REPULSION BY MARJA HAGBORG Every ounce and inch of your body aches and revolts; your mind parallaxes, as if it’s been stricken by lightening. You keep throwing up - figuratively speaking - again and again, intent on purging all the poison spoon-fed to you since childhood; you aim to spit out the last drop of contaminated. The toxic waste must be removed, dumped, buried – forsaken and forgotten. They say you should never harbor hatred and contempt in your heart. Who says? The fools, of course! The same fools who say you should forgive and forget and forgive again. Yes, they do! They also say you should tolerate Evil and Depravity, the identical twins who rule the world. You should have patience, say the religious people. Yeah, yeah, you say, enough of that crap. You have learned that patience is for dimwits, forgiveness for fools. Now you know for sure that you've run out of it; you are not going to play shrink, nurse, or social worker for the nasty, the wicked and the stupid. You’re fed up with them all now, wish them dead; you can see them rotting in pits of toxic waste, strip clubs reeking of the sour body fluids of desperate people, the opaque tears of whores on crack, the semen of mobsters and bank presidents. You wish them dead, the ones who wear Dior and Diamonds in Fancy French restaurants with their gaping, greedy mouths filled with livers of tortured small animals, the ones who penetrate their lovers’ snatches with butts of Cuban cigars. You can see them rotting in their wood paneled board rooms, the young CEO’s with their nouveau riche armpits, guzzlers of bottled water. You’ve attained immunity to the sight of fly covered corpses in golf carts and swimming pools once filled with green cool water now turning into slimy yellow liquid with tiny bubbles penetrating the oily surface. Hope exists only for those already dead. Author bio: M.H. is a short story writer and artist who lives in Chicago with a Viking husband and a tuxedo cat. She is author of short story collection Orphan Dog.
Grr by Paul Hostovsky I love the grouchy words-- peevish, irascible, bilious-- I am all of them--crabby, morose, snarky and more. I hate the phrase “and more.” It’s so American, so manifest destiny. I hate all the increase, all the excess, all the productivity-- the abundance, the stuff, the shelves upon shelves. And the free shipping. We’re prolific as fuck and I am such an asshole. I’m surly, tetchy, moody, nasty and gnarly. I admit it. I revel in it. I’m querulous, captious, and vindictive. And it's not just the adjectives I love. I love the verbs too. Lour, glower, growl and glare. And snarl. And more! My stepdaughter gave me a T-shirt with Grumpy on it. You know, Grumpy of Seven Dwarves’ fame? I love it. I own it. I wear it like a badge of assholiness. Like a bellying flag. Listen, don’t be an asshole if you can help it. But if you can’t help it, help others to understand the assholes. Be an ambassador of assholes. Wear it on your sleeve, on your chest, on your boobs. Wear it on your belly. Because you can’t be what you want to be if you can’t be what you are first. So go ahead, be that way. And if you don’t love yourself, try loving the superabundance of pithy words for describing someone as hateful as you. Author bio: Paul Hostovsky's poems appear and disappear simultaneously (voila!) and have recently been sighted in places where they pay you for your trouble with your own trouble doubled, and other people's troubles thrown in, which never seem to him as great as his troubles, though he tries not to compare. He has no life and spends it with his poems, trying to perfect their perfect disappearances, which is the working title of his new collection, which is looking for a publisher and for itself.
Manganese by Dave Shortt Parkinsonian movements complicate the downward reach into happily happening to be born 'with a hoe in your hands,' the thing that made love of working the land a no-brainer, aided by debatably small handwriting, & so for an agriculturist all the water-soluble implements of soil culture (tines, blades, celts) become who they are, being absorbed through the pores through pathways of sweat into an endless harvest trying to break even as it started noticing its own mysterious 'mitochondrial' anger like in a Balkans fertility feud, while in a purple-turning lower chakra where would-be areas of focused concentration rising from an offender's poor attentions might be uptaken in antioxidated dawning visions of Canaan, sprouting flowering together with inklings of imprisoning manufactures breaking into have & have-not toxicities including a consolatory escape clause of a wonderful wife subtly breathing while on vacation in a geology of untapped riches, the atoms all lining up such & such, perfect in their own way, was it fair that they couldn't admit they were the problem? it was in the wrong place, but so was everything else, an ammoniated stratum of reality, trying to stay sober in tests of alchemy when (after the latest breathalyzer) still being stuck inside the same walking rustbucket, gone so rusty as to border on incompetence just when eye-tremors become interpretable as 'leaving the emotions behind,' expressionlessly, back where friendship was ending in ghosting manifestos leaving an aftertaste of alternative deities, while industrial dreams (now deemed obsolete)
that created you & you would have to be replaced by other dreams, refreshing sleeps, waking on a headland overlooking high tide trivializing the sound of each 'because' (but wait, this may've already happened, brainfog symptomatically forwarding it into the Krebs cycle's continuous self-effacement, helping organize an underground of archetypes in a break in routine in a free Sunday, during intimations of bardos of self-display, in a barrage of metabolism honoring the guest citric acid's winning hand, bankrolled by the mystery of Abraham's years, the psyche nestling into the 21st century, evolution interpreted as the little town just passed through, behind the times with its bad air, regressed with narcissism or a damaged globus pallidus it's said, essential fatty acids still pervading the senility of its fisherfolk, lack of chagrin at least taking over in them from awe experienced via the health of earlier catches, as the wealth of neurological signs pays nothing to compensate barren casts into shoals of dementia, as enzymes rush through light cones of symbolic illnesses like minor earthquakes rocking the topology again, diagnoses translating to 'everyone says you look fine,' influential, present in these edifying moments, 'moved by the basal ganglia,' mood moodily determined, imminent stuff, but not so sure 'for now the strong force claims the mind of those 25 things' Author bio: Dave Shortt is a long-time writer from the USA whose work has appeared over the years in a number of online and print literary-type venues including Silver Pinion, Sulfur, Peculiar Mormyrid, and Collidescope. Two of his poems are scheduled to run soon in Carmina."
