Free Mumford and Sons.

In 2015 Mumford and Sons went electric.

After massively successful debut and sophomore albums, the British neo-folk rock band that stomped and banjo-plucked their way to the music industry's heights decided on a new direction, and asked their fans to trust them on this journey. But amid the weeping and gnashing of teeth, distant wails of "where's the banjo?" and clockwork dismissals by industry critics, it wasn't a happy journey. As I wrote in an earlier blog post, Wilder Mind was a perfectly charming rock album, but in the shadow of the folk revival M+S helped engineer it paled in comparison for many, and perhaps a majority of, fans.

Three and a half years later their newest album, Delta, strays even further from the original formula, almost as if fealty to music's possibilities and group evolution is more important to them than glowing reviews. And again, the reception is middling at best. So have M+S officially lost their way, tone-deaf to the quality of the magic they used to make? Or is there possibly another explanation?

***

Sigh No More and Babel are the M+S acoustic albums, and share plenty in common: four-part harmonies, furiously syncopated guitar strumming, dramatic crescendos, excellent hooks, grandiose lyrics, and a very abused kick drum. M+S, in their old-timey vests and hats, were peddling a populist new folk that dispensed with the regional intricacies that often make historical folk difficult to penetrate.

It helps to place these albums in the context of the larger musical landscape of the late-aughts and early teens. It may be hard to remember a time when music was quiet, but singer-songwriters dominated the 2000s, and Colbie Caillat, Jason Mraz, Regina Spektor, Glen Hansard, Corinne Bailey Rae, and dozens of their contemporaries specialized in quirky, even Gallic sounds and ruminations. When Mumford and Sons and fellow British act Florence + the Machine came screaming onto the world stage in 2009, they woke everyone up. Music became big, epic, vast - everyone from Lady Gaga to Fun. to Kings of Leon to Beyonce to OK Go to Katy Perry to Sia got in on the game.

When M+S debuted, what they were doing was fresh and exciting by 21st century standards. Their stage name sounded appropriately hipster-vintage, their album cover was inscrutably indifferent, and their carefully curated look ran directly parallel to the elder Millennial men with their silly mustaches and just-burgeoning beards. Fans amassed in veritable hordes. Small-venue concerts sold out. Music festivals were abuzz. Babel was released in 2012 and was exactly more of the same; the boys won Album of the Year at the Grammys (partly to make up for them not winning Best New Artist previously). The love affair was solidified.

And then came that moment when every musical act has to decide where to go from there - risk criticism for sticking with the formula, or risk criticism for trying something new? Take your pick! I say very confidently that M+S fans would have been blissfully content with a third album of exactly more of the same, and critics would have chided them for playing it safe while still paying homage to their legacy which is the most anyone can ask for.

So they mindfully chose moving in a new direction.

Castle Rock.

I had to write to say that I won't be home anymore

'Cause something happened to me while I was driving home

And I'm not the same anymore

As part of this newest wave of filming Steven King adaptations, Hulu has released the ten-episode series "Castle Rock" (all episodes streaming now). It is written by Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason and based in the King multiverse, set in his oft-used fictional, foreboding town of Castle Rock, Maine and making frequent nods to past literary horrors. The story is new, and as mentioned not penned by King, but tries mightily to carry the spirit and underlying philosophy of his work.

The series is made to appeal to both the rabid and the casual King fan; you do not need an intimate knowledge of his canon to understand and enjoy it. I personally have only read two of his short story collections and seen a handful of his films, but his writing is so iconic, so permanently etched into the fabric of modern American society, that the odd reference to Cujo or The Shining is immediately recognized. (The series also features at least three actors who have been in previous King films: Sissy Spacek of Carrie, and Bill Skarsgard and Chosen Jacobs from the recent It)

The premise is this: on a bright late summer morning, Shawshank Penitentiary's very recently retired warden Dale Lacey (Terry O'Quinn) commits suicide. Upon hearing that he had kept an entire cell block empty for decades, his successor Theresa Porter (Ann Cusack) sends two prison guards to investigate the area; there they find, in an underground cell, a young man in a cage. When asked to identify himself, he says the name Henry Matthew Deaver. The problem is, he is most decidedly not Henry Deaver, and the guards who grew up in Castle Rock know this instantly.

One of those guards, Dennis Zalewski (Noel Fisher), calls the real Henry (Andre Holland) anonymously and tells him he is being asked for in his hometown. Henry is currently a lawyer for death row inmates in Texas; we see him eloquently (but ultimately fruitlessly) arguing to a jury for the commutation of the death sentence of a woman who killed her husband. He reluctantly makes the trip up to Maine to discover the purpose of the anonymous call, and on a more personal note, to visit his mother Ruth (Sissy Spacek), currently suffering from dementia.

