Going to Wingdale

It would be inappropriate to mention here that I'm listening to the Wingdale Community Singers' debut album. Said group consists of two folks best known for their music -- David Grubbs and Hannah Marcus -- and one fellow best known for his writing (Rick Moody). It's a nicely understated, mostly acoustic record; while it definitely feels like a debut, there isn't much awkwardness to it. This can probably be chalked up to its members' collective experience making music, and the fact that all three Singers have worked together on the past (see also: Grubbs' A Guess at the Riddle).

I was at a friend's apartment the other day when this program on the band could be heard on WNYC. I say "could be heard" because, well, we were in the other room watching Heaven's Gate -- though the stripped-down folk-influenced music made by Grubbs, Marcus and Moody complimented the imagery of said film surprisingly well.)

I'm reviewing the Wingdale disc for ARC in the days to come; when the review's up, I'll post a link to it here.

(Also, fans of the music of David Grubbs might do well to head to the Lower East Side this Saturday. I'm just sayin'.)

YA

In the days when I could have been called a Young Adult, I didn't read much of the fiction designated for Young Adults; I think that, somewhere along the way, I made the jump headlong into the Adult world, and that was that. (Which, among other things, led to my reading a number of books that I flat-out didn't 'get' at the time. Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, for one, at the age of fourteen or so.) I've since read a couple of books that could be called YA -- mostly recommendations from one of my cohorts here -- and dug them considerably (the His Dark Materials trilogy; Garth Nix's Sabriel;). Via Cory Doctorow and BoingBoing comes a recommendation that seems to be along similar lines. This looks fascinating...

Kirn Online

I haven't read as much of Walter Kirn's work as I've intended to; the essays of his that I have read have impressed me, and with the release of a film adaptation of his novel Thumbsucker on the horizon, he's been more in the foreground of my brain lately.

He's a guest blogger this week on Andrew Sullivan's blog, and it should make for an interesting couple of days' reading.