REVIEWZ
TINY-ASS REVIEWS: TEN BEST MUZAKS OF 2023 PETER GABRIEL (i/o) - Rousing, intimate, and eccentric in that inimitable Gabrielan way; stunningly evocative of his 70s and 80s work, and yet somehow fresh as a newborn prog-baby - with an artrock mother, of course. WATER FROM YOUR EYES (EVERYTHING'S CRUSHED) - Speaking of art-rock, check the FUCK out of Water from Your Eyes, and bask endlessly in their artfully bruised dance-punk/nowave/dream-pop/genre-and gravity-defying tunes. SLOWDIVE (EVERYTHING'S ALIVE) - Warning: This music may induce extreme melancholy, with its lushly layered, dreamily desolate soundscapes that are so tempting to immerse yourself in - but only if you are a fierce swimmer. PROTOMARTYR (FORMAL GROWTH IN THE DESERT) - On this release, Protomartyr have subtly evolved their sound into something more expansive and not as claustrophobically volatile as previous efforts, and yet shadows ever loom over the turmoil churning within their signature sound. TOLHURST X BUDGIE X JACKNIFE LEE (LOS ANGELES) - Fiercely adventurous and sprawlingly diverse in sound, mimicking the variegated aspects of the title locale, and showcasing such disparate talents as James Murphy, Bobby Gillespie, Lonnie Holley and Arrow de Wilde.
OMD (BAUHAUSE STAIRCASE) - Simultaneously (and paradoxically) revives the ambience of 80s synth-pop, infused as it is with a charming naivety, while lyrically invoking less innocent themes like, oh, I dunno - looming eco-fiascos? GEESE (3D COUNTRY) - Working with a proggier canvas than the debut, and yet still wielding a post-punk brush, there are generous Pollack-esque splatterings of blues and gospel, and vocals that simultaneously captivate and aggravate. DRAB MAJESTY (AN OBJECT IN MOTION EP) - The majestically drab duo has slyly wedged two breezy excursions into quasi-classical guitar pop between tunes of swirling shoegaze goth (shoegoth?), likely alienating its more mercurial fans. DEPECHE MODE (MEMENTO MORI) - This just in: Depeche Mode has a sloppy orgy with old schoolers Gary Numan and Kraftwerk, middle-aged schooler NIN, and ancient scholars from Berlin-era cabaret - and from out their loins pops this album of pristine tunes, which lyrically mines the the inevitability of ephemerality. PIL (END OF WORLD) - Not PIL's strongest effort by miles and miles, but it gets mega-points for the poignant ode to Lydon's late wife, "Hawaii"; "End of World," "Car Chase" and "Penge" also stand as sturdy testaments to the post-punk pioneer's enduring appeal.
GOTHIC TRIBES: CURE CO-FOUNDER LOL TOLHURST EXPLORES POP MUSIC’S DARK ARTISTS/By Alison Ross In the past few decades since leaving the band he helped start, the Cure co-founder, drummer, and keyboardist Lol Tolhurst has been steadily “reclaiming” and “repossessing” his art, as he puts it in his latest tome, Goth: A History. His recent musical venture with Siouxsie and the Banshees’ former drummer, Budgie, entitled Los Angeles, has met with wide acclaim, and he’s been immersed in other musical projects as well, most notably Levinhurst, with his wife, Cindy. In 2016, Tolhurst added writer to his palette of talents with the release of Cured, a book that details his beatific highs and bottomless lows with the Cure and his attendant struggles with alcoholism. Tolhurst’s new book – in parts, anyway – can almost be considered a sequel to Cured, as his tales involving the making of the storied proto-gothic trilogy Seventeen Seconds (1980), Faith (1981), and Pornography (1982) are like comfort food for the ravenous Cure fan. Goth: A History details in intimate fashion an encapsulation of the mercurial music movement, interweaving anecdotes and personal memories with descriptions of how the “architects of darkness” such as the Banshees, Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, and, yes, the Cure, helped generate a style that indeed is more pervasive today than ever, with sartorial nods on display in malls across the world, movies, and television shows implicitly or explicitly infusing gothic themes, and endless streams of post-punk and goth revival bands (a few of which are discussed in the book – Drab Majesty and Molchat Doma, for example). Of course, Tolhurst also touches on the seeds planted by “prototypes” such as the Doors, horror rockers like Alice Cooper, and glam rockers like Bowie, not to mention the literature and art that informed the music (Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allen Poe, Albert Camus, TS Eliot, Francis Bacon). Naturally, Tolhurst briefly examines bands that were more goth-adjacent, like Cocteau Twins, or bands that were part-time goths, such as the Damned. He furthermore delves into how unlikely
bands such as Wire inspired the Cure’s incursions into darkness and how others like Depeche Mode – not technically goth though tinged with gothic overtones – helped usher the expansion of the music into the mainstream. Finally, the author treats readers to an insider look at the clubs that buoyed the ’80s goth movement (such as the Batcave) and the visual aspects of goth, fashion-wise, and decor-wise. At times, Tolhurst may go off on seemingly marginally related tangents, but he always brings it back around to the topic at hand, showcasing just how intricate a movement goth ultimately is, with nuanced influences and less obvious sources of inspiration. If there is one critique of Goth: A History that I could offer, I would say that it would be nice to have a more in-depth discussion about the OGs – not the 1980s goths, but the actual Original Goths, the Germanic tribe – and how we got from there to here. A deeper dive into the architecture of the time, the evolution of goth fashion and literature, and so on would have provided fuller context and further grounding. It seems that the concept of goth has traveled a long way over time and that its modern mutation, in many ways, bears little resemblance to the past, and a delineation of that might have proved fruitful and elucidating. In fact, critic and musician John Robb offers such a purview in his book about goth, The Art of Darkness, which was also published in 2023. But Robb’s book is also an unwieldy 600 pages, while Tolhurst’s Goth: A History is a more manageable and streamlined 228-page history. That said, a thorough comparison of the two books would not be fair since I have not made a huge dent in Robb’s book just yet. Let’s just say that Robb’s book is hefty, and a bit messy, though not without heaps of intrigue as well. Crucially, Tolhurst does address the mildly controversial claim about whether the Cure is a true goth band. Indeed, I often roll my eyes at such a pedestrian pronouncement whenever the “accusation” is leveled that the Cure is a goth band. Just because they look goth doesn’t mean they are, musically speaking. The Cure is too varied in sound to fit into such provincial pigeonholing. If there is any Cure “signature sound,” it’s in the emotional evocations: the euphorias, the melancholy, and really just the overall spectrum of sentiments from the vehement to the delicate and every subtle shade in between. Cure music is about feeling; style is secondary and always metamorphosing. But Tolhurst makes a strong case that the Cure (obliviously) played a formative part in the original goth movement. The Cure may not be a true goth band, in the end, given their post-trilogy forays into sundry sonic territories, but they certainly helped shape the sound and, yes, even the goth look. (And heck, the Cure did actually come back around to inhabit their early gothic skin, first with 1989’s art-goth masterpiece Disintegration, then with 2000’s psych-goth masterpiece Bloodflowers, and finally with the yet-to-be-released goth-opera Songs of a Lost World – proving that their impact is so strong, they even influenced themselves!) Tolhurst makes an equally strong case for the fact that contrary to popular perception, gothic music doesn’t exacerbate melancholy but rather relieves sadness through validating its listeners’ emotions, making tangible their anguished yearnings, and enabling a sublimation of such longings into something more bearable and, dare we say, beautiful. In other words, goth might just be our salvation. Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in PopMatters, January 2024.
