Leviathan | Music | Leviathan.Rook.Crow.JohnnyRook.Ox.Eagle.Lion.etc.

Shearwater’s Rook is an astonishingly good record for a whole bunch of reasons, most of them Jonathan Meiburg-related – the guy is just embarrassingly gifted (and wears glasses far better than Franzen wears glasses). I’ve got a theory about its particular excellentness, though, which doesn’t necessarily apply to the other Shearwater albums and certainly not to Okkervil River’s (Meiburg’s other band’s) work. To my mind, Rook learns a lot, and takes a lot, from metal – yes, I said it, metal – whilst not ending up shit like metal. And I’m not saying that just because their drummer’s called Thor.

A scattering of evidence. Their drummer’s called Thor. The opening track has a definite melodramatic ‘prologue’ feel to it, introducing themes that will go on to recur throughout the rest of the album’s ‘narrative’ – avian wildlife, maritime imagery, that sorta thing – before cracking up into a big ol’ crash inspired by the lines, ‘But your angel’s on holiday / And that wave rises slowly and breaks.’ The next track does something similar, working itself up to growled threatenings of how ‘we’ll sleep until the world of man is paralyzed’ – albeit ones flecked with choirs and cornets. And the track after that is called ‘Leviathan, Bound’. The first half a word that, due to its biblical, satanic and demonological connotations, had previously only burrowed its way into music by bands like Cradle of Filth and Gothminister. Indeed, there’s a guy called Leviathan whose biggest hits to date include the syntactically questionable ‘Fucking Your Ghost In Chains Of Ice’, ‘A Bouquet Of Blood For Skull’ and ‘Heir To The Noose Of Ghoul’. And no, before you ask, he’s not another Norwegian black metal act with a language excuse, he’s some dude from California who once explained, ‘lyrics are important and also very hard for me... at times, the way things come out in words sounds like nonsense. I don’t consider myself a poet by any means.’

No shit. Still, I guess a reputation for being illiterate retards has sold a fuckton of Kings of Leon records, so perhaps Leviathan’s ‘Wrest’ is just another shameless yankee capitalist.

Anyway. One imagines, what with Okkervil River’s various forays into Great American Literature (one of which is included on this mixtape) that Meiburg’s concern here is more Moby Dick than it is one of the seven princes of hell – but ‘Leviathan, Bound’ does combine lyrics about a ‘trembling jaw’ with a splendid yelled second chorus that, to my mind, reflects a more than passing acquaintance with metal-ish tropes. I think the thing to focus on here is the fact the record is called Rook – and not, y’see, Crow. Because as Brandon Lee probably knows best of all, the crow/raven is a creature associated with every kind of gothic shit, where the rook is a bit more complicated and ambiguous. Indeed, Shearwater’s adoption of the rook strikes me as a useful focal point of the record’s relationship with metal. (And before you start being all, it’s just a name bro, it’s just a fucken album title, watch these lovely videos, paying particular attention to the excellent penguins, and think again.)

For though the rook is traditionally associated with bad weather and impending death, and though it is the Blunderstone Rookery and its empty rooks’ nests what represents the backdrop to David Copperfield’s long-suffering mother’s passing, so one also finds the cultural rook symbolising other, less Iron Maiden things. Take the gorgeous example of Alexei Savrasov’s 1871 painting ‘The Rooks Have Returned’:

Here, winter and mortality are in decline and the rooks offer an early portent of the arrival of spring. I love this painting. It reminds me of my favourite line in Lord of the Rings – both book and film, I hasten to add:

So fair, so cold; like a morning of pale spring still clinging to winter’s chill.

Moreover, based on those above lovely videos, it seems it is the ‘Johnny Rook’ (or Straited Caracara to those willing to toss aside fun nicknames) from the Falkland Islands that specifically inspired Shearwater. And sure enough, Johnny can specifically be identified via his mischievous, whimsical habits, so different from the ol’ raven trick of eating living things’ eyes. This, from Wikipedia:

Often it is known to steal red objects such as clothing or handkerchiefs, possibly because red is the colour of meat. Like all falconiformes it has excellent colour vision which easily surpasses that of any known mammal. Often it will also raid dustbins and move rocks to get food from underneath, thus proving themselves to be one of the most intelligent of the birds of prey.