(thar be spoilers ahead)

"Cat Person," Aziz Ansari, and the end of love.

In December 2017 a short story published in The New Yorker titled "Cat Person" caused a stir as it depicted the awkward, ugly realities of modern dating; it caught more notice, perhaps, because of the attention lavished on it by people (largely young women) who claimed it was a page ripped directly from their own lives.

My interaction with the hubbub was mainly through Instagram, as my cousin tagged me in The New Yorker's post and I read the thousands of too-similar comments exclaiming some version of "this is soooo true!!!" My cousin tagged me because it resonated strongly for her, and she knew that it would for me as well. I proceeded to read it, and it did.

"Cat Person" details one college student's misadventures in trying to get to know a patron of her movie theater where she sold him snacks. Because he was mildly more talkative than most boys her age, they managed to swap numbers and then for a few weeks engaged in dopamine-triggering text exchanges full of witty banter. But when it came time to be fully human - to go on a date, to fool around - everything changed. The guy who was so confident and funny via smartphone screen turned out to be just another socially-challenged disappointment who'd learned all he knew about sex from porn, and who claimed to have a bunch of cats she never actually saw.

In a weird trick of timing, several weeks after the fervor over "Cat Person," an article was published in Babe magazine detailing a young woman's abysmal date with comedian Aziz Ansari. There was even less to their connection than the ill-fated duo of the short story, as she and Ansari hardly knew each other, and the "date" quickly devolved into an almost shockingly comical imitation of shockingly bad porn. The hubbub surrounding this article, which was printed less than a week after Ansari won a Golden Globe for acting, involved a wide range of social factors: the #metoo movement, feminism in general, the racial implications that it was a hit piece (considering his incredibly recent accomplishment), the state of sexuality among Millennials, the increasingly embedded effects of a porn-saturated society.

Both of these events, and many, many more before them, have forced us to begin trying to figure out how sex, love, and companionship have become so very difficult and distant in a time when we should be reaping the multiple rewards of a sexual revolution now fifty years in our past. This is simply my perspective.

***

Snapshot.

What I'm Reading: Maurice by E.M. Forster
What I'm Watching: Lore on Amazon Prime
What I'm Listening To: Delta, Mumford and Sons
Mood: a blank slate
Smells: pasta
Sounds: the upstairs neighbor dragging a body??
Temperature: 50s
Thoughts: my world has always been a cold fire

In the bleak mid-autumn.

It's interesting, keeping up with photography trends. Back when I first decided to really focus on my own photography, around 2010, it was ultra-trendy to give pics of people and places a vintage look in post-processing. By 2014 the look was closer to matte in vintage tones; now we have an emergence of the film look imposed onto digital photos. I've enjoyed it all!

I will note the heinous HDR fad, in full force by 2010, which placed a high emphasis on bringing up the shadows so that the entire photo had essentially the same exposure level. The problem with HDR processing (which, in basic form, requires taking at least two photos (but up to six or seven) of the exact same scene using different exposure levels, and then blending them together in post-proc) was that it so often gave the finished product a painterly look at very best, and a hellish cartoon appearance at very worst.

And photogs loved it. The weirder the HDR, the better for some of them. It was about doing something new (as all fashion is), rather than faithfully rendering a scene. No true scene - especially in nature where the majority of HDR work was focused - is without shadows. And as time wore on, the fad wore out; full-frame DSLR cameras became sophisticated enough to capture enough detail in the highlights and shadows of a scene that you can now simply adjust them in Lightroom or Photoshop (without the shitty HDR look). And, as fashion always does, the trend swung back to including both light and shadow in photos once again, but this time using new processing techniques to an overall greater effect.

But this post isn't about HDR; I just had to bash it real quick because I hated it so much and I'm glad it met its demise.

Mingo Falls

Since I mostly follow professional photographers on Instagram, I've noticed the film trend for about a year now. The funny thing about vintage and matte and film presets is that until very recently, I think it was pretty much frowned upon to use them on nature photography. But the influencers will not be silenced. And though I'm usually in favor of just processing the photo to where it looks the way it did with the naked eye, I can't help but be drawn to using the film look on my own recent stuff...

High Falls

Last month I road-tripped to Asheville, NC to photograph the fall color in the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains. Alas, the foliage schedule was completely off due to a rainy summer and very warm September, but since I know Murphy's Law is real, I planned to visit mostly waterfalls so that it wouldn't matter if the leaves had turned (and they hadn't).