Protomartyr Showcase Subtle Expansion of Their Shadowy Sound/By Alison Ross The music of Detroit-based Protomartyr has always felt dense and dark, so, interestingly, they have recorded their latest album, Formal Growth in the Desert, in the desert. A place called Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas, to be exact, where there are sun-baked Sonoran rock formations. The group that fellow Michigander and punk pioneer Iggy Pop called “the best band we’ve got in America right now” decamped from moody Motor City to sandy West Texas, if only temporarily. One would think, then, that an album informed by and formed in the Western desert might have a “sunnier” sound (whatever that means) or maybe even some desolate expanses in the tunes. But solar-infused sonics aren’t quite there, though you can hear nuanced intonations of levity. However, the music is indeed less impenetrable than previous efforts. There’s more room for the instruments to breathe, and a true sense of space, at times invoking a feeling of being surrounded by the sky as you contemplate the stars. There are some Western touches in the music; after all, guitarist and co-producer Greg Ahee had been listening to Spaghetti Western soundtracks during the recording process. The standout “Let’s Tip the Creator” features Ennio Morricone-like textures and reverb to excellent effect. The music seems tighter and more accessible. While it’s always been difficult for me to discern the Motown influence with Protomartyr, in songs like “Elimination Dances”, you can hear a rhythmic buoyancy. Protomartyr move toward lush territory and shoegaze subtexts in “We Know the Rats”. Yet those cowboy guitar hooks reappear, evoking the swirling dust and sneering gunslingers of southwestern wastelands. Joe Casey’s stony vocals always severely contrast anything that approaches upbeat, so there’s that to contend with, too. Protomartyr’s music is challenging in the most rewarding way; shadows ever loom over the turmoil churning within their signature sound. That deadpan vocal delivery is showcased most dynamically on riff-heavy songs like “3800 Tigers” and “Graft vs. Host”, where Casey’s voice can slink from a stoic whisper to an understated croon (“Graft vs. Host”) or even lurch toward a gritty bellow (“3800 Tigers”).
Another shouty song, “Fun in Hi Skool”, starts with a twitchy, almost danceable sensibility but unfolds toward controlled chaos, reminding us of Protomartyr’s decidedly raggedy origins. On the other hand, the single and singular “Polacrilex Kid” sees Casey flattening out that shout and giving his best anti-rap as guitars fiercely shimmer in the background and his voice pounds out syllables in a defiantly non-rhythmic way. The David Lynchian touches in the video add absurdist heft to an already surrealistic song ostensibly about aging. Lyrically, the other songs find Casey, often obliquely, grappling with parental death, the dystopian aspects of technology and capitalism, and being a crime victim. Yet through it all, there is hope: “Can you hate yourself / And still deserve love?” he asks in “Polacrilex Kid”, and in response, he croons, “I am deserving of love,” in “Rain Garden”. Formal Growth in the Desert closes with the droning, softly cascading “Rain Garden”. Given that the desert is, by definition, often void of rain, it seems fitting that Protomartyr would circle back toward something less arid; the song is drenched in eerie melody. On Formal Growth in the Desert, Protomartyr have ever-so-subtly evolved their sound into something not quite mellow and not quite as expansive as its titular reference – and yet also not as claustrophobically volatile as previous efforts. It’s something gloriously in between. Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in PopMatters, 2023. ‘Between Two Worlds’ Traverses Class Issues with Privileged Ease/by ALISON ROSS Two recent films and one slightly older book came to mind while watching the 2021 French film Between Two Worlds (Ouistreham, directed by Emmanuel Carrère and starring Juliette Binoche). Ruben Östlund’s 2022 comedy-drama Triangle of Sadness and John Patton Ford’s debut feature from the same year, Emily the Criminal, emerged into my psyche while I was watching, but what immediately lept foremost to mind was the 2001 best-selling book Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich. Between Two Worlds is loosely based on a French book with analogous themes, Florence Aubena’s autobiographical best-seller The Night Cleaner (Le Quai de Ouistreham). Triangle of Sadness most closely parallels the premise of Between Two Worlds, as both films center on issues facing cleaners on passenger ships. Therein lies their main shared likeness, but the plots of the two films diverge sharply. In Triangle of Sadness, the overarching theme concerns the balance of power and how that power can become inverted
through disaster. When the survivors of a cruise ship crash are marooned on an island, it turns out that the theretofore “invisible” cleaning lady has sturdier survival skills than the bourgeois passengers, whose privilege has largely bulwarked them against more “primitive” threats. Emily the Criminal, conversely, is a dark take on the gig economy and delves into how desperation might push an otherwise honest person toward illicit activities. Between Two Worlds is neither savagely satirical like Triangle of Sadness nor as forebodingly cynical as Emily the Criminal. On the contrary, the film is soft around the edges. It is a quietly intense affair that provokes thought and compassion but also some moral reckoning. After all, as one of the characters says about the protagonist’s endeavors to go undercover as a cleaning lady on a ferry to research her book about Northern France’s employment crisis, “I can’t decide if what you are doing is right or wrong.” This thought nagged me as I watched Between Two Worlds for the second time – and I don’t mean feeling conflicted about the story itself. Rather, I felt ethical quandaries about the execution of the film. After all, Between Two Worlds features an internationally renowned actress among a cast of non-actors. That is, of course, a great marketing device, and it lured me into watching it as much as the plot description did. Juliette Binoche was persistently keen on doing this film, and doubtless, she feels