As a general rule, the rook has been enjoyed by bands and songwriters considerably less hairy and scary and more, well, indie than ‘Wrest’ and his brethren (he definitely refers to his pals as brethren) with their ravens and crows and eyes. Bands like XTC, Elliott Brood (who also wrote a song about the Johnny Rook) and iLiKETRAiNS – the latter who composed ‘A Rook House For Bobby’ about Bobby Fischer, the former world chess champion slash arguably the greatest player of all time who variously joined an apocalyptic cult, had the fillings removed from his teeth fearing that they’d hamper his ability to think straight, got arrested in Japan and turned up a year later in Iceland before dying three years later with the last words, ‘nothing is as healing as the human touch.’ (This would be a good time to point out that chess has had a part to play in defining the rook as a creature associated more with eccentricity than düm und glüm.)

And what links these bands, musically-speaking? A melodramatic edge, an enjoyably self-indulgent approach to narrative, a rather thrilling occasional heavy-handedness – all of which can be traced, in one way or another, back to the same metallic influence displayed by Jonathan Meiburg and Shearwater. Evidently the rook is the symbol of music that takes from metal without becoming metal thus not ending up shit like metal – a bestial musical liminality, if you will. A fact that the excellent and similarly enjoyably pompous Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man are definitely reflecting on with their animal/transition-focussed name.

(I once saw the Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man singer self-consciously ‘warming up’ for a show by reading Primo Levi’s harrowing If This Is A Man. If that’s not a clever, witty, erudite, indie take on metalness, then I don’t know what it is. Actually I do: it’s called being a fucking prick. Who uses a book about the holocaust to show off? He’s called Frederick Blood-Royale [of course he fucking is] in case you’re interested and here’s his blog.)

It all makes me wonder whether other animals might be identified as the iconographic bridge between other musical genres – whether other bestial musical liminalities exist. I guess a place to start might be the ox, the eagle and the lion. Not the man. Not sure that would work. So…

OX

EAGLE

LION

I’m going to sign this off with a you decidez sorta sidestep actually, I’m afraid. That’s three calls too big to make in one night.

(To access a Spotify Essay-Soundtrack-Playlist to accompany the above open your exercise books here)

Sam Kinchin-Smith

Music Editor

Leviathan | Fiction | An Exclusive Story By Jonathan Franzen, 'The Intonement'

Editor’s Note: This arrived on my desk this morning, delivered by first-class post. The signature and accompanying letter claim that it is the God’s-truth confession of the celebrated author and wearer of glasses, Jonathan Franzen. As to its veracity, I dare not pass judgement, for it may well be a prank by some mischievous ex-student, most likely of little literary worth themselves and arrogant enough to believe their hoax will not be uncovered – but its contents, and its serious theme, lead me to speculate that this may well be another work of classic fiction written by a novelist who has delivered no less than two ‘Great American Novels’ (if I may be so bold as to use Mr Franzen’s own words) according to our most hallowed arbiter of such things; that is, Wikipedia. And so, without further ado, I present An Intonement, (and this very Franzenian title goes some way towards convincing me that this story is no forgery.) Enjoy; and be certain to remember this moment so that, in centuries to come, you may tell your astrograndchildren where you were when you first read it.




*



“If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak like great whales.”

Goldsmith to Johnson.


...according to ‘Moby Dick’.



Call me Franzen. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely - having a serious-looking pair of spectacles, and nothing in particular to interest me in reality, I thought would write about a bit and, perhaps, catch, kill and consume the Great American Novel. Whenever I find myself bemoaning the state of literature, whenever I find myself wishing to take a circle-saw to every bookshop table holding the latest Dan Brown novel, I feel a certain instinctual urge to hunt and trap the Great American Novel. Every male novelist, some time or other, cherishes very nearly that same feeling.

Our captain’s name was Roth; a bitter, stern, aging man who I felt must surely be past his prime, for he would stand at the prow of our little coracle and write out novel after novel in which a facsimile of the author has a lot of sex with frumpy young women. And yet in sailors’ circles, these were hailed as great literature, so I was not sure how much I should believe in my own inclination. The first mate, a dour man by the name of Updike, I found in closer spirits to myself, forever mumbling about the American family and wishing to cast a ‘wry’ eye over the idiosyncracies of the act of love-making. There were others, too – as many as there are novels in the sea.

Artist's impression.

“Avast, ye dogs,” Roth snapped, getting to his feet. “Bellow, sit up straight! Pynchon, get that gum out of yer hair! I’ve set our course; the white whale awaits.”

