Word: moderns
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Every week it's something new but never useful. If the section were about Ancient Greece, he might bring up Gandhi's philosophy of satyagraha, but if it's about modern India, Plato is the man of the hour...
...when The Sheila Divine (not Neil Levine) strutted on stage like Buddy Holly in a three-way mirror and began to play, the whole crowd of anxious modern citizens was alike in amazement; not a one was prepared for the emotional intensity delivered soon thereafter. Goofiness we might have expected from the bespectacled Aaron Perrino, the three-person band's guitarist/lead singer/Max Headroom lookalike. And we might have anticipated a too-jaded-to-smile brand of contemporary bass-playing from bassist Jim Gilbert...
...Radiohead here and to Sunny Day Real Estate there, The Sheila Divine's nine-song set began and ended in sweetness. They started the evening with "The Amendment," a precious ballad that allowed Perrino a warm up before exploding into the kind of fervor needed for the later "Modern Log" and "Opportune Moment." Except for the ballad, the songs were similar in form; they began with a Belle and Sebastian like delicacy and built up to a passionate central moment that belied the simplicity of the band's instruments (drummer Shawn Sears plays only a bass drum, snare...
...both of them like a die hard indie fan. But then, growing up, realizing we demanded odd things of love, our parents and our world, we tend to brush off these brilliant-brave complainers as if their long struggles with and against masculinity, motherhood and the other arrangements of modern life were nothing bigger than our own childhood naivetes...
Oddly enough, Gluck maintains a cool, stony voice throughout--despite her pluralistic embraces. She recalls antiquity, speaking through Aeneas, Eurydice and Orpheus in various poems, yet her usage encloses the most tragic scenes in a modern living room. She retells: "In the end, Dido/summoned her ladies in waiting/that they might see/the harsh destiny inscribed for her by the fates." The phrase "In the end" dooms the stanza to almost blase speech, which is almost bucked by the phrase "that they might," until the stanza ends with the prepositional pile-up "inscribed for her by the fates." Flat language and idioms...