The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. LeGuin

The Left Hand of Darkness (LeGuin, 1969)

Though this novel is technically science fiction (and won several sci-fi awards), LeGuin in her introduction characterizes it as a "thought experiment". However, it's only as cerebral as you want it to be. This is a wonderful read, complete with a richly imagined world and a subtle yet persistent plot that builds to a desperate journey of escape.

Genly Ai, a man from Earth, has come to the ice-bound planet Gethen as an ambassador from the Ekumen of Known Worlds. His mission seems simple enough: to invite Gethen to join the Ekumen and share their knowledge and culture.  However, the rival civilizations of Gethen (an increasingly warlike monarchy and a smug communist collective) prove to be difficult to navigate, not to mention their strange physiology. They have the average look and build of the other humans in the universe, with one big difference: there are no permanent genders.  Once a month, a Gethenian enters "kemmer" and develops the reproductive organs of one sex or the other. The father of several children could be the mother of many more. Since Genly is perpetually male, he is considered a pervert, a freak in constant kemmer.

Obviously, the gender potentiality constitutes the thought experiment of the novel, and it is thoughtfully developed. LeGuin explores the construct without imposing an agenda (which would be easy enough to do). The society she imagines is rich in tradition, myth, and legend.  The interactions Genly has with others, particularly Estraven, the banished royal counselor whom Genly believes betrayed him, creatively explore the misconceptions and hidden dangers of the first contact between alien cultures.

Of course, the story deals with a lot of other things: politics, individuality, love, friendship, religion, and survival in harsh conditions, to name a few. But it is all secondary to a well-told story of action and intrigue that I will relish reading again.

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 ice-bound gender potentialities

The African Queen - C. S. Forester

The African Queen (C. S. Forester, 1935)

***This review contains spoilers.***

I came to this book with high expectations - maybe that was part of the problem.  The movie is so good, I figured the book had to be just as good, if not better. And for awhile, it was as good.  Our pair of opposites - Rose the missionary's sister and Charlie the lazy steamboat mechanic - head down the river in the rickety African Queen to strike a blow for England against Kaiser Wilhelm's military presence in Africa.  Along the way they brave bullets, rapids, marshes, leeches, and improbable odds while developing an improbable romance.

In many ways, this book has all the elements of the Hollywood adventure formula: action, danger, humor, and attraction. The only thing missing from the formula is the ending.  In the book, they are unsuccessful in destroying the Germans' cannon-toting steamship; instead, the British Navy use a new tech toy - speedboats with cannons - to strike the Hun.  The ending is so out of left field, it makes the whole thing feel like wartime propaganda, except it wasn't even wartime when the book was written.

The other problem: Forester doesn't respect his characters. Nay, I would hazard to say they disgust him. Charlie is constantly characterized as a hen-pecked husband, and Rose's intellect is repeatedly belittled, merely by virtue of her gender.  This might explain why their quest is fruitless in the end - Forester doesn't think they deserve the payoff.  The most they get is a grudging respect from the Germans for navigating the rapids, a respect that betrays the Germans' location to the British and ultimately leads to their defeat. I suppose this could be construed as Rose and Charlie succeeding, but when you build a torpedo out of spare parts, it needs to go off, not sink unfulfilled to the bottom of the lake.

Arbitrary rating: 2.5 out of 5 unfulfilled torpedos

Snowtorch - Phideaux

Snowtorch (Phideaux, 2011)

1. Snowtorch, Part One - 19:42

        a) Star of Light

        b) Retrograde

        c) Fox on the Rocks

        d) Celestine

2. Helix - 5:54
3. Snowtorch, Part Two - 16:29
        a) Blowtorch Snowjob
        b) Fox Rock 2
        c) Coronal Mass Ejection
4. - 2:40

On their eighth album, Phideaux have crafted another modern progressive folk Gothic rock treat. Their third album-length opus in a row (following Doomsday Afternoon and Number Seven) finds the band sharpening their musical focus. Instead of a concept album, per se, we have an album-length song in the tradition of Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick. Indeed, that album is a good touchstone, from the mock serious yet grand lyrical imagery, the classically infused folk melodies, and the masterful weaving of separate sections into a cohesive, powerful whole.