Grim, decided expressions, all around our ship of fools.

“What’s the catch, cap’n?” someone shouted. “Huck Finn? Catcher in the Rye? To Kill a Mockingbird?”

“Nay,” Roth replied. “They be novels for schoolchildren. Adolescent; pregnant with possibility, but not a full-grown, behemoth of a novel.”

There was a thoughtful silence.

“I hear fishin’s been good in Latin America recently,” Bellow suggested. “Still counts as America, technically speaking. What say we harpoon us a big fat Garcia Marquez? Or a Bolano, if we’re not feeling too picky.”

“Nay, thou belly-acher!” Roth shouted, clouting him over the head with one of his extremely slim recent publications. “Thou knowest that it is not the same thing.”

I suggested my own book, Freedom, as a Great American Novel. The bottle-nosed critics that liked to follow our coracle about instantly popped their heads out of the water and began to bray applause; the other novelists, however, ignored it.

“Our prize is Moby Dick,” Roth told us.

Silence.

“You know,” Updike said, scratching his nose, “It is interesting that so many of the Great American Novels are adolescent in nature; how many of them deal in some way with desire and with the urge to push oneself further and further that could be said to embody the founding principle of the USA. Some of them embrace this spirit wholeheartedly, but many more are directly concerned with the consequences of that desire. Great Gatsby, The Old Man and The Sea, Moby Dick itself, Death of a Salesman, Citizen Kane-”

“They’re not novels.”

“Sssh.”

“In fact,” Updike continued, “doesn’t Moby Dick take itself with such light-heartedness that to pursue it in such a serious, state-of-the-nation manner (little matter that only a small section of the narrative actually takes place on American soil) does it an injustice, and mistakes the nature of the Great American Novel, which cannot desire to be a Great American Novel and hope to become one, without at least examining the nature of its own desire.”


“That’s some Jedi shit right there,” said Saul Bellow.

Literary experts speculate that the naked man may be Ernest Hemingway.

We ruminated on this for some time.

“Truly,” I said, speaking for the first time, “Moby Dick is the only Great American Novel. Some of our most treasured books deal with social issues; some are tragic, some whimsical. Some of them, over perhaps the last fifty years, have clearly had no potential legacy, but have been worked up anyway by a critical consensus desperate for this peculiar thing, this Great American Novel, which only ever came about from a colonial identity crisis and a desire to replicate the literary successes of Great Britain. But great literature is not duplication. Moby Dick is only so memorable because it cannot be so clearly defined. Moby Dick is not a novel; it is everything.”

And the enormous whale burst up through the water, its jaws surrounding us on all sides, hurling us up into the air, scattering we damned fools, we novelists, in all directions.

I was lucky; bouncing off the slick final chapters of Moby Dick, I fell into the ocean at one side of the carnage. Many of my shipmates simply dropped back into the creature’s gargantuan mouth. I caught a glimpse of Captain Roth, stabbing ferociously at the whale’s hide with a harpoon, his legs pinioned against it, roaring,

“Give me that Nobel Prize, you sons of bitches!”

And then he, too, was dragged below the surface.

On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the Beat poets, who’d been hoping for a bite or two out of a Great American Novel themselves, though mostly this was related to a severe case of the munchies.

*

As told to Jon Ware.

Wider Reading | The time I met Andy and Angela McCoy outside an iLiKETRAiNS show

Last night, I went to see iLiKETRAiNS (or I Like Trains as they now profess to be called) at the 100 Club – this may or may not, incidentally, be a clue about who’s going to be behind this week’s mixtape. Anyway, stepping outside onto Oxford Street for a quick cigarette in between the two dreadful support acts, the following occurred:

Man dressed as gauntly ribbony rock‘n’roll pirate approaches, a bevy of astonishingly drunk and frankly dirty-looking hanger-ons in tow.

Man – Thaddaspliff?

Me – I’m sorry?

Man – Thadda. Spliff?

Me – No. This is Oxford Street. That would be imprudent.

Man – Who’s playing in there?

Matt Cooper from Spring Offensive – iLiKETRAiNS (Matt prefers the old spelling)

Man grunts.

Me (to man) – I like your gold tooth.

Woman unceremoniously pushes man out of the way.

Woman – It’s Andy fucken McCoy dude, show some fucken respect.

Me – Who?

Woman – Andy fucken McCoy.

She grabs my cigarette.

