A Slight Delay

 Throughout their fifteen-year career, Ozomatli have had plenty of musical surprises up their collective sleeve. Their template, from the beginning, has built on an energetic fusion of salsa, cumbia, rap, rock, banda, and pretty much anything else you can think of. In the last few years, over the course of the recent discs Street Signs, Don’t Mess with the Dragon, and now Fire Away, Ozo have matured and cohered in ways that their amazing self-titled debut could only hint at.

Complaints will likely be raised, as they were with the K. C. Porter-produced Dragon, that Ozomatli has somehow abandoned the core sound that made it great. While I’ll readily concede that the sound is miles from anything on the debut or its followup (Embrace the Chaos, which had the misfortune of being released on September 11, 2001), it’s safe to say that this is a stylistic evolution, rather than an instance of the band “selling out.”

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 There’s something to be said for a restaurant that breaks all the rules, especially if it results in food that manages to be thoughtful, innovative, and delicious. With that said, there are three rules that should be set in stone no matter how many of the others you intend to break. In no particular order:

1. If you’re going to trumpet a Zagat rating, you should probably make a good-faith attempt to live up to it.
2. Getting the basics right goes a long way.
3. I ought not to go to a restaurant — any restaurant, but especially not a somewhat expensive one — and at the end of the evening, say to myself, “Y’know, I could’ve probably stayed home and done better.”

Mignon isn’t an especially daring place, yet — at least by the above criteria — they manage to break all the rules. Did I mention that the steak tartare was perfect? It was all downhill from there.

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 Alright, we’re back. (Wait. You’d gone? –ed.) Starting May 1, A Slight Delay will be addressing the backlog of books, music, and happenings that’ve been piling up hereabouts since we last posted. Watch this space.

This recipe was (nearly) written in blood, and underscores why it’s a good idea to keep bandaids and a good antiseptic in reach of your kitchen. But I digress. The following is a reasonably tasty potato soup. You’ll need:

5 lb. of Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled
1 32-ounce container of store-bought chicken broth*
1 package of bacon**
1 smallish bunch of green onions
3/4 cup or thereabouts of light cream or half and half
About 1/4 cup sour cream
Half a package (about one cup) of shredded sharp cheddar cheese***
Dash of black, white, and red pepper
Kosher salt, if needed

The procedure: Read the rest of this entry »

A brief post, albeit one I’d rather not have to write…

By now, a day after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake demolished what was left of already-demolished Port Au Prince, you’ve already seen the visuals, and heard the first faltering attempts at making sense of what’s happened in Haiti. A couple of times already, I’ve commiserated with friends who’ve still got friends and family there, as they try and try again to get word of who’s safe, and who’s lost.

If you’re of a mind to help, there are a number of organizations soliciting donations for disaster relief. While news reports focus on the lack of medical supplies and drinkable water, it should be emphasized that what’s needed most at the moment is cash. In the absence, at least for the short term, of means to distribute supplies, a check–even if only for five bucks–would likely go further than the donation of a case of water. This page on MSNBC.com provides links to a plethora of organizations, including the American Red Cross, UNICEF, and Doctors Without Borders that are on the ground in Haiti and offering assistance.

I received an email a couple of days ago. The message in this disturbing missive: “Only YOU can save Christmas!”

Dammit. It was bad enough when only I could prevent forest fires.

The email comes courtesy of an outfit calling itself Heading to Heaven. They’ve nicked a page out of the Bill O’Reilly playbook and decided that Christmas is under attack by secularists, or progressives, or JC Penney or someone. And how do you save Christmas? By spending a buck ninety-eight on a cheap pin that says, “Keeping Christ in Christmas.” This is a rare opportunity since, according to their website, “Unfortunately, we only ordered a limited print of 1 million buttons.” So, only a million buttons at $1.98 a pop. Only two million bucks. They apparently asked themselves, “WWJD?” and come back with the answer that Jesus would’ve turned the situation into an opportunity for monetary gain, camels and needles’ eyes be damned.