Lyrically, Snowtorch is ripe with poetic drama as it examines birth, life, and the inevitable beyond.  The band raise a collective Byronic fist to the universe in this duologue between a mind and its doubts, making pit stops along the way for figurehead friends, books of the dead, and beautiful vowels.  If I had to choose one favorite lyric, it would be this, from "Fox Rock 2":

When is a man just a mouse?
When he hides in the house and ignores what is happening
Covers his eyes to the lies that he tells
So he won’t have to know
Hiding away from the fray in a hole in the wall
In a world become small.

The singing is high quality throughout. Phideaux's raspy buoyancy balances well with Valerie's sultry stateliness, and the background vocals from the Ruttan sisters (and anyone else who wants to sing) are layered to perfection.  But it's the playing that really grabs my attention on this one.  The instrumental section "Celestine" is one of the heaviest pieces of music the band has ever done, riding full throttle on a Middle Eastern minor key riff, violin sawing away over a distorted guitar/bass unison, saxophone growling from the sheer force of the playing, and Rich Hutchins wailing on the drum kit.  Folk metal, anyone?

The only drawbacks: the other instrumental section, "Blowtorch Snowjob", is a little weak.  The chord progression is simplistic and repetitive, and it dissolves halfway through to silence before picking back up on a completely different (albeit better) musical theme. Also, there are a couple self-plagiarisms, probably intentional - the musical cue before "Fox on the Rocks" is lifted straight from the end of Number Seven's "Gift of the Flame", and some of the lyrics have been used before (if perhaps in a slightly modified version) on The Great Leap. On the whole, this is still an excellent album and an astonishing musical achievement.  What are they going to do next?

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 worlds become small

If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino

If on a winter's night a traveler (Italo Calvino, 1979)

Metafiction is always a risky game.  Telling a story about a story has the potential to lose a reader.  That might be why Calvino makes the reader a character in If on a winter's night a traveler. This book about readers, writers, and stories chronicles your adventures (yes, your adventures) as you try to read the novel If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino, which the publisher has botched and mixed with nine other stories.  The odd-numbered chapters are written in second person, directed firmly at You (by the way, you happen to be a single, twenty-something Italian male), while the even numbered chapters are the beginnings of the botched, mixed-up novels you keep tracking down in your quest to find the ending to the story you first started.

Calvino delivers some clever revelations about the expectations of readers, the tricks used by writers, and the whole experience of reading. The first chapter, of course, is the classic example, where he admonishes you to find a comfortable place, remove distractions, and yell at your roommates to turn down the TV.  He lambasts the agenda-ridden dissection of books by academia, explores the interactions of regular readers discussing a book, and probles the motivations of readers - a recurring question is "What kind of book do you like?", and the answer keeps changing. The book is focused on the nature of readers and stories, which is refreshing, and maybe more relatable than a writer writing about writing.

The first person chapters, i.e. the beginnings of the stories, are fairly interesting, and they do get you wanting to read more, but that's the problem: after about the sixth or seventh dead end, you (the real you) start to lose interest in where the book is going, even though you (in the book) are having your own story: falling in love, auditing a literature course, digging through manuscripts at the publisher's, meeting a reclusive author, and traveling to a restricted country to try and find the rest of the stories you have started.

Maybe Calvino knows it's a tiring premise, which would explain the increasing amount of sex in the later chapters. I guess that's an easy way to make a dead-end story-beginning interesting, but he kind of comes off as a misogynist.  We could give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's making a point about popular literature's continued use of women as sexual objects despite these progressive modern times, but he makes the point a little too well.

Arbitrary rating: 3.5 out of 5 roommates turning down the TV

Number Seven - Phideaux

Number Seven: A Post-Pythagorean Presentation by Phideaux (2009)

ONE: DORMOUSE ENSNARED
1. Dormouse - A Theme - 1:08
2. Waiting For the Axe to Fall - 19:21

TWO: DORMOUSE ESCAPES
3. Darkness At Noon - 3:44
4. Gift of the Flame - 6:57
5. Interview With a Dormouse - 0:27
6. Thermonuclear Cheese - 1:54
7. The Search for Terrestrial Life - 8:14

THREE: DORMOUSE ENLIGHTENED
8. Love Theme from "Number Seven" - 13:50
9. Infinite Supply - 4:58
10. Dormouse - An End - 2:16

How does one describe this album?  Intricate, dramatic, elegant, dissonant, tender, brash, always adventurous; Phideaux's Number Seven is a cornucopia of styles, strung together with a philosophical theme and a high standard of singing, playing, and composition. While not as focused and consistent as Doomsday Afternoon, the band's masterpiece, Number Seven's loose-limbed, shotgun approach to the concept album pays off unexpectedly, while also giving each member of the band space to shine.