So, I've been post-processing away on them for a few weeks now, and in that time stumbled upon a small photo company whose film presets package was at like a 90% discount so I bought it. The preset used in the photos in this post is called 'Aged Grit.' As you can see, its defining feature is taking the color green and turning it to the color yellow. *evil laugh*

Near Glen Falls

But I also will always say when I've processed a photo beyond the point that someone could achieve on their own without a preset or some other trick. I actually was hard at work figuring out the tone tweaking necessary to get the 'look' I was seeing on Instagram, till I realized they are using presets like the rest of us (even if they made the preset themselves, which I super respect).

Qualla, NC

That's enough unasked-for rambling from me. :)

New music part 3/Music roundup.

Lots to cover!

Joseph. Discovered via Pandora. This trio of sisters from Joseph, Oregon is rooted in folk sensibility but also manages to defy description over the course of three albums; if I were to try I'd call it neo-alt-folk. Their first album, Native Dreamer Kin, is firmly three-part harmony swelling over acoustic accompaniment, with gorgeous standout "Tell Me There's a Garden"; the second, I'm Alone No You're Not, was produced by Mike Mogis and joins the strengths of their harmonies and songwriting with modern accoutrements. Tracks like "Planets" and "Sweet Dreams" bring the neo-folk; "S.O.S." and "Blood and Tears" sound like chart-toppers from the early 90s; and "More Alive Than Dead" is just insanely beautiful, evoking the quiet, mystical forests of the northwest with just a muted piano, that harmony, and a soft river of synths.

Their most recent album, Stay Awake, is a short seven tracks which sounds frankly like the sisters singing whatever the hell they please. There's a cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," a stripped down, folksier cover of their own song "Planets," and a synthesized, beat-heavy version of, again, their own track "Lifted Away" from Native Dreamer Kin. It also features one of my newest favorite jams, "Moonlight Mile." These sisters are mega-talented and their music is endlessly listenable; check 'em out!

Haim. Yes, I know I'm late to the Haim party, and here's why: back in 2014 when their debut album came out, I swear they were described as a folk trio. I swear. But they're not, they just are again a trio of sisters who sing in perfect harmony - over perfectly produced pop. That wasn't my bag at the time so I let it go, and gave them another chance this summer with their newest, Something to Tell You. It's still perfectly produced pop, but so dang catchy.

I don't require that singers also be songwriters and instrumentalists, but I love when young talented women go all in, as Haim does (and Joseph, and First Aid Kit, and...). They have an inherent sense of rhythm which they display in an impressive use of percussion, and they also know their influences inside and out - you can attach almost every song to not just a genre or era but a specific act. Throughout the album you'll hear Prince, George Michael, TLC, MJ, Florence + the Machine, Phil Collins, etc. Something to Tell You is impeccably produced and a ton of fun; go listen!

American Horror Story: Roanoke

The scariest part of all of this is that it's been a year and a half since I blogged about Freak Show.

I also will confess now that I only watched three episodes of Hotel. In the span of those three episodes my soul died. I cannot think of another TV series with a season as unwatchable as AHS: Hotel. It was like watching an obscene, badly acted kaleidoscope that never stopped turning. The best thing I could possibly say about it is that when I'm 90, and have legit run out of things to do in life, then I might finish watching it.

So it is with immense relief and satisfaction that I now review season six, Roanoke. Some spoilers ahead.

The true conceit behind American Horror Story is that the show's creators must work with uniquely American tropes, and naturally a country as young, in the global landscape, as this one has much less history to work with. We have one ghost story - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. So I commend Murphy & Falchuk for tuning in to the institutions that have been uniquely horrific - or just chill-inducing - in the last four hundred or so years. The haunted house; the insane asylum; witch hunts; freak shows; fucked up hotels; cults. The legendary lost colony of Roanoke, while kind of easily explainable when you think about it, still has plenty of potential because there's no definitive answer as to what happened. Season six uses this as an intensely engaging backdrop.

The remarkably different tone of the show compared to all other seasons is immediately noticeable, for two reasons. First, it is presented as a television show about a haunting in North Carolina, so we cut back and forth between the 'real' people relaying their story (including mainstay Lily Rabe as yoga instructor Shelby) and the actors portraying them (Cuba Gooding, Jr. as her traveling salesman husband). Second, after a brief backstory set in L.A., we follow Shelby and Matt Miller to eastern North Carolina where they buy a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse in the middle of absolute nowhere. The burnished golden hues of the southern countryside and the clean yet vintage interior of the stunning farmhouse are unlike anything AHS has presented us with before. It is perfectly Gothic and dare I say beautiful.

Pyramid schemes.

I first became interested in the weirdness of pyramid schemes when friends of my parents, a couple I've known since I was fourteen, invited me to participate in one. The wife - we'll call her Karen - approached me at a gathering one afternoon and said that, based on what she knows about me, she thought I'd be interested in an opportunity in the community. She phrased it as a way to help, to foster education, to guide young people.