passionate about the subject matter. And the acting from the non-actors is sublime, not at all obviously amateur. Binoche, as Marianne, is ever a shimmering force and infuses her role with humility and charm. But it’s Hélène Lambert, with her portrayal of Christèle, who steals the show. Lambert inhabits Christèle with raw authenticity. She is, by turns, gentle and fierce, evincing a nuanced metamorphosis of character as she and Binoche’s Marianne form a soulful bond. There are standout scenes of humanizing verisimilitude and true pathos. These are workers who, after all, do low-paying, thankless, brutally backbreaking work, and most are women. In one scene, where the crew of cleaners goes bowling, the characters discuss their tattoos and their dreams of striking it rich. It’s a lighthearted scene that doubles as a way for viewers to empathize with their lives and struggles. In another scene, the crew holds a farewell party for one of their departing members, who is off to take on a modeling job. This scene allows us a glimpse into the heartening camaraderie that can be formed among workers, as well as provides further insight into the hopes and aspirations of the cleaners. In Nickle and Dimed, where Ehrenreich takes on low-wage labor to deeply understand the plight of the working class as far as affording basic food and shelter, the goal is clear: to expose the exploitive aspects of capitalism. In the press materials description of Aubenas’ The Night Cleaners, the author was “determined to find out what it means to be unemployed in the midst of a recession.” Between Two Worlds addresses these problems of the working poor, but by the end, which happens rather abruptly, Binoche’s character has gone back to her real life as a comfortable writer, basking in the praise at a book signing event. While the book she writes from her experience is meant to enlighten and educate the more privileged masses who have the means to read it – itself an activist gesture – Between Two World‘s ending seems condescending to those
“exploited for their stories”, if you will, the working poor. This casts a pall over an otherwise engaging and calmly compelling film. But that’s the point. The unemployment and poverty-wage crisis is global and ongoing. Between Two Worlds and other works shine a necessary light on these tragic realities. While this film does not question the dark side of capitalism or impel viewers to action, what it does do beautifully is celebrate the indomitable spirit of workers – those of us who stand in the shadows together while the rest bask in the glow of their materialistic pleasures. Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in PopMatters, 2023. The Cure’s ‘Wild Mood Swings’ Indulges the Glories of Genre-Jumping/By Alison Ross The Cure are among the most enduring and beloved bands from the 1970s and to this day. As they are currently on the second leg and US portion of their “Shows of a Lost World Tour“, it’s fitting that their extensive discography comes under closer inspection. As part of that oeuvre, 1996’s Wild Mood Swings is the Cure’s most maligned album of the pre-millennium era. Need convincing? Check out the Wild Mood Swings entry on rateyourmusic.com. Laconically spiteful comments exist amidst more thoughtful diatribes that agonizingly analyze why the album has often been branded a stinker.
Search for any variation of “Does the Cure’s Wild Mood Swings suck?” and enjoy an excursion into the rabbit hellhole of wrongheaded critiques from professional and amateur critics alike. Check out the stats for The Prayer Tour, where, according to the Chain of Flowers and the Cureconcerts.de sites, the 1989 tour in support of the Cure’s most popular album, 1989’s Disintegration, sold out 50,000 seat arenas like Dodger Stadium. The Swing Tour only half-sold 10,000 seaters, and there were several canceled shows due to poor ticket sales. However, most get it wrong when it comes to Wild Mood Swings. The album is a scintillatingly significant piece of art. Its two chief “problems” are the timing of its release and two tracks that cast an unfortunate pall over the rest of the album – at least for some people. Of course, which two songs are deemed disposable varies among listeners, but we’ll address that in a moment. Those weaker songs – whichever they may be – are a minor quibble, anyway. Just skip them, and voila! You’ve got a perfect album that is cohesively incoherent, as the case may be, given that it’s shape-shifting in the most ecstatic extremes. Most albums have at least one or two filler tracks anyway, no? Wild Mood Swings is implicitly meant to be an updated, spiritual kin to 1987’s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (hereafter referred to as Kiss Me). Released in 1996, nearly ten years after that masterwork (though some fans do not cherish Kiss Me – can you believe it? It’s rife with hooks, hits, and harmonies, after all), Wild Mood Swings once again showcased the stunning breadth of genre-jumping that the Cure are capable of. Wild Mood Swings is not just meant to showcase that breadth; it’s meant to celebrate, revel in, bask in, glorify, shout, and scream it. What is more tantalizing than music that exalts eclecticism to such stupefying heights? At 18 songs, Kiss Me is a sprawling, thrilling mess of an album that specializes in sonic whiplash. Scorching rockers such as “The Kiss”, “Torture,” and “All I Want” push aside angsty ballads such as “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep” and “A Thousand Hours”. Kiss Me‘s goofiest songs, like “Why Can’t I Be You” chase away dizzy pop and bounce into a snarky funk that dissolves into ethereal serenades. “One More Time” slides into jazzy ditties and “Hot Hot Hot!!!” scats toward Beatnik Rap that then bursts into the sludgy psychedelia of “Shiver and Shake”. Kiss Me is the ultimate anti-concept album embodied in all its lusty glory. After all, it birthed the Cure’s most euphoria-inducing hit, “Just Like Heaven“. At 14 songs to Kiss Me’s 18, Wild Mood Swings is not quite so sprawling, and, as noted, it’s two songs too long – for some fans, anyway. Or, you could keep those songs and embrace the (reputed) flaws. After all, those songs are redeemed by their own adventurous attributes. Either way, Wild Mood Swings might not feel as splayed out as Kiss Me, but it’s just as ebulliently discombobulating with its searing rock, jerky pop, and lush balladry on abundant, delightful display. Kiss Me was of its time – embedded in the ’80s zeitgeist of “anything goes” music-wise. The ’80s is known for its equal embrace of genres – hard rock/synth-pop/R&B and every nuanced hue in between shared equitably in the love-fest showered upon bands. MTV and radio spat out a wild variety of sounds, and while there was some definite genre segregation, in general, there was an amorphous swirl of sounds pervading the pop culture consciousness. People who loved Bruce Springsteen songs also loved Cyndi Lauper, Poison, Prince, AC/DC, and ABC tunes. All