The album doesn't tell a story so much as it presents a philosophic arc of self-awakening, or so it seems. There are a lot of typical sentiments throughout: questioning what you are told, finding your own way, leaving the hive, and so on. However, it transcends these tropes in search of something bigger, and it takes a left turn at the end that makes the pursuit of individual "enlightenment" seem much less important than it did at first...

Musically, the journey of the Dormouse takes a fantastic trip through great melodies, soulful harmonies, folky acoustic passages, and full-on electric assaults. "Waiting for the Axe to Fall" is a dizzying medley of minor key magic, with plenty of vocal features for co-lead singer Valerie Gracious, the Ruttan sisters, and Ariel Farber.  Four female vocalists is never a bad thing, especially when they're all outstanding. "Gift of the Flame" features Valerie singing some juicily Gothic lyrics based on the myths of Prometheus, Tantalus, and, my favorite, Narcissus:

There's a boy by the pool who simply can't move but to drool,
Staring ever in to a silly grin
Trapped beside the pool...

Hour by hour I wait for my flower to bloom;
It's a hideous black mushroom,
Odious spore of doom!

There are ten people in this band, which could make for cacophony, but they navigate the movements well and show remarkable restraint on many simple and beautiful passages. "The Search for Terrestrial Life" stands out as a gem of an acoustic pop song with close harmonies - at least until the five minute mark, when it builds up into a mountain of rock and roll grandeur, then morphs into... a spaghetti Western soundtrack?  Several instrumental themes throughout have a certain Italian flavor. There are even Italian lyrics in "Love Theme From 'Number Seven'". This could be campy, but it's played with such gusto that it works.

With the poignant yet soulful piano ballad "Infinite Supply" (which uses Pachelbel's chord progression to good effect), the musical rollercoaster ends in fine fashion. If you're like me, you're back in the line immediately to ride again.

Arbitrary rating: 5 out of 5 odious spores of doom

If - Glass Hammer

If (Glass Hammer, 2010)

1. Beyond, Within - 11:44

2. Behold, The Ziddle - 9:11

3. Grace the Skies - 4:29

4. At Last We Are - 6:46
5. If The Stars - 10:25
6. If The Sun - 24:02

Glass Hammer is an indie symphonic progressive rock band started in the late 90s by Tennessee musicians Fred Schendel (keyboards) and Steve Babb (bass and keyboards). They have a lot of albums with a revolving cast of musicians, most with titles taken from J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and I've always been cautiously curious about them, but when a friend said I had to get their newest album If, it found its way to the upper echelon of my birthday list. Since my wife truly loves me, here it is!

By the first few notes of "Beyond, Within" I can already tell this is going to be good. These guys unabashedly worship the sound of the 70s heyday, playing Hammond Organ, vintage Moog synths, Mellotron, and a growling Rickenbacker bass (though this particular item is recorded and mixed too quiet for my taste). The lead singer sounds suspiciously like Yes's Jon Anderson (and is named Jon Davison - coincidence?), and the intricate vocal harmonies bring Yes, Genesis, and Gentle Giant to mind as well. Adding to the Yes comparison, the guitarist they have on this album seems to be channeling Steve Howe's muse with spidery melodic lines. The songs and arrangements themselves are adventurous, complex, and stirring in the best tradition of symphonic prog rock.

The songs are all very mystic and poetic, almost like they have Walt Whitman writing their lyrics.  Well, the opening words of "Beyond, Within" are basically stolen... "I sing electric to the skies / I sing the orbs in the heavens." This uplifting epic about creation (individual and cosmic) is filled with a sense of mature wonder. Contrast that with "Behold, The Ziddle," a mysterious, turbulent song about a bizarre creature and the people trapped in his dark world. "Grace the Skies" is another Whitman-esque rumination ("If the bird is free to fly / then why my soul should I deny?"). "At Last We Are", a song about heaven, has one of the most stirring melodies in 5/8 I've ever heard, with perhaps my favorite lyric of the album:

When I draw close He'll be waiting there
Father of my soul in the morning fair
Then I recall He has never been
Far from my side
Leading me, cheering me
Feeding me, guiding me home.

