Simple melodies that build behind pure voices is music that’ll make you homesick. The Novel Ideas’ third album is called Home for a reason, with sweet lyrics about being alone and growing up, about remembering who you used to be and the people who helped you become the person you are now. But instead of a melancholy sound that laments the lost time, each song on Home has its own sweeping, bouncing rhythm – a soundtrack for memories, reunions and old times.
They describe themselves as a “folk rock outfit of friends” – Daniel, Danny, James, Sarah, Nick and Ezra. Last year the group recorded Home amidst the elements in a New Hampshire barn. Daniel, on guitar and vocals, was nice enough to answer a couple of questions about what it takes to make memory-filled music:
How did the six of you meet, and when did you first find out that you could make great music together?
Danny and I met in kindergarten, James and I met at Boston College. We met Sarah via Reddit. And Nick joined thanks to our Craigslist ad looking for a drummer. We’ve been working on new songs as a band and I can say that it is much more fun and successful than trying to work out songs while recording them.
What was it like recording “Home” in a New Hampshire barn?
Recording in New Hampshire was a really nice outlet for us. It was a rough summer in a lot of ways and having a place of respite to focus only on music was really nice. We’ll be recording some of the new album in the same barn which will be fun, except for the bugs.
Which band member writes the songs, and where do the lyrics originate?
Myself (Daniel), Danny and Sarah write the base of the songs but the songwriting process has been very collaborative. James is excellent at writing bass parts and has an amazing sense of harmony, while Nick has a knack for rhythm (naturally as a drummer) and song structure. Said simply, our lyrics originate from the experiences we go through. Some are sad, some are happy, some are bittersweet. Personally I find it impossible to be content writing anything I don’t feel is completely true, so writing honest lyrics is especially important to me.
Which songs on Home do which vocalists sing, and what do you think the different voices offer your music?
Danny and I are the only lead vocalists on “Home,” though Sarah and James are also both featured on the record. Some of my favorite bands have multiple lead singers: (ex: The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, The Beach Boys…) I think it can add a whole new dimension (or two) to a band.
Who are some of your folk idols, and how do you guys keep your own sound unique?
I know we’ve all been listening to a lot of Sera Cahoone lately. Her melodies are absolutely beautiful as well as her pedal steel parts (which we’ve been trying to steal a page from). Kathleen Edwards is also one of our favorites. I suppose in terms of trying to keep our sound unique, it comes from having many different influences. Some days I feel like listening to Bon Iver, some days Gavin Bryars, and some days Taylor Swift. I suppose our music comes out of five people’s different tastes and styles but with the intention to create a common and unifying style.
A lot of your songs are quiet and happy with melodies that rise and grow. What sort of experience are you trying to create for the listener? Where do you try to bring them with your music?
When I write a song I want the listener to understand and even feel the things that I felt while I wrote that song, and feel what I feel when I sing that song. If I can impart that through my music I’ll feel I’ve connected with others in a meaningful way.
Promise is one of my favorite songs on the album, with lyrics that start like this:
Here we are now in the backyard
On the warm ground out at sundown
But in twelve days I’ll be halfway
Cross the world, I’m too tired to be afraid
You’ve got green eyes, I had foresight
When I said we’d be good I was so right
If we lay here, spend every day here
Well our legs might take root and we’ll grow dear
I made a promise to you
The Novel Ideas will be performing throughout July and August, with one show in Providence and three in Massachusetts.
After nine years it’s finally over and they wrapped it up in a perfect, complete way. If you haven’t seen The Office’s finale episode by now, watch it IMMEDIATELY because there are spoilers below!
It was weird to come back to all our beloved characters a year later in this finale episode – just like it was weird when they started introducing the documentary we’ve watched all this time to the characters themselves. To them it’s a PBS documentary but to us it’s a comedy show, but the fact that they’re confronted with their old selves grounds the show in good heart, because they end up loving each other as much as we love them. It’s also a good excuse for this neat little wrap-up episode, so that after nine years of devoted watching we’re given a little closure.