Me – I don’t know who that is.

Matt Cooper from Spring Offensive – Is he famous?

She returns my cigarette and starts to walk off. She turns around.

Woman – See y’all later man, I love you.

Beat.

Woman – What am I saying, I don’t love you, I don’t even fucken know you.

So look, it turns out Andy McCoy (Matt and I initially thought she’d said Jason McCoy – himself an established Canadian c&w singer-songwriter it turns out – but Matt’s girlfriend Lianne put us right. That such a mistake was even possible to make, is a testament to how fucking drunk these fifty-somethings actually were) it turns out Andy McCoy is a pretty interesting dude. Perhaps even deserving of the ‘fucken respect’ that was asked of unsuspecting me.

Lead guitarist and principal songwriter with Hanoi Rocks, the most successful Finnish band of the 1980s and godfathers of hair metal (Duff McKagan and Slash used to go to their shows. They used to party with Mötley Crüe until Vince Neil killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle in a drunken car crash. Don't get in a car with Vince Neil) Andy McCoy has written songs with Ian Hunter of Mott The Hoople, played guitar on a couple Iggy tours and has inspired the admiration of such esteemed mediocres as the Manics, the Foos, Alice in Chains and Joe Elliot of Def Leppard, who went as far as to state the following:

The only band – and I’m not saying it because we’re here [Swedish festival] – the only band that did pull it off was Hanoi Rocks. I thought Hanoi Rocks were a good band, and Michael Monroe [Hanoi frontman] was one of the best… I would have shagged him. [Laughs] I like Michael, I think he’s sexy, and I’m not gay. And I think Andy McCoy does the best kind of Keith Richards... so much better than Mötley Crüe or Poison or any of those bands. Hanoi Rocks were real – the rest of the guys, it was all a bit fake for me.

Such is McCoy’s stature in Finland, a statue of him was erected in the main square of a town called Pelkosenniemi. He continues to make music and does a bunch of other stuff, best summarised by what has to be the worst written Wiki page on the entire net:

Besides music, McCoy is an avid painter and he also makes a lot of his own clothes for himself and his wife along with Designing jewelry, scarfs, you name it and he can make something not so good looking look great. Ivo De Lange At Team IQ (www.iq.nl) whom is McCoy’s Creative Consultant saw something very Innovative and special in Andy and his paintings. McCoy had his first Art Exhibition last May 2010 at The Cabel Factory In Helsinki, Finland titled ‘Pure McCoy Hits Canvas’. The Art Exhibition was a great success protected by The Kingdom Of The Netherlands. Team IQ and McCoy plan to have another one in the near future.

Glorious. ‘The Art Exhibition was a great success protected by the Kingdom Of The Netherlands.’ What the bloody hell does that mean? Needless to say, the guy’s paintings are fucking dreadful.

Oh yeah, his wife. Andy’s wife, who I’m almost certain is the nice lady who took my cigarette then loved me then didn’t love me IS JOHNNY THUNDERS’ COUSIN. This would be reason enough to put together an Essay-Soundtrack-Playlist celebrating an extraordinary ten seconds that, in hindsight, I should have definitely followed up by writing off iLiKETRAiNS and painting the town whisky-/vomit-coloured with McCoy’s crew. That most of Hanoi Rocks’ work is actually pretty fun is an even better reason. So here it is.

And God bless you both, Andy and Angela McCoy. Truly I can now say, I love you both too.

SKS

Leviathan | Wider Reading | Job 41

Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?

Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?

Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee?

Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?

Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?

Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants?

Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?

Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.

Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?

None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me?

Who hath prevented me, that I should repay him? whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.

I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion.

Who can discover the face of his garment? or who can come to him with his double bridle?

Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.

His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.

One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.

They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.

By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.

Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.

Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.

His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.

In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.

The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in themselves; they cannot be moved.

His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.

When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid: by reason of breakings they purify themselves.

The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.

He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.

The arrow cannot make him flee: slingstones are turned with him into stubble.

Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.

Sharp stones are under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things upon the mire.

He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.

He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.

Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.

He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.

Leviathan | Introduction | Kilbit

Week 24 | Leviathan | Contents

Tuesday | Poetry | Incest Porn

Wednesday | Fiction | An Exclusive Story by Jonathan Franzen, 'The Intonement' 

Thursday | Music | Leviathan.Rook.Crow.JohnnyRook.Ox.Eagle.Lion.etc.

