Monday Morning Rhapsodic: Veronica

This weekend's NY Times Sunday Styles' "A Night Out With" column featured a profile of the band Spoon, a band I'll readily admit to knowing next to nothing about, except that I'm supposed to like them a lot, and that a lot of people I know love them. I am, however, familiar with frontman Britt Daniel's winning good looks, and even though I've heard very little of their music, every picture of Daniels causes me to rethink that indie rock lacuna in my life. He is an attractive man, I'll give you that -- a welcome addition to the Army of the Weak-Chinned.* Reading the profile reminded me of Daniel's cameo on Veronica Mars in season two. In it, he does a very charming karaoke version of Elvis Costello's sort-of hit, Veronica, from his 1989 album Spike. [You can watch a clip of that cameo here.] And that got me thinking about the original song and its accompanying video, which I hadn't heard nor seen in quite some time. Thanks to iTunes and youtube, both the audio and video are back in my life, and for that I am eternally grateful: Veronica is a tremendous little song,** and the video is really something else. Co-written with Paul McCartney, the song is about Costello's ailing grandmother as she was slipping further into Alzheimer's disease. It's a sweet, poignant song about memory and time, and a little bit about love, and maybe also just a wee bit elegiac. It's also incredibly catchy, with great harmonies, which I think says a lot about Costello's genius*** -- you're singing along to a pretty bittersweet song about senility. The video adds another dimension to this: on the one hand, it's a fairly literal interpretation of the song itself, a straightforward glimpse into memory, and the effects of Alzheimer's on how we remember the past. But then you've got Costello sitting in an empty room, talking about his grandmother, and as the song plays you can hear his voice quietly singing along, over the tape playback. And there's something about the whole thing that ... I dunno. It's really touching without being schmaltzy. I'll confess to getting a little teary when I saw the video again. That's all I got for you. No funny, quippy ending. Just watch the video, I guess. It's good stuff. * Crack open a nice bottle of Greco di Tufo with me and I'll explain. ** Possibly even better is the demo version of the song, which is available on the deluxe edition of Spike. Stripped down to guitar, piano, and vocals, Veronica becomes that much more sparse and elegant, without losing any of its poppiness. I can't seem to locate any version readily available online, except ... erm ... here. (The visuals are a little distracting, no matter how cute you think Kristin Bell is.) *** There are lots of folks out there who think of themselves as true and proper Elvis Costello fans, and who insist that he's done nothing good since 1979's Armed Forces. To be sure, it's a spectacular album, but I'm a bit more generous about the Costello oeuvre, and think that his genius started to slip around the time that he and Diana Krall got together, when he started getting super-sentimental, and not in a nuanced, Veronica-esque way. I am not the only one who thinks this.

Early Sunday Morning Rhapsodic: Saturday at the Farm

On Saturday morning, RP and I went down with MH to his family's mostly-non-working farm situated some 30 minutes north of Princeton, NJ. Along the way, we stopped at a grocery store to get some seafood, and then purchased amazing Jersey sweetcorn from a pickup truck parked by the side of the road. At the farm, we lounged in inflatable floaty donut things inside the pool, played bocce and horseshoes (see above!), napped, chilled out with a lively 22-month-old wunderkind, grilled the seafood and corn, and just generally had a low-key, perfect Saturday afternoon, seemingly a gazillion miles away from the city. Somewhere in there I even very gamely tried my first egg salad sandwich (do not get me started on my long-standing fear of mayonnaise). Maybe it was because of the day in general, but man, that was tasty. The three of us had had something of a bender-y Friday, and so before we set off for Jersey, I steered us towards a nearby McDonalds. (I know, I know. I'm a terrible person.) There, McMuffin sandwiches were consumed with reckless abandon -- or at least as reckless and abandon-filled as three hungover people can muster at 10 on a Saturday morning in Chelsea. It gave us the necessary energy to start the trip, such that afterwards I felt compelled to proclaim, "I believe in hand-held sausage!" Oh yeah. Mild sunburn aside, I'm going to sleep very well tonight. Back to ironic, detached judgment tomorrow.