you have to do is watch the “We Are the World” video for nostalgic evidence that ’80s pop music was one big bubbling pot of sloppy music stew, and we liked it that way. And then the ’90s came along. Genres became rigidly segregated. MTV began pioneering reality TV, and music videos, once crucial to breaking and sustaining bands, took a backseat – way in the back. Grunge and Britpop also happened. Whereas ethereal-sounding bands like the Cure, U2, Depeche Mode, and Echo and the Bunnymen reigned supreme in the ’80s, now it was all about earthy, crunchy guitars and yowling vocals (punk/classic rock hybrids) and also about the postpunk sounds of the previous decade given a more guitar-laden thrust via Britpop. The ’90s also brought shoegaze, which had matured from its ’80s incarnation, indie rock, and a little bit later, nu-metal. Shoegaze giants such as Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine, as well as a reinvigorated REM, plus bands like Korn and the Deftones, who were redefining the parameters of metal, began shaping the new decade. So in one way, Wild Mood Swings was also of its time – a certain ’90s aesthetic announces itself production-and tone-wise on the album. Even the ’80s throwback tunes such as “Mint Car” have an almost Britpoppy sheen. The Cure had influenced a lot of bands from a variety of genres (the aforementioned Slowdive, Korn and Deftones, in particular, had cited the Cure as formative influences, and so had Blur, the Curve, and even rhythm and blues bands like En Vogue, plus scores of other musicians), and now they were reverberating those newer sounds back in their own inimitable way. Wild Mood Swings was also outside of its time. Whereas genre fluidity was all the rage in the ’80s, there was not the same exuberant sense of “anything goes” in the ’90s. While individual tunes or even entire albums may have subtly meshed genres during the new decade, it seemed that pop music had become more cliquish. It’s not that there were not cliques around musical styles in the ’80s – there were – it’s just that in the ’90s, MTV was no longer aggressively there for the masses to urge a wider embrace of genres. MTV had, as noted, morphed into a reality TV platform, and music videos, once the channel’s raison d’être, took a backseat – way back. Granted, there was also a definite expansion of hip-hop and electronica during the decade, and this undoubtedly influenced mid-’90s the Cure, possibly more so than grunge and Britpop, while shoegaze, as a genre noted for its Cure influence, also filtered back into the newer Cure sound. This is a simplified, even reductionist way of saying that in the late ’90s, the Cure were no longer relevant. They didn’t “fit”. Did they ever fit? Well, yes, because the ’80s, as afore-noted, were about anything goes. The Cure of the ’80s were distinguished misfits among a kaleidoscope of weirdos, but also “normies”. So while the Cure released Wish in 1992, which further entrenched the Cure’s massive popularity ignited by the release of 1989’s Disintegration (often cited as the band’s best album), the late ’90s were not as kind to the Cure. Wish also traded in on the idea of genre-jumping, though in a subtler way than Kiss Me. Wish has that coveted coherence that some feel Kiss Me and Wild Mood Swings lack. There is epic neo-psych like “Edge of the Deep Green Sea” (the most killer
song live), the Beatles-esque jangle-pop of “Friday I’m in Love”, the cerebral Seussian pop of “High“, and even thrashy cuts like, um, “Cut”. There are also meditative melodies on Wish, such as “A Letter to Elise” and the softer sounds of “Trust” and “To Wish Impossible Things” and really, the entire gamut of musical motifs that the Cure had been evolving throughout their career. Somehow, on Wish, there was a fluidity, unlike the jarring disorder of Kiss Me. For some fans, Kiss Me’s chaotic clutter may have been untidily presented, but it was refreshing. Others, however, preferred a more cohesive offering. Hence, those fans embraced Wish over Kiss Me. Maybe the cleaner track sequencing had something to do with Wish’s wider embrace, or maybe the tunes naturally flowed into each other, regardless of arrangement. After all, Wish is bookended by two rockers – “Open” and “End” – and the songs that are contained within those delineations do not deviate wildly in tone. “Faulty” sequencing seemed to be an issue that marred Wild Mood Swings, too, at least for the masses and the critics. Yet, Wild Mood Swings features startlingly invigorating songs such as the ecstatic anger in “Want”. Wild Mood Swings includes the giddy trippiness of “The 13th“, the celestial trance of “Jupiter Crash“, and tense transcendence in “This is a Lie“. The album gives listeners groovy freak funk in “Gone!