In my mind I envisioned a non-profit group desiring to help kids develop the tools and knowledge for success in school and beyond; and she was right, that is right up my alley. Unfortunately, the reality was furthest from that.

What is a pyramid scheme? It's a business model that recruits members using the promise of payments in return for enrolling additional members. Since there are fees and dues for participating, the more members you recruit, the more money you make, as the money heads straight up the pike. Because this is an unsustainable practice, pyramid schemes are illegal in the United States.

You may have heard of Amway, which got taken to court in the 1970s, or more contemporaneously Herbalife, which (until recently) was in the process of a possible take-down by Pershing head Bill Ackman. (Watch the documentary Betting on Zero) Additionally, well-known companies like Mary Kay and Avon are often lumped in under the designation. I won't be getting into the legitimacy of specific companies here; often a Google search is its own reward.

My personal experience is based on an organization with rabid defenders and as such, I won't be mentioning it by name.

New music part 2.

My life is a series of music eras; I go through kicks. Throughout all four years of high school I was on a classical kick; in college it was rock. Post-college I devoured blues and soul; then I swerved to pop and neo-alternative in the 2010s. In my previous new music post in 2016 I heralded James Blake, Active Child, Banks, and Lo-Fang, all acts who are experimenting with the vanishing boundaries of their genres (and a couple who are simply creating their own). And now, after flirting with it on and off for a few years, I believe I have entered the folk era.

Though as with any genre there are various types of folk, the sound I'm most drawn to centers on simple harmonies, acoustic backing, and the kind of simmering melancholy that runs through even songs about real love. Please, keep your twang to a minimum and take your hoedowns elsewhere.

First Aid Kit. I'm leading off with my newest discovery and, I confess, my newest obsession. While giving Pandora literally one last shot to do what it's supposed to, the app brought forth two Swedish sisters singing (in English) robust Americana by way of the 60s. I caved after about three songs and jumped to my Prime music app to listen to the albums proper.

Ruins is Klara and Johanna Soderberg's most recent album, out just a few weeks ago, and it is stunning in its alternating moments of darkness and light, fragility and power, and in its despair. I believe some of the best art is born from loss, and the pain of younger sister Klara's broken engagement courses through the entire album; but wisely, and never wallowing. What I really like about the sisters, musical prodigies who write everything they sing, is how they join upbeat sounds with 'downbeat' lyrics, and how it is not in the least bit jarring. All the same, the tonal universe they craft never loses sight of the melancholy I seek. On "Rebel Heart" they sing "Nothing matters/all is futile" to a march tempo; "To Live a Life" is so delicately beautiful you don't notice at first when one of them nearly whispers "I'm alone now." "Fireworks," an instant crowd pleaser, sounds like an unreleased track from Neptune City-era Nicole Atkins, and the title track is so perfect I'd have to cease with words and use shades of color and light to try and describe what it evokes in me.

American Idol Albums: Best of the alumni.

Disclaimer: no, I haven't heard every single album put out by a former AI contestant, for clear reasons.*

American Idol flipped the script on the hegemonic music industry by allowing potential superstars to bypass the well-established (unethical, sexist, pay-for-play) gauntlet while simultaneously cultivating a huge fanbase; naturally, this means that many voices over its lifespan strained to make sure we all knew the contestants were nothing but hacks, that 'literally' none of them could hold a tune in a bucket, that the show had never produced a viable music industry artist. You, dear reader, being of sound mind and good judgement, are at least dimly aware that can't really be true.

But discussions of the way people lost their mind over Idol are for other blog posts. I simply state this in order to segue to a list of the albums put out post-Idol that give the lie to the rabid naysayers.

A basic Google search will show that there have been more successful Idol albums, and contestants, than the establishment would want you to remember. For example, Kelly Clarkson, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, and Jennifer Hudson have all won Grammys (and all have won multiple save for Tasia) and the list of those who have been nominated is quite long. There are even more who have gone platinum - the industry standard of success, at least unless an Idol contestant achieves it - including the aforementioned plus Ruben Studdard, Clay Aiken, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, and Taylor Hicks. Hell, Daughtry's debut album sold 4 million copies. Carrie's Some Hearts sold 7 million. At this point, if you're naysaying, you're just a jerk.

Even so, you can factor in the rabidity of fan bases (especially when albums were forced out the same year to capitalize on a winner or contestant's popularity) or the naturally welcoming arms of genres like country. When it comes to overall quality - and not record sales or even runner-up status - which contestants can go to their grave saying that they put out music that they are damn proud of, no matter what? (IMO, of course) Herewith, that list.