Tuesday Evening Rhapsodic: The Clientele

This was supposed to be a weekly column, Friday Morning Rhapsodic, to demonstrate to our readers the depths of my otherwise-hidden sentimentality; I had planned to post just one ditty a week, on Fridays, so as to not overwhelm our dear readers with the sort of sap I normally reserve for my repeated viewings of The English Patient. (Yeah, I don't get me either.) But then last night I was having some wine with my old bartender friend IB (whom I lovingly refer to as my sixth favorite Welshman), and several glasses of wine into the evening, the conversation turned to music -- and how easily the right song can turn one's day around. And that got me thinking about the Clientele, whom I recently had the chance to see at the Bowery Ballroom, in a set that was just about as perfect as could be. I think I'm still riding a high from that show. And so now, dear readers, you get my sap a couple of days early. I remember the first time I heard the Clientele. I was living here in the city the summer after my first year in Ithaca, and over on Eldridge Street there used to be a little record store that I go to every now and then, Sound and Fury (alas, it no longer exists). One afternoon I wandered in there, and this absolutely lovely song was playing. Whispery vocals, shimmering guitars, and just a strangely comforting feeling of not-quite-thereness. Just a wonderful, hushed sense of longing. I bought their EP, A Fading Summer, on the spot. It's been love ever since. That I've since spent some time with Alasdair Maclean, the frontman for the band, only confirms what their music suggests: they're a bunch of really great individuals who love making some of the saddest, most elegiacally big-hearted music I've ever heard. "Saturday," the song I first heard at Sound and Fury, remains my favorite; despite its bittersweet convergence of memory, hope, and longing, there's still something wonderfully un-bitter and very sweet about it. And heck, it's a much more age- and culturally- appropriate vehicle on which to float my sentimentality than, say, Ralph Fiennes.

Friday Morning Rhapsodic: My Other Local

If MD and I are out on the town, there's a pretty good chance that at some point in the evening we will have stopped by our regular spot. The barkeeps are great, the happy hour caters to people who don't get out of work at 5 sharp (a very generous 6-9pm 2-for-1 sort of thing -- don't get me started on those strange happy hours that run from 5-6pm and give you a $1 discount on your second drink), and even though it sometimes gets pretty packed on the weekends, I can almost always squeeze onto a seat at the bar. I also love my local because it's the site of many epic evenings. By epic here I don't necessarily mean crazydrunk or madhookup sort of epic. I mean...memorable. There was the night last spring when MS, NM, and I photo-documented our debauchery, complete with pics of other people hitting on each other at the bar. (The fellow in the picture on the right still remains something of a mystery from that evening; NM and I for the life of us can't remember his name, or his provenance. But he sat next to us, making very drunk conversation.) Or the lovely, new-standard-setting first date I had there last fall. Or the recent indie royalty free-for-all that saw members of Pipas, the Clientele, and the Ladybug Transistor drink and flirt the night away. That sort of epic. Really wonderful things have happened there, and though I'm sometimes hesitant to embrace my lushness, I'm never ashamed to admit that my local has given me some pretty amazing memories. No, seriously. Not every night is a local sort of night though, and more often than not, if I'm wanting to shell out some money and not be so sociable, I go to my private local, a spot I thank RZS for introducing me to. It's a little wine bar sort of place not terribly far from my apartment, and has the feel of a cafe more than a bar per se. This is, I think, one of its strengths: because most people are sitting down at the little two-tops or communal tables, or at the bar, one might feel awkward just standing near the bar with a drink. It's not that sort of place. Besides, there's only wine and bottled beers; you're not going to get a sidecar or a greyhound at this place. There's something very genteel about the whole thing. The folks behind the bar are young, goofy, much too attractive for their own good, but somehow still incredibly down to earth. It's a little disarming. The slightly edgy, hip civility about the whole thing makes it a pretty comfortable spot, which is why I'll meet up with folks there and split carafes of wine and just lounge for a few hours. But I think one of its silent merits is that it's not really set up for casual encounters -- not that such things couldn't happen there, but I don't think the space/ethos is really about that. Or, put differently: it's not a singles scene. And yet, by the same token, it encourages a kind of easy-going sociability that doesn't necessarily have that awkward undertone of flirtation. I could easily start a conversation with someone sitting next to me, but it wouldn't have that slightly unnerving potential-picking-up sort of vibe. I mean, it's hard being a single person in a city -- going to bars by oneself (especially being a woman) is tricky because one tends to feel like there's a big sign on one's back upon entering. I am a single woman. Please hit on me, or please talk to me if I start hitting on you. And at this place that quite frankly I'm not going to name, I sort of feel ... I don't know. The single/coupled dichotomy doesn't seem to take hold there, at least not for me. Nothing epic ever happens here, and it's not that that absence is refreshing so much as it is ... different. Time passes, very lazily, and usually to quiet conversation. I would almost say that it feels European, but I don't think that's quite it. It's not like there aren't single people in Europe. I guess this place exists somewhat strangely in some kind of bizarro universe where those sorts of identity markers don't matter at the get-go. When I'm there, I forget that those things are supposed to matter. It's nice. I almost wish I could take you all there. Almost.