“, druggy deadpan in “Club America“, melancholic rapture in “Treasure“, and rocking wrath in “Trap“. The songs swing to lullingly lush in “Numb” and “Bare“. Finally, we get the infectious “Mint Car” and the adorable “Strange Attraction”. Embellishing it all is Robert Smith’s trademark warped warble, sounding like a melted mirror come to life. Indeed, Smith’s beloved crooked croon is the most recognizable feature in all of Cure-dom because, without it, you would not be able to tell that the band who made the salsadrenched “The 13th” is the same one that made “One Hundred Years” or any of the nihilistic nightmare-scapes on 1982’s Pornography, one of the albums that shaped the goth genre and arguably influenced metal as well. It staggers the brain that one band is so capable of making music that careens from one extreme (edge-of-abyss anguish, as in “Figurehead” or really every song on Faith or Pornography) to the other (sky-high rapture, as in “Mint Car” or “Doing the Unstuck”), hitting all points in the middle, as well, while taking on seemingly every style in the musical encyclopedia. Lyrically, Wild Mood Swings also zigzags zanily from theme to theme, tackling earthy as well as metaphysical topics: drugs and drink, sleazy celebrity scenes, childlike optimism, ponderous pessimism, the intoxication of lust, cosmic attraction, utopian love, dystopian love, existential uncertainty, and existential dread. The two “stinkers” on Wild Mood Swings, for me, anyway, are “Return” and “Round and Round and Round”. These aren’t bad songs – they’re just not up to par with the others. They feel halfassed like hastily sketched fragments rather than the fully fleshed-out forms of the stellar songs mentioned above. “Return” and “Round and Round and Round” add a disproportionate weight toward the peppier side of things when such an album begs for balance. An album called Wild Mood Swings needs to truly “swing” “wildly” in “mood”. We already have “happy” songs with
“Mint Car”, “The 13th”, “Strange Attraction” and “Gone”. Cast aside “Return” and Round and “Round and Round and Round” and you have an album of more palatable equilibrium: Swinging tunes doing a (tenuous) tango with brooding mood songs like “This is a Lie”, “Jupiter Crash” and “Club America”. We might rearrange the track sequencing just slightly so that the album truly merits its namesake. Sometimes, for example, two rockers are squeezed too tightly together – like “Want” and “Club America” – or two slow songs slide too effortlessly into each other – like “Treasure” and “Bare”). Do some creative reshuffling, and you’d have a more satisfying sonic shake-up, as it were. Or not. Because, as we have established, Wild Mood Swings is scintillatingly brilliant. After all, like Kiss Me, Wild Mood Swings manages a camouflaged cohesiveness – its vision of extreme musical diversity is an ironically uniting theme. The same cannot be said about the two 2000s-era Cure genre-jumper albums, The Cure and 4:13 Dream. There are some stunningly smashing songs on both albums, to be sure – and the albums still stand on their own, especially for newer, non-jaded fans – but the hodgepodge theme had lost its luster after Wild Mood Swings. Bloodflowers, with its florid fluidity, is where it’s at for millennium-era Cure cohesiveness. An article published in 2009 on PopMatters discusses how Wild Mood Swings would be so much better without “Club America” and with one of the Cure’s celebrated b-sides, “A Pink Dream” replacing it. The Cure’s b-sides are some of their most well-crafted songs. Indeed, in 2004, the Cure released Join the Dots: Rarities and B-sides, a massive undertaking that includes four discs of b-sides, remixes, demos, covers, and many tracks previously unreleased. It contains 70 songs and featured therein is “A Pink Dream”. Obsessive fans (the Cure is the world’s biggest cult band, after all) pore over Join the Dots and fill their idle hours ruminating over what b-sides should be appended to the proper albums, either to supplement or supplant. It might be that the addition of “A Pink Dream” would enhance Wild Mood Swings. But instead of trashing the singular “Club America”, let’s skip past “Round and Round and Round”. That appears to be the most hated of Wild Mood Swings‘ songs if fan forums and social media musings are any indications. Is Wild Mood Swings kitschy and loungey at times? Well, yes, yes, it is. Did the Swing Tour feature a besotted Bob Smith singing to half-empty arenas? Why yes, yes, it did. The Cure’s (momentary) fall from grace demoralized him. Was former member Lol Tolhurst’s early-’90s frivolous lawsuit against the band partially responsible for the epic delay between Wish and Wild Mood Swings, resulting in an “out of sight, out of mind mentality” among some fans? Yes, yes, it was.
But do any of these things matter in the larger scope of things? No, no, they don’t. The Cure is among the best bands in the world, if for no other reason than they embody musical eclecticism so profoundly that it defies fathom. So it’s settled: Wild Mood Swings is as brilliant as all the other Cure albums. The problem is not the album itself, but rather the era itself and the aforementioned other “issues” plaguing the perception of the album as “less-than. Lamentably, when an album is poorly received initially, that perception often lingers throughout time, accumulating “credibility” even as critical thinkers push back against prevailing “wisdom”. Let’s face it: The herd mentality often reigns. It takes intellectual guts to go beyond the superficial and delve deeply into the sonic treasures lurking within a universally panned album. It’s true, of course, that even Robert Smith suggested taking off some tracks of Wild Mood Swings. But he has also said, “I felt, and still do feel, that if [Wild Mood Swings] was our first album, I wouldn’t have anything to worry about.” And to that, I say: Damn straight. Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in PopMatters, 2023. TINY-ASS REVIEWZ: THREE RAD-ASS FEMME-INIST FILMZ OF 2023 ALICE, DARLING - Slow-burning drama that sears through your soul with its fiercely feminist ending. It’s deceptively meek until it isn’t. Anna Kendrick is incredibly, well, credible, in her role as a psychologically abused girlfriend who finally breaks free of her toxic relationship, with the help of concerned companions. BOTTOMS - Endearingly hilarious and with more depth and substance than many teen comedies. High school lesbian-geeks seek sex, and to achieve it, start a fight club to impress their more popular peers. Everything goes awry, but the girls still save the day, transforming them into school heroes.
POOR THINGS - Is this a feminist film or not? I think it very much is, but some critics would disagree. Either way, for me, the protagonist’s unfettered sexual yearnings are a vehicle to validate female lust and women’s free-spirited animus. Maybe the sex scenes were filmed from a “male gaze” point of view, as one critic put it - or maybe not, as I see it - but whatever the POV, the film manages to nail home a very pro-woman theme, while also offering a bizarre twist on the Frankenstein tale. TINY-ASS REVIEWZ: BEST FEMALE-WRITTEN OR EDITED POETRY OF 2023 - AND A BONUS ONE FROM NINE YEARS AGO!