The last two songs, "If The Stars" and the 24-minute "If The Sun," do not disappoint. "If The Stars" is another sweeping metaphysical epic ("Man, just a grain of sand on an island / In a sea of stars"), with gripping guitar flourishes, haunting harp (yes, harp), and a high-octane rocking outro with guitar and Moog fighting for ascendancy. "If The Sun" migrates through many memorable musical themes and jams, from more aggressive jazz-based themes to a quiet vocal section with Mellotron flutes that builds slowly into a musical sunburst. The last five minutes of the song revel in multi-vocal prog rock glory. Both songs deal with man's identity and worth in an infinite universe, with the search for a spiritual home and how a person can be changed: "He sang me a song to break / The hardest heart / For I had made mine a stone."

Glass Hammer has created a stunning classic of modern progressive rock with If.  They use the sounds and styles of yesterday but succeed in creating their own beautiful music, indebted to (and occasionally paying tribute to) the past while forging ahead with their own vision.  This is good stuff.

Arbitrary rating: 5 out of 5 fathers of my soul in the morning fair

Fly From Here - Yes

Fly From Here (Yes, 2011)

Fly From Here

1. Overture - 1:53

2. Pt. 1: We Can Fly - 6:00

3. Pt. 2: Sad Night at the Airfield - 6:41

4. Pt. 3: Madman at the Screens - 5:16

5. Pt. 4: Bumpy Ride - 2:15

6. Pt. 5: We Can Fly (Reprise) - 1:44

7. The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be - 5:07
8. Life on a Film Set - 5:01
9. Hour of Need - 3:07
10. Solitaire - 3:30
11. Into the Storm - 6:54

Ten years after their last studio album, Yes have made a triumphant homecoming. With Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn from the Drama era back in the fold, and new vocalist Benoit David, the remaining core of Yes (Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Alan White) are invigorated, and, while Downes and Horn dominate the writing credits, Fly From Here is truly a Yes album, a group opus in which everyone shines in the context of adventurous new music.

The opening song suite, which uses an abandoned airport as a metaphor for death and the afterlife, starts with a classical flourish in the "Overture" which calms to silence for Pt 1, "We Can Fly." A mysterious, lonely vocal accompanied by wistful piano chords slowly builds over long bass tones and palm-muted guitar into a dramatic prechorus:  "Every day that you wait is one more that you've lost / When you wake up, I see you there on display / Like some final point of no return." The chords climb steadily underneath, releasing in a sunburst of chorus: "And we can fly from here / into a sky that's clearing / Look back we'll dry the tears / for loved ones held so nearly / Our love will never disappear." Chris Squire's bass is loud and proud, Steve Howe's guitar work is ascendant, and even Alan White has a little fun as the song transforms into a soaring rock anthem.

"Sad Night..." starts with gentle acoustic guitar picking and Benoit David's calm, tender voice. The music accentuates emotions of loneliness and change, leading up to a simply gorgeous slide guitar solo from Howe, quite possibly one of the best uses of the instrument. "Madman" is a very adventurous, progressive number, the musical source of the "Overture," with orchestral counterpoints and a bewitching 5/8 melody overlaying five measures of 4/4. "Bumpy Ride" continues the adventure with a bouncy, semi-Latin rhythm and some psychedelic, neo-classical riffing - perhaps not to everyone's taste, but it's impressive these old codgers still have it in them. Finally, "We Can Fly" makes an epic reprise and brings the whole to a satisfying conclusion.

The shorter songs deliver as well. Chris' Squire's contribution "The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be" is a fairly straightforward rock song, with a little time signature monkey business and some nice harmonized instrumental leads from Howe and Downes. "Life on a Film Set," another from Horn and Downes, starts very quiet and moody with playful tuned percussion, then ramps up into a rollicking 11/8 jam with angular guitar, nimble bass, and catchy harmonies.  Howe provides the two short tracks: "Hour of Need" features folk singing over acoustic guitar (or is it vachalia?), and "Solitaire" features Howe alone, another excellent solo acoustic piece in the tradition of "Mood for a Day." It all winds up with the 7-minute "Into the Storm," an up-tempo slab of prog where Squire's bass takes center stage.

If I have any complaint, it's the editing of the pieces of the "Fly From Here" suite.  Each part gets really quiet at the end, then the next part fades in (except, thankfully, for the last two).  It's most noticeable between "Madman" and "Bumpy Ride" and it's really unnecessary.  Maybe Horn was trying to make a statement about how an extended piece is really indebted to the individual songs within it, or maybe he was just being lazy - either way, a little more work would have made a seamless progressive rock epic. As it is, it's still pretty amazing.

Arbritrary rating: 5 out of 5 loved ones held so nearly