Bobkast #16:...And You In Your Autumn Sweater

"Yes, Yes, Yes It's My Autumn Almanac"
*a magical forest near kilkenny city, republic of ireland.
(Photo by Edward Dullard)

September 21 marks the Autumnal Equinox, which means this is your last chance in 2008 to successfully balance an egg on end. It also means the rolling Green Mountains of Vermont will erupt in technicolor magic, wool sweaters will return from moth ball covered chests in the corner of basements and pumpkin seeds will be salted and subsequently roasted. But the best part of fall is the way whiskey warms your belly on aimless jaunts through leaf plastered forests, bundled in flannel and wool (herringbone). Oh yeah, and you in your autumn sweater.

Bobkast #16: ...And You In Your Autumn Sweater

1. Mark Mothersbaugh- Kite Flying Society
2. Camera Obscura- Let's Get Out of This Country
3. The Kinks- Autumn Almanac
4. Jim James- Gideon (Live @ Newport Folk Fest)
5. Fleet Foxes- Mykonos
6. Magnetic Fields- Abigail, Belle of Kilronin
7. Blitzen Trapper- Furr
8. Ra Ra Riot- Winter '05
9. Jenny Lewis- Acid Tongue
10. Oxford Collapse- Featherbeds
11. Okkervil River- Lost Coastlines
12. Pavement- Folk Jam
13. Sufjan Stevens- Tahquamenon Falls
14. Micah P. Hinson- Yard of Blonde Girls
15. Yo La Tengo- Autumn Sweater

Bobkast #16: ...And You In Your Autumn Sweater [PC: right click+save as; Mac: option+click]

I Think John Berryman Was Right

"I'd Like to Start This One off By Saying Live & Love"

On a frigid January morning in Minneapolis in 1972 John Berryman, confessional poet and University of Minnesota professor, waved to morning commuters on the Washington Avenue Bridge and hurled himself into the wind. While poetry and suicide go together like PB & J, Berryman's case is interesting as it resonates with artists today. Last year Minnesota natives The Hold Steady immortalized Berryman (and Kerouac) in "Stuck Between Stations":

The Devil and John Berryman took a walk together
They ended up on Washington talking to the river
He said "I surrounded myself with doctors and deep thinkers
But big heads with soft bodies make for lousy lovers".
There was that night that we thought that John Berryman could fly.
But he didn't so he died.
She said "you're pretty good with words but words won't save your life"
And they didn't so he died

More recently Okkervil River, whose singer/songwriter Will Sheff spent his college years at Macalester in Minneapolis, conclude The Stage Names with "John Allyn Smith Sails," a confessional about Berryman's plight into the next world, that incorporates the Beach Boys "Sloop John B" in its cadence. After the band's last tour, Sheff found himself in Minneapolis after a freewheelin' road trip. He had this to say about his experience:

I wanted to go to the Washington Avenue Bridge, which is the bridge John Berryman jumped off of. I went there and I was standing in that same place where he was and I was thinking a lot about him. It was a really bitterly cold day, and it had been a really bitterly cold day when he killed himself in January 1972. And I went to the library where all of his books and a lot of his effects are stored. I was thinking a lot about that and it was, though it sounds corny, a very moving experience for me. After that I was listening to music and thinking about John Berryman and thinking about a lot of different things….There's a part of A Night of Serious Drinking where he talks about the inescapable velocity of the suicide, or something like that, where you might think halfway down, "Wait a second, I've made a bad decision."

No doubt Berryman's legacy haunts some of the most profound, poetic lyricist of our time. Evidence below.

R.I.P John.

The Hold Steady- Stuck Between Stations
Okkervil River- John Allyn Smith Sails

old musick: Okkervil River

"The World Ain't So Sweet or So Tender"

New Hampshire born, Austin bred Okkervil River recently released their fifth full length, Stage Names. While the record continues to build on the melodramatic epic-ness of Black Sheep Boy and Down the River Of Golden Dream, I find myself revisiting the Australia only Tour Ep Overboard & Down. Two tracks in particular keep drawing me to this EP, which conveniently fits into the 25 minute constraint of my bike ride to work. Quite lovely. "The President's Dead," the opening track of the EP, is a nostalgic history lesson, which functions as a meaningful portrait of the thoughts running through ones head during a catastrophic historical event, for example the assassination of a President. Nothing political here, rather a character study of what one "small, quiet man" felt the day the president was shot and killed. He was in his bed with his girlfriend, the presidents dead. His memories lead to an array of emotive sentiments, dreaming of the future and recreating the past in sweeping poetics.

"Love to a Monster" is an over-dramatic jangler about trying to hate an EX when it's near impossible to do, regardless of what he or she did and includes the line "I Hope You get Angry and Get Hurt and Have the Hardest of Landings." Melodrama, nostalgia and poetry, just the thing we've come to expect from Will Sheff and company.

Okkervil River- The Presidents Dead
Okkervil River- Love to a Monster