good works

I seem to be meeting a lot of new people these days, and thus fairly frequently testing out little nutshell explanations of what I’m doing with my life. Being asked “Qu’est-ce que tu fais dans ta vie?” has always struck my WASPy neural pathways as a little abrupt, but, though it’s still primarily used to ask after someone’s job, I appreciate the formulation for its offering a little more conceptual openness than what’s allowed by “So what do you do for work?” I imagine the former creates more space in which to identify a doing of some sort – an occupation? a calling? – that may not necessarily overlap with how one pays the rent. It’s a space I’ve been spending some time thinking within lately, as I self-consciously tell people I’m getting paid to read books for a living, once in a while trying out “researcher” instead of “grad student,” half-joking about the softness of my hands as inversely proportional to the righteousness of my class rage. I'll say “I’m working,” and I might mean editing a press release or wrangling a meeting, or writing a grant application or an essay or lyrics, watering the plants or doing the dishes or the laundry, or, indeed, going in for a shift at the warehouse.

Our languages are older than the mode of production, of course, and in a way perhaps it's simply that we haven't sufficiently adapted them to describe the perverse shapes that capitalism's laws of value have forced our lives to assume: how can we use the same terms to describe both pure drudgery done only out of necessity or coercion and constructive, creative activity from which we can derive such deep joy? I won’t go quite as far as some Marxist romantics in believing it the key to the full flowering of humankind’s gattungswesen or whatever, but I can't agree that labour, as such, is reducible to simply “a depressingly inevitable part of the human condition” (see Sam Gindin in the AK Press update of Raymond Williams’ Keywords). To me there's always this needling sense of some higher stakes: some other, peculiar gravity bearing down on the question.

Take away the self-consciousness about my lack of career ambition or earning potential (those markers of bourgeois respectability that I'm supposed to have gotten over as a teenager); or the guilt about not doing enough to support my family (because yeah, I’ve got family to support); or the ableism, explicit and ambient and internalized, telling me I’m too much of a debt and/or eugenic burden (to borrow phrasing from Artie Vierkant and Beatrice Adler-Bolton); or the embarrassing yearning for significance and meaning measured only in terms of other people’s approval and acclaim. Put all of that aside and still, when called upon to describe my living – called to account for the ways in which I live – I can’t help but feel there's a debt to be honoured, like there’s been a fundamental bargain made with the world and I have yet to make good on my end of it.

When we've emerged victorious from all the battles to come, when inequality and gender and the police have been abolished and it's all "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need," what will it mean to talk about labour? It's not just my anger with god, I swear, but it's so much work just to exist, and yet everyone’s still so haunted by the sense that somehow simply being isn’t enough – we all feel that pull, don't we? Is it always necessarily a bad thing?

Anyways, here's some songs for when you've gotta make the donuts. Per above, I’ve been feeling not too unlike a human these days, so this time around they're all sung. There's a lot in here about letting go, in one way or another, whether it’s of love or anger or guilt or expectation, and damn, I’m sure feeling lately like I could use some of that kind of grace.

It starts off with a bit of triumphant mourning courtesy of one Hannah Frances, whose Keeper of the Shepherd released this past spring. Its stunning opener “Bronwyn” is technically complex and boldly emotional, serving as a sort of mission statement, tender and ebullient and self-confident, if nonetheless a bit world-wearied. Next it's "Describe," a breathtaking highlight from Perfume Genius’ 2020 LP Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, which came out just as the pandemic was setting in and feels no less vital four years on. A hallmark of Mike Hadreas’ earlier work was a kind of brutal rawness, and though that’s still present here, this record steers it towards something more sensual and rapturous, viscerally rooted in the corporeal while aiming for the sublime. “Describe” is a generous and romantic gesture, at once miles deep and immediate. Then it’s Lucas Frank’s Storefront Church with “Divine Distraction,” a delicate and deliberate look into the face of the great big darkness. I’ve got my hesitations about “baroque pop” as a signifier, but if the shoe fits anywhere it’s here, though I’ll also say that for all its high drama and swelling strings and the like, Frank’s work doesn’t feel overly indulgent or self-serious to me at all.