Friday | Chapbook | Lost and Found, by Rowena Knight

A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable.
William Wordsworth

This week we will be discussing Leviathan - the most monsterous of monsters. Avanc, whale, sea shaped demon and the very mouth of hell.

As soil treaders the sea is an encounter of the second kind - the nearest to alien that we can get within our own atmosphere. If you thought a shark was scary - wait till you see this...

JH

Swamp | Mixtape | Vol XV, Narrative for Orchestra

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Music As Reading: Mixtape XV, Narrative for Orchestra

For a background to this mixtape, a rather hysterical and dreadfully organised set of paragraphs are available here. To summarise, it is intended to be a reflection on the way that we can’t help but read certain songs forever tied up with the television show/ film/ whatever narratives that we’ve seen them accompany/ introduce/ symbolise/ whatever enough times that this connection has become the point of the song, whether we like it or not. Such tracks, indeed, represent an act of Music As Reading that we’ve all engaged in, subconsciously or not, at one point or another, and deserve to be recognised as such. Lyrics and even mood are discarded and the connotation is king! Half of the mixtape will illustrate the various points made in those aforementioned paragraphs, the other will introduce a few other particularly compelling examples – for the potential scale of this mixtape is enormous, but citing examples such as the Star Wars theme and Singing in the Rain would be a waste of everybody’s time.

We’ll begin then, to pay lip-service to this week’s theme, with Jace Everett’s ‘Bad Things’ along with another of his recent tracks, ‘More to Life (C’Mon C’Mon)’ to demonstrate that ‘Bad Things’ probably isn’t as good as we think it is. Then we’ll draw out the strand of teenage association via Remy Zero’s ‘Save Me’, Mates of State’s decent attempt to make ‘California’ listenable and Simple Mind’s ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ to demonstrate that this has been going on for some time in a teen-sense – since 1985’s Breakfast Club, certainly. We’ll then explore four of the five versions of The Wire’s ‘Way Down in the Hole,’ two versions of Twin Peaks’ ‘Falling’ (the Wedding Present cover proving that even when a band with a significant, important, connotative identity take on one of these songs, the narrative prevails) and finish off with Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’ in order to state, in less explicit terms, I hope it was the fucking label what sold it to Hollyoaks. ‘Red Right Hand’ also offers a useful segue into Cave’s cinematic soundtrack work, an unsurprising example of music acting, beyond its original context, as a vessel for narrative – considering that Cave wrote a soundtrack for the audio version of his most recent novel and just generally has form here, as regular readers will have noticed. Then, by way of conclusion, three other examples of this phenomenon manifesting in film: Carly Simon’s ‘Nobody Does it Better’ from The Spy Who Loved Me, mainly because of Alan Partridge. Bernard Herrman’s Psycho work for straightforwardly evocative reasons as well as the fact that when he combined all the cinematic fragments into a single composition he called it ‘a Narrative for Orchestra’. And the Door’s ‘The End’ because, despite the fact it was the final song played at the band’s last ever gig i.e. represents a fabulously important musical-biographical punctuation mark (and a staggeringly appropriate one at that), one can’t hear that without first thinking of Kurtz/Brando. A fitting final testament to the power of the imposed filmic narrative. And one that comes full circle, in terms of its relation to this week’s theme. For Apocalypse Now = Martin Sheen, in blackface, in primeval swamp, as much as it = anything, right?

TRACKLIST, Y’SAY?

Bad Things – Jace Everett (True Blood)
More to Life (C’mon C’mon) – Jace Everett
Save Me – Remy Zero (Smallville)
California – Mates of State (The OC)
Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Simple Minds (The Breakfast Club)
Way Down in the Hole – The Blind Boys of Alabama (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – Tom Waits (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – The Neville Brothers (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – Domaje (The Wire)
Falling – Julee Cruise (Twin Peaks)
Falling – The Wedding Present
Red Right Hand – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (NOT Hollyoaks)
The Proposition #1 – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Proposition)
Song for Jesse – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Assassination of Jesse James...)
The Road – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Road)
Nobody does it Better – Carly Simon (The Spy Who Loved Me)
Psycho: Narrative for Orchestra – Bernard Herrman (Psycho)
The End – The Doors (Apocalypse Now)

Swamp | Chapbook | Vol XXXV, Chords by Michael Patrick McSweeney

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Vol XXXV, Chords

Michael Patrick McSweeney