three Anthology releases were much more fun than those last few years of dour memories of the Fab Four. Cut together from takes left on the cutting room floor, "Anthology 1-3" remains quite cohesive portraits of a band becoming a group of writers with their ideas almost always being presented to each other. In hindsight, it remains hardest to believe that now 4 compilations are devoted to eight separate years of recordings - and still there is more remaining to dive into. The true spotlight is focused on "Anthology 4." While the book and the series have been updated to add more music from the later years, "Anthology 4" musically ventures all the way back to the beginning (those ballads, "This Boy" and "If I Fell" are still so amazing) through the Music Hall/Psychedelic gooey middle ("Strawberry Fields Forever" and a first take of the underrated "She's Leaving Home") toward their dissolution ("Helter Skelter (Version 2)" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps") before a brief three-song bonus from "Abbey Road." While several of the extras have been in their deluxe boxes, many are new to this recording. In addition, with only a few notable inclusions from "Rubber Soul," it leads one to postulate that it might be next in line for a revamp/remaster.
WICKED: FOR GOOD [2LP/CD](Republic)
Since we all know the story underway in the second act of the juggernaut "Wicked," it feels like the music for this half may actually be more important. From its transfer from Broadway to the silver screen, "Wicked" needed to feel sweeping, classic, and familiar. Since those three adjectives now apply to the arrival of a certain Kansasian in Oz, "Wicked: For Good" should offer more depth and character development.
TBONES will be holding a special Wicked:For Good Listening Party on Saturday, November 22nd at 6pm for all you Elphabas and Galindas out there.
DIJON - Baby [SILVER LP/CD/CS](Warner)
A producer/collaborator with many artists (namely Bon Iver in 2025, who helped him land his first Grammy nom,) Dijon's style and Hip-Hop-meets-Pop sensibility are now everywhere. "Baby" is his barn burning yet romantic grand statement that there is more to the process than writing about the process. "Baby" (like its other 2025 brother from Nourished By Time) is packed to the gills, but never loses its intimacy or its melodic thrust.
ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER - Tranquilizer [WHITE 2LP/CD](WARP)
How Daniel Lopatin continues to exist on the outer orbit of Pop and Indie music is beyond description. Employed by both The Weeknd and The Safdie Brothers, OPN should be on the tips of tongues. However, Lopatin would rather set those tongues to wagging. Always true to his construction and EDM/Electronic old-school-with-a-new-future style, "Tranquilizer" is dense and all-encompassing. After discovering a stash of library music (and commercials,) Lopatin finds nearly every level of coverage from soothing quietude to foundation-shaking bass. Weirdly, "Tranquilizer" needs a lot of time to develop as most songs have no structure and want to lean you along (again, like a commercial should.) Where it is different from most of his catalog, "Tranquilizer" is not interested in sounding like anything else, even as it jumps from track-to-track.
PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION - Around The World In A Day [BLUE LP/3LP DLX/2CD DLX](Warner)
The first "difficult" Prince album from 1985 was clearly made in a hurry. In a rush to capitalize on "Purple Rain," Prince went Psychedelic. The studio was his friend, so "Around the World" is a feast of overindulgence. He cranked out a classic ("Raspberry Beret,") dealt us some more Controversy-like slinky funk ("Pop Life") and then set out to make "Paisley Park" like his "Magical Mystery Tour." Strangely enough, given the interest in the Paisley Underground out West (he would give Susanna Hoffs and The Bangles "Manic Monday") it worked. Now, we can hear everything else that was saved from those sessions including dance remixes, a longer version of "Paisley Park" and a never-before-released 22-minute jam on "America.'
THE REPLACEMENTS - Let It Be DLX [4LP/3CD](Rhino)
In transfer between high schools, Paul Westerberg and the Mats were the glue that kept me sane during the change. Westerberg, ever the reluctant hero who then writes like he WANTS to be the voice of a generation, spoke to disenchanted youth about a handful of universal issues. In short, his angst was transferrable to almost anyone because it was uniquely human. Unlike a lot of bands, the Mats were content to seal their mistakes in the music. While their major-label debut "Tim" has possibly aged better, 1984's "Let It Be" was the injection that brought strictly independent music (that did not have to sound like Punk, Post-Punk, Synth Pop, or a slew of easily categorized genres/subgenres) to College Radio.
"I Will Dare" (featuring Peter Buck of R.E.M. on a chiming mandolin well before "Losing My Religion") was jangly, age-encompassing, and could immediately occupy you. "Favorite Thing" was a blazing blast of Amerindie Punk with a twist, Westerberg's growing habit of writing bridges. "We're Comin' Out" satirizes, mocks, and still captures the rage of waiting for meaningful music to appear on the dominant cultural force, MTV. Then, Westerberg as a Mat shows his heart is clearly dangling from his sleeve with a handful of tracks that have grown more favorable as their issues have grown more important over the years. "Androgynous" is a classic messy Mats song (that will birth things like "Nightclub Jitters") wrapped around a deep meaning. "Unsatisfied," an anthem for disassociated teens, is their initial generation yowl leaving you feeling cathartic as Westerberg's "Kool-corroded lungs" (shout out to Rob Sheffield for that one) shout "I'm so.....I'm so....unsatisfied!" When "Let It Be" slams its door shut on "young adulthood," it does it with a Westerberg-only recording (again sowing the seeds of future distress) that to the day encapsulates late-night loneliness, the dissatisfaction of messages left unread/unanswered, and how it leaves anyone unable to communicate. There may no longer be an "Answering Machine," but that trifecta of loss of contact, isolation, and faith-shaking disenchantment still applies for those bouncing dots, being ghosted or put on read. A classic from start to finish, now with a March 1984 concert added for effect.
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
