Word: backgrounders
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...horns. Most of the record’s songs are waltzes; most feature the same full horn section, accordion, and Condon’s slow, bittersweet voice (think a higher-register Stephin Merritt). The effect isn’t unpleasant—but the album works best as background music. Some of the songs feature slightly different elements, like the Celtic drums of “Guyamas Sonora,” or the jazzy piano line throughout “In the Mausoleum.” However, hearing Owen Pallett (who also wrote the album’s string arrangements...
...finds the band being intelligent in its playfulness. The chorus purposely drags out the many syllables in “restorative,” suggesting that the lyrics are—for once—purposely intended to not fit in with the musical phrasing in the background. The fact that the Fiery Furnaces actually are capable of writing quirky songs that aren’t mainstream but also aren’t contrived makes the entire project frustrating. Earlier albums, like “Blueberry Boat,” were successful not only because of Pitchfork?...
...excellent choice for a speaker because she represents in her work the “American experience as it was in the past and as it is, the history of slavery, the history of freedom.” The reading also resonated with Faust’s background as a Civil War historian. Faust spoke immediately after the reading, thanking Morrison for her contributions to literature and for “bearing witness to the past.” This is Morrison’s second visit to Harvard this year, having received the 2007 Radcliffe Institute Medal in June...
...begins the band’s latest video mastercraft: a rapid-fire history lesson from the 1960s through today. Rob Thomas heralds the birth of Modern Time with delicate overhead claps, jamming in the NASA control center while Neil Armstrong bounces like a lunar Tigger in the background. “I’m waking up at the start of the end of the world,” Rob-Thom narrates via song. We learn that contemporary history is more about Rob Thomas’s desperate inner-state than you ever realized (“I started crying...
...letters are to his beloved mother, Mary Doyle, beginning in 1867, when he was an 8-year-old boy at a Jesuit boarding school, and continuing until 1920, when Mary died. The book's editors - two Conan Doyle scholars and the author's great-nephew - also provide plenty of background material, rare drawings and photographs, and relevant excerpts from Conan Doyle's other works, making this the most comprehensive single volume out there...