Next it's "I Was Saved by Rock and Roll," from All Wild Things Are Shy, the forthcoming posthumous LP from the great Richard Laviolette, and honestly just a perfect song. I asked Sarah Mangle, an absolute legend, to introduce it (thanks tons, Sarah!):

Richard is one of my very best pals. In the mid 2000s, we were romantic partners for a couple of years. Before we were a couple, we were friends and fellow musicians, and after we were a couple, we were good friends and bandmates. Richard’s music was his primary artform and a way he channelled love, activism, education and beauty to his audience, community, friends, and lovers. This last album ALL WILD THINGS ARE SHY was launched last night, Aug 1, 2024, 11 months after he died. SAVED BY ROCK AND ROLL is a song on that new album about the years Richard spent in Sackville, NB around 2016, during a challenging period of his life, and the community and rock and roll he found in Sackville. His then partner, Klarka Weinwurm is named in the song. I saw Klarka and Richard play in their band, DOUBLE VISION outside of Sackville in a farm festival called SNAKE DAYS during that time period. That was a wild farm party, complete with giant homemade stuffed snakes. Klarka’s love of rock and roll, partnership, snacks and having a good time buoyed Richard. Klarka is fucking cool. It’s hard, you know, when a person is a public person, especially a community based one. It means the private difficulties others might have in their lives can be laid open to more public more elongated scrutiny. It means we sometimes don’t have the privacy we deserve or need when we’re just trying to, in a human way, get by.

After that, I’ve pulled another tune from Wye Oak’s Every Day Like The Last, which they released last year as a sort of grab bag of recordings that hadn’t made it onto proper albums. “I Learned It From You” is short and almost unbearably sweet, disclosing the tension of emotional dependency in a huge melodic sweep. Then it’s Grouper, who I don’t believe needs much introduction at this point, with “Kelso (Blue Sky),” a highlight from 2021’s Shade, uncharacteristically optimistic for Liz Harris, though of course not still without a health dose of her signature melancholy. That’s followed up by “Blood Moon” from Penelope Trappes, whose widely-varied oeuvre ranges from the smoky goth-pop adventurism so deftly displayed here, to the haunting and formless drone excursions of Hommelen, which just released in June and which I’d strongly recommend checking out.

Next is “Raat Ki Rani,” a lush and exquisitely-arranged mediation on the deep night from folk-jazz experimentalist Arooj Aftab’s latest LP Night Reign, the follow up to her 2021 breakthrough Vulture Prince. Listen closely and you’ll notice the subtle autotune on Aftab’s gently soaring voice, which really ought not to work as well as it does here. Then it’s cellist and weirdo pop titan Mabe Fratti, master of stripping songs down to their most basic component parts and rolling them around like dice, with “Oidos,” from her latest LP Sentir que no sabes. That’s followed up by “The Two of Us” by the mighty Nina Nastasia, whose latest full-length, Riderless Horse, appeared in 2022. As is perhaps clear from these no-nonsense lyrics, she’s been through some shit during the 12 year gap between this and her last LP, and come through it humbly resolute as ever.

Now, among the many things I love about Eric Chenaux’s uncanny way with songcraft (and indeed there are many), is his implicit understanding that a song exceeds any specific iteration of itself – and after all, the musician’s job is to serve the song, rather than the other way around, right? That might be a counter-intuitive way to introduce an 11-minute extended jam, but this take on “Love Don’t Change” seems to me an archetypal illustration of the principle. The tune, quietly devastating in all its simplicity, appeared on his 2008 LP Sloppy Ground, but clearly there was more to say, and on this recently-released 2003 recording with Michelle McAdorey (another indie-folk wonder in her own right, as demonstrated here) the duo artfully take out its bones and watch it wobble around the room, letting the light bounce off at odd angles – an absolute joy.

Then it’s “Imbecile Thoughts,” a nervy burst of frustrated passion and torch song for lives and loves contorted by and for money, drawn from Siskiyou’s 2017 LP Nervous. Finally, and speaking of songs about being broke, things close with perhaps one of the best ever written: “Walking Is Still Honest” is from one of the first releases by Against Me!, when it was still a little anarchist folk-punk solo project from Laura Jane, passed around among the believers on recycled cassette tapes. Whatever I think about what the directions the band took later on, I’m still endlessly grateful for her work and the example it set: the sincerity in its conviction, the intelligence and nuance in its politics, the subtlety in its anger.

Okay that's it!

• Mixcloud: good works (aug 2024)

• MP3: 24/08 - good works.zip

NB: Same as last time, I've included a single hour-long MP3 of the whole mix in the zip file linked above (along with the individual MP3s).

Also and finally, since I'm now in my actually-inviting-people-to-shows era, I'll let you know that my band Clayborne will be playing at TurboHaus on September 6, to officially launch our debut LP. We're going to have some special guests, and it'll be a fun night, we promise.

Many thanks as always, friends, and thanks especially to Sarah Mangle.

xo, graham