Jim and Dwight’s newfound best friendship is the show’s solid foundation – the relationship we’ve seen most visibly since its beginning. The imbalance in Pam and Jim’s relationship makes it feel like we’re missing something, which would make sense since we can’t be in on all the romance, although maybe it is just that Pam’s too selfish and has to be asked point-blank for her to realize how much Jim has given up for her. I also think it’s really telling that the amount of time Jim needed for the Athlead tour was the same length that Pam took to go to art school in New York – three months.
The Q&A format gave us a behind-the-scenes look at these characters we’ve watched grow up for so long. Pam compares her relationship with Jim to a long book, it turns out Meredith was earning a PhD in child psychology and Erin meets both her parents after years of wondering. The Office recognized how important ordinary people can be, and it gives itself credit for this by making the documentary real for the characters too.
When someone asks what it was like to be filmed for so long, Dwight responds,
“With today’s modern surveillance technology, we’re in a constant state of being watched whether it’s our government or the government of other countries, AKA Google, you guys are being filmed way more than we ever were.”
After serving as manager twice already, he’s made the mistakes of firing a gun and painting his office black. He’s grown up into the best version of himself, keeping all the intense no-nonsense parts but adding the confidence to go after what he wants. Seeing the dramatic way he and Angela finally come out about their feelings for each other is the happiest series-ender we could wish for. And when Michael shows up with a “that’s what she said” to be the Bestist Mench just in the nick of time, everything is right in the world. He only has one other line in the whole episode but he’s happier than he’s ever been. When he watches Pam and Jim laughing across from Dwight and Angela, Michael leans back to the camera and says,
“I feel like all my kids grew up, and then they married each other. It’s every parent’s dream.”
Also Kelly running off with Ryan who leaves his baby to Nelly is just nuts. And I think we all kind of assumed Creed had a stash of the government’s LSD somewhere. The finale episode pays homage to the series as a whole, sticking to every crazy Shrute tradition and bringing back Carol and even the stripper from the Ben Franklin episode. After nine years in the same place, things are changing but they can only imply it’s for the better because we won’t get to watch.
A painter paints another painter in this picture, a man in blue holding a palette of colors. And since this is Picasso, it’s done in a style based off of his own. His figure is disjointed and geometricized, turned into shining cubes of color that hold pieces of a nose here and an ear there. It’s like looking at a realistic work by Picasso through an organized kaleidoscope.
Juan Gris was a Spanish painter and sculptor who met Picasso in France after moving to Paris in 1906. Gris regarded Picasso as a teacher, but Gertrude Stein wrote “Juan Gris was the only person whom Picasso wished away.”
These photographs were taken at the Art Institute in Chicago.
For more pictures of this museum’s work, see my Flickr album.
Tim O’Brien’s illustrations have been published in Rolling Stone, Newsweek, The New York Times and so many more – simple, conceptual images that resonate with audiences and stick a message in your brain. His personal pieces trade in celebrities and politicians for animals with bodies elegant and strong, and they persevere through hardships that make our stresses seem silly. There’s always a surreal aspect in his conceptual pieces but often they hide in subtleties, turning each illustration into a new game of “what in this picture is impossible?”
Tim is a professor at the University of Arts in Philadelphia and at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and he’s lectured at The Norman Rockwell Museum, Rhode Island School of Design and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Ron Mueck’s new solo exhibition at Paris’ Fondation Cartier includes this incredible work where a man and a woman have been isolated from the rest of the world and are still happy about it after decades. Simply titled, “Couple Under An Umbrella,” it’s one of three new pieces in a show made up of bizarrely scaled sculptures that present people so real you wonder why they’re not breathing – hyperrealism in a contemplative way. My first impression is to relate the sculpture’s size to the person’s character or circumstance, and here the couple’s love is bigger than they are so their bodies follow suit.
“They seem to be frozen moments of life, each capturing the relationship between two human beings. The nature of their connection to each other is revealed by their actions, small, ordinary, yet intriguing. The precision of their gestures, the true to life rendering of their flesh, the suggestion of suppleness in their skin makes them seem completely real.
These works describe situations which are imaginary but their obsession with truth indicates an artist in search of perfection and with an acute sensitivity to form and material. By pushing likeness to its limits Ron Mueck creates works that are secret, meditative and mysterious.”
Ron Mueck’s solo exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in on view until September 29, 2013.