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You very nearly have to feel sorry for one-hit wonders. In some rare cases, that single shot of fame eclipses the rest of a damn fine album, and in others, it’s viewed — very wrongly, as it turns out — as a high point in an artist’s, or a band’s, career.

The Flaming Lips fall into the latter category, having hit it small with “She Don’t Use Jelly” in the aftermath of Nirvana.¹ While Transmissions from the Sattelite Heart had its moments, it wasn’t ’til a couple of albums later, with the experimental Zaireeka (a four-disc opus that could be enjoyed in its component parts, or on four CD players simultaneously) that the band would really start to hit its stride. When 1997’s The Soft Bulletin dropped, it was apparent that the Flaming Lips’ sound had come to full bloom, in all its hallucinatory grandeur. Half the fun of the band’s evolution from Zaireeka through The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, At War with the Mystics, and finally their latest effort, Embryonic, has been listening to a handful of musicians setting out to do something different and startling on each successive release and generally succeeding. The other half of the fun, at least ’til Mystics, was often as not in the songs themselves, finely constructed miniatures with lyrics that would’ve done Syd Barrett proud married to music that sounded like Brian Wilson had recorded Pet Sounds while listening to Brian Eno’s Another Green World.

Embryonic is a logical progression from what’s come before. It’s also their most challenging album since Zaireeka. This is not, as it turns out, a bad thing.

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 It can be hard writing about music, all the “dancing about architecture” stuff aside. You want to say something that will evoke what’s coming through the speakers sometimes, what it makes you feel other times. Actually, forget writing about music; the hard thing sometimes is just listening to it in the first place. Music is all about context. First of all, there’s the pile of emotional baggage that some artists’ work carries with it. Then you also have to deal with a web of connections and connotations that comes with a lifetime of listening to music. Sometimes this is a good thing, especially when that past experience reminds you of something—a throwaway line or bit of phrasing, lyrical or otherwise—that somehow deepens and enriches the experience.

Sometimes, though, it’s just frustrating. I’m reminded of the more frustrating aspect listening to Wale’s debut effort, Attention Deficit.

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A couple of months ago in this space, I reviewed Gustavo Cerati’s “Deja Vu” as a teaser of sorts to his new album, Fuerza Natural. At the time, I included the disclaimer that it’s pretty difficult to extrapolate the sound of an entire album on the basis of one track, and speculated that this album, like its predecessor Ahi Vamos, was likely to be a more straightforward rock effort. I turned out to be more right on the first point than the second since, as so often happens with Cerati, this disc is anything but straightforward.

A lot of the usual influences are here, including Charly Garcia, Luis Alberto Spinetta, and the ever-present shade of Cerati’s former band, Soda Stereo. There are also surprises here in the echoes of George Harrison and Todd Rundgren. There’s a stopover (”Magia”) in the same ZIP code previously occupied by ELO, and a riff on “Amor Sin Rodeos” that would do a certain Mr. Petty* proud.

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Luis Alfredo Garcia-Roza: Alone in the Crowd. Garcia-Roza’s Espinosa mysteries, of which this is the seventh, need not necessarily be read in sequence. This is a good thing, since that makes this book as good a place to start as any if you’re new to the author. Some series — Armistead Maupin’s beloved Tales of the City books come to mind — tend to rely too heavily on back stories and on the sense of connection that some readers develop with authors’ characters, to a point where the authors seem to skimp on other things that count, like a compelling narrative. It’s to the author’s credit that in this case, as much sense has been paid to crafting a story worth telling, and reading. I won’t spoil the plot (there’s plenty of spoilers available online); suffice it to say, if you’re a fan of Chandleresque detective fiction, with a twist, you’ll find much to enjoy in this book.

Chuck Klosterman: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Criticism can be dismal business. I’m reminded of this as I read things that start from the assumption that you can’t say something intellingent about something without a ranking or a handful of stars attached, and some wiseass will likely be reminded of it while reading this. 

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