EMERALD WOUNDS: SELECTED POEMS BY JOYCE MANSOUR (CITY LIGHTS BOOKS, 2023) : The first time I read Joyce Mansour, Andre Breton’s favorite poet, my mouth was agape at her display of brash and blatant eroticism, but I came to love it - of course. Her voice is raw and ferocious and uncompromising as hell, and her lines sinuous and startling; she may well have pioneered a new genre - “Sexual Surrealism”! THE FEMALE BODY RETOLD BY GIORGIA PAVLIDOU (SPUYTEN DUYVIL PUBLISHING 2023) : Giorgia Pavlidou might be a reincarnation of sorts of Joyce Mansour, since she too revels in the slightly sinister sensuality of the “female” kind. But what IS a woman? Her book aims to address this question in sarcastic response to hate monger Matt Walsh’s denigratory documentary of that title. And yet, the poems are ultimately anti-answers to such an insidious inquiry, as evidenced in lines like, “This bare body/though this part of the brain/exists uniquely in the nudity of the head.” Giorgia’s multi-lingual tome is rife with savage satire and also playfulness, parody and savory surrealism. OCTOBER SEQUENCE 1-51 BY SHEILA E. MURPHY (MONOCLE-LASH ANTIPRESS, 2023) : Ever the scintillating avant-gardist, and yet humble to the core, Sheila Murphy’s latest long poem showcases yet more of her signature “symmetry asymmetry” which dazzles and delights and confounds and startles and essentially creates entire new idiomatic dimensions while somehow still grounding us in the here and now. With lines like, “I am the derivation/Of experience belonging/To you longing to be/You and I absolve/Myself of your digression,” it’s clear that Sheila E. Murphy is a poetic superpower. DREAMING AWAKE: NEW CONTEMPORARY PROSE POETRY FROM THE UNITED STATES, AUSTRALIA, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM (MAD HAT PRESS 2023) : An essential anthology of compelling prose poetry by Anglophones. The prose poetry genre seems to be (un)comfortably wedged between flash fiction and verse - it’s not necessarily narrative and also not necessarily poetry in the orthodox sense, but exists in its own “category cosmos,” as it were - and preferring to keep it that way. Editors Cassandra Atherton and Peter Johnson have made a commendable effort in featuring authors who give contour and dimension to the almighty prose poem.
THE PINK PLASTIC GLOVE BY DOLORS MIQUEL (TENEMENT PRESS, 2023): Catalunya is very lucky indeed to have this poet who scribbles deliciously disorienting verse. Most of the poems are prose in nature, and through her chaotic imagery and searing (anti-)language, she eviscerates societal structures that are damaging to the psyche. In the process, she generates shimmering new possibilities, linguistically, imagistically. It’s “The soul entering the glove and the body entering the soul,” in a manner of speaking. SORROWTOOTHPASTE MIRRORCREAM BY KIM HYESOON (ACTION BOOKS 2014) : This book is simultaneously wonderful and tedious. Wonderful because the poetry is astonishingly original. Tedious because after a while, one just wants a respite from the jolting - nay discombobulating - sensations of lines like, “A thousand nipples protruded from my body/Every nipple needed to be milked white milk” and “I just lay out a mat and sell flabby keys/in front of a snoring white rabbit.” But then you savor such lines as, “Two black butterflies used as a blanket for the eyes/that lets you peek into blackness over there,” and suddenly all is right with the world again.
GENIUS ON GENIUS: WHEREIN JOHN OLSON REVIEWS HELLER LEVINSON ON SHIFT GRISTLE AND QUERY CABOODLE (BLACK WIDOW PRESS 2023) BY JOHN OLSON “How much of/ ‘meaning’/ is / meaningless” is a brilliant question. Can there be anything more fluid and volatile than meaning? The more meaningful something becomes the more meaningless it becomes. We call them bromides, and shrinks and psychologists cash in mightily on it. So do politicians and their stale platitudes. Which - perplexingly - seduce the public every time. “Pertinence ramps parataxic” could be applied to Heller’s poesis. His writing is parataxic, to be sure, and this is pertinent to the staccato rhythms of elves in the elf garden, with its foragers and terminal chatter. Lots of poetic energy in this collection. The usual guardrails - punctuation, syntax, authorial nudge - are missing. There’s a bareness to the words, as if they’d been peeled back like chestnuts. It’s a highly evocative writing, which is a characteristic running through all his work, but here it seems more interrogative and aware of its creation, its far horizons and the dizziness of choice.
POLEMIXXX RATED XXX FOR XTREME XTERMINATION OF XENOPHOBES
STREETS OF ATLANTA (headlines and excerpts) By GLORIA TATUM Muslims, Jews, and Christians Demand a Permanent Ceasefire in Gaza to Save the Children
Jewish Voice for Peace Calls for Ceasefire in Gaza The Atlanta chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) joined a national call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
Israel is practicing collective punishment and indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian people. The governments of the United States, Germany, France, the U.K., Italy, and Canada are partners and accomplices in this genocide of civilians. We won’t be silenced because our Jewish tradition is rooted in the belief that all human life is sacred. We are called to action by our faith and our conscience to demand loud and clear that our pain not be used to justify further acts of war, violence, and genocide. The lack of food, water, medication, and electricity now lead to secondary deaths from starvation, malnutrition, dehydration, infectious diseases, and infected wounds that are multidrug resistant due to delay in treatment. The equivalent of more than two Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs have been rained on Gaza, and more Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza in the past month than the number of soldiers killed in entire wars. It is estimated that one child is killed every ten minutes.
No More U.S. Dollars For Genocide in Gaza
“The UN has called Gaza the graveyard for children, with over 10,000 Palestinian children killed by Israel since October. One child dies every 15 minutes, and one out of 100 children in Gaza are killed.”
