Someone once told me that, according to some study, people stop listening to new music around age 33. I was maybe 25 at the time and a professional music critic, so I found this to be, as I almost definitely put it at the time, a huge bummer. Not me, I thought. I’m better than that.
And so here I am just three days away from turning 33, sending you an email about a song from 2013.
— Ashley
let me tell you about this song
I had it in my head that The Men recorded “I Saw Her Face” — the 5-minute, 22-second rambling jam off 2013’s New Moon — in one take. But I’ve been googling about it for a good 20 minutes and can’t find any evidence that that’s true. The band said in interviews that some tracks were done in one, including the nearly 8-minute “Supermoon,” but no combination of search terms is confirming the thing I’ve definitely been telling people for years. (Sorry to those people.)
Anyway, it sounds very much like it could have been recorded in one take and that’s at least 80 percent of its appeal.
The first 3:25 isn’t anything I’d bother writing to you about. Not that it’s bad — it’s a dreamy slow-burn on remembered love1 that you’d probably keep in the rotation for a while. But it’s the back 2 where the song bursts into flames and locks itself into my forever playlist. Guitarist Nick Chiericozzi leads us in with a wailing and easy-paced solo before the whole band snaps into high gear, absolutely ripping through the final 40 seconds and hammering back down on the central riff to put a period on it.
It’s a great plot twist. It’s a nice bit of musicianship. It rules.
let me tell you about this book
Families are hard and Joyce Carol Oates knows it, though almost certainly not in the way every character in Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. comes to know it.
As far as I know, Oates’ father was not a rich and small-town-powerful man who died a terrible and enraging death, sending his wife and adult children spiraling. (I won’t spoil the circumstances of John “Whitey” McClaren’s death, since the publisher’s blurb doesn’t.) But practically every moment we spend with the McClarens feels recognizable, though probably a few or more degrees removed from whatever our own realities are.
We spend many dark pages with Jessalyn McClaren, a woman so cartoonishly subsumed in the role of “the wife” that she becomes entirely unmoored in her identity as “the widow.” Then there’s Thom, the oldest grown kid, with his alarming anger problem. There’s Beverly, who’s the oldest sister and who, my god, needs to swallow 1,000 chill pills (and maybe read a book). There’s Lorene, the bafflingly heartless middle child, and Virgil, the hapless trustafarian younger brother. And there’s the youngest, Sophia, who responds to her father’s death by panic-quitting her job and dating her much older, now-former boss.
So they’re, you know, a lot. A fair bit of the experience of reading this book is swinging wildly between silently begging the family members to “holy shit please calm down” and “holy shit just do something about it.”2 And you know what? It’s absolutely engrossing.
Part of what kept me hooked is the shifting POV between chapters — pretty much a guaranteed way to keep me interested. I love when a story comes together as the author shifts between characters. The other part is the way she picks apart family structures and takes a long, hard look at the broken pieces. And if I’m being honest, a good 30 percent of my interest is in the drama and pettiness.
Oates is also digging into race here… sort of? I’m not sure what she’s trying to say, if she’s trying to say anything in particular at all. At bare minimum, she’s probably nailed the different flavors of wealthy white racism in small towns.
I wish I didn’t feel so frustrated by the final chapter. It’s not very sophisticated to demand resolution for every single character. But here’s the thing:
We spend 742 pages in small-town New York, dipping into the lives of each McClaren.
Then we abruptly depart for a far-flung location
leaving almost everyone behind
to spend the final 45 pages following Jessalyn’s misadventures and anxiety
and to end with a shrug.
I’m surprised to check back and find it was only 45 pages because it felt like 100+. It’s a choice! And it maybe wouldn’t bother me so much if one sibling hadn’t gotten something of a resolution while we leave the other four mid-crisis. And maybe (definitely) this ending is more true to life. People’s lives carry on whether you’re following them or not. But I guess I want a more dramatic finish to justify the dramatic change in scenery.3
All that said, I love long books for their world-building and Oates delivers on that. It’s a dark, petty, mood-swinging world to sink into.
let me tell you about these cats
For as long as almost anyone can remember, Tommy Half-ear and his crew have been right here.
That’s Tommy in the center — here and always. That’s Carlo on the left, he’s the new guy. Still skittish, still green. The guy on the stoop is Oreo Jones. No one knows how a non-tabby ended up on the streets but they know better than to ask. Mack the Knife, the old-timer and the meanest motherfucker, is in the back there, and Slim, the con man, is on the other end.
These guys ran the block. If you’re a lucky street cat in this town, maybe you can claim a porch or an alley as your own. Maybe you know where the birds nest. But the whole block meant something. Tommy had the in at every house. He knew who was tossing fish carcasses every Friday, who left beds out under their shrubs, and which porches get the longest sun. And information was power. If you wanted to dip your tongue in 824’s fountain, you went through Tommy. If you needed to lay up under 843 for a while, you went through Tommy. If you wanted to lick your rear in peace and quiet on the 800 block of Clouet, you’d better be good with Tommy.
That racket ended the day the lady in 816 started leaving food and water out. It self-dispenses, for Christ’s sake. There’s no owning that — not that they haven’t tried.
Lately the only action these guys are seeing is keeping this new gray cat off the block. Most people call him “that mean cat.”4 Tommy calls him “the rogue element.” None of them are sure where he picked up the phrase but you don’t make fun of Tommy. Not now, especially.
Anyway, now it’s just this. Sitting on a stoop eating kibble, chasing off the riffraff and staring down any dog who thought he might tread down their sidewalk with his clumsy feet. Dogs walk in the street on this block. That much hasn’t changed.
This song has to have some of the funniest misheard-by-the-robots lyrics listed on the internet. (“Make me aware to that pressure plans” = “take me away to that special place.”)
Is there anything so frustrating listening in on the internal monologue of someone paralyzed by anxiety? I just want to help you! Please help yourself!!
See also: We Cast A Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin.
This is true.