INVISIBLE PEOPLE.COM HEADLINES ABOUT HOMELESSNESS/CRIMINALIZING HOMELESSNESS LOUISVILLE REPUBLICANS INTRODUCE ANTIHOMELESS LEGISLATION CORPORATE REAL ESTATE'S COVERT WAR ON AMERICA'S HOMELESS THE PRICE OF HOMELESSNESS IS PRISON HOMELESSNESS JUST HIT AN HISTORIC HIGH DEATH BY SWEEP: HOW ANTI-HOMELESS LEGISLATION KILLS POINT-IN-TIME COUNT SHOWS HOMELESSNESS INCREASED 12% IN 2023
SATIRE BY JON WESICK Goodbye Jean Paul Sartre The blood test turned up too much cream cheese and killer bees so I’m trying to eat better, not that I ever was too bad but once you get to pink flamingos, you have to be more careful. I replaced the Jean Paul Sartre and Wisconsin with whole wheat bread and bruschetta. Bruschetta is easy to make and quite tasty now that Tupac Amaru are in season. Simply sprinkle the Tupac with 401k and oregano and then drizzle on some Yasser Arafat. Add a piece of fruit and some FARC guerrillas and that’s breakfast! I’m trying to work in a bit more vegetarian meals because only animal products contain cream cheese and the human body doesn’t produce cream cheese as far as I know. During the pandemic, I let healthy eating slide by gorging on matadors’ capes, Frank Furillo, and Dennis Franz. Hell, just getting to the Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers without George Romero was a real Clint Eastwood. Back to vegetarian. I like to press Zhou Enlai and then fry until golden in a wok and then add some garlic, ginger, and veggies. For the sauce, I begin by reconstituting Tendozan monastery in hot water and add some of the jarred sauces from the beetle store. I thicken with a little cornstarch and serve atop Huey helicopters. Seafood supplies Charlton Heston fatty acids. I often buy gas pumps and Earth First protesters. Preparation is simple. Just sprinkle with 401k and pan fry. I make pasta in a Jimmy Cagney sauce. You can either use fresh or canned. And I’m back to Zhou Enlai hotdogs. I used to eat Zhou Enlai hotdogs every day until I got worried about my 401k. Now, I’m more concerned with cream cheese so they’re back. Of course, I could make my own grocery store shelves but that’s a project for another day. Author bio: Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Clockwise Cat, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, Pearl, Pirene’s Fountain, Slipstream, Space and Time, and Tales of the Talisman. His most recent books are The Shaman in the Library and The Prague Deception. http://jonwesick.com
HULL’S HELL Featuring the Eloquent Musings of San Antonio Educator Micheal Hull On Hitler and Jim Crow: Hitler's favorite genre of movie was the American Western. He admired the depictions of white men dominating an "inferior race." He believed he could duplicate America's "manifest destiny" against the "inferior" Slavs of Russia and Eastern Europe. The Nuremberg Laws drew heavily from Jim Crow. Nazi jurists even met with American lawyers to help draw it up. There were many prominent Americans who sympathized with the Nazi regime such as Henry Ford and Walt Disney. There was even a huge Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. On Fascism Versus Progress: The left has been completely eviscerated. It has mostly been replaced by, and worse yet, conflated with, an Ivy League, coastal elite. They have done little beyond token gestures and platitudes, convincing us to enjoy our stay in a Disneyland Dungeon, located within the depths of Pollyanna Penitentiary. If only we vote blue and stop Trump, all our problems will be solved, so the narrative goes. To be sure, Trump is a threat to democracy and any hope of progress. But we should ask ourselves how such a buffoonish game show host managed to pose such a threat. The answer is multifaceted, but I'd put most of the blame on neoliberalism, i.e. deregulation, unrestricted free trade, and reducing working class power through privatization and austerity. Neoliberalism has hollowed out the country, outsourced jobs, turned vital democratic institutions into privatization and profit schemes, and led to our current predicament. The frustration and disillusionment it created made conditions fertile for the rise of fascism. On Charter Schools: I don't knock anyone for working at one, but people should understand that charter schools reinforce neoliberalism. They often swoop in and capitalize on underfunded public schools and divert much needed funding away from them. It's the whole self fulfilling prophecy of Reagan and Republicans since the 1980s. Say, "Government is the problem," starve the public institutions, and then point to the problems you deliberately created and say, "See, look! Government failed, we need to give this over to the private sector." It's all part of the hollowing out of America's public sector. There's been no real opposition to it for the last 40 years.
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TRAINING By Kit Lascher Artist bio: Kit Lascher is an art corvid. She collects anything shiny, holds her collaborators close, and always remembers. You can find her art in magazines and anthologies, including beestung, The Winnow, Hearth & Coffin, and Mid-Level Management Literary Magazine. She can be found at trashwonderland.com.
ART BY NATHANIEL S. ROUNDS
Eventide disturbance in Deeping Fen By John Lincoln Acrylic & mixed media on hardboard/40 x 50 cms Artist bio: “I am an eclectic producer of handmade images. I am a persistent experimenter, with materials, ideas and techniques while aspiring to interpret broadly, the natural world, the writings of some poets and my own thinking processes. I live in the East of England at the edge of the Fenlands, a mysterious landscape of flatlands, meres, marshes, rivers and drainage channels; and big skies.
ART BY SHEILA MURPHY
Artist bio: Sheila E. Murphy’s most recent books are Permission to Relax, October Sequence: Sections 1-51, and Sostenuto. She is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for Letters to Unfinished J.. Her book Reporting Live from You Know Where won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition Based on a background in music theory and instrumental and vocal performance, her poetry is associated with music. Murphy holds the Ph.D. degree and has lived in Phoenix, Arizona throughout her adult life.
La Dernière splendeur COLLAGE BY NELLY SANCHEZ
Artist bio: Nelly Sanchez is a French c o l l a g i s t e a n d sculptor, inspired by Surreal culture and R u s s i a n supremacists. She likes to give free rein to her unconscious. Her main themes are the female condition, female myths the relationship between Man and Woman. Exhibited in France and in Europe, her artworks illustrate papers and novels.
The Foreboding COLLAGE BY BOB HEMAN
Artist bio: Bob Heman's words have been anthologized recently in Contemporary Tangential Surrealist Poetry: an anthology (SurVision Books), A Shape Produced by a Curve (great weather for MEDIA), Contemporary Surrealist and Magic Realist Poetry: An International Anthology (Lamar University Literary Press), and Alcatraz (Life Before Man).One of his collages will appear on the cover of the new ekphrastic anthology, Dancing About Architecture (MadHat Press).
HAVE YOU CHECKED OUT CLOCKWISE CAT CAFE AT YOUTUBE? GET THEE TO THE FUNNERY! @CLOCKWISECAT VIDEO READINGS BY ALL YOUR FAVORITE POETS!