Little Paris Bookshop is a Book Lover's Book

THE LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP: A NOVEL (2015)

Nina George

Crown, 400 pages, 978-0553418774

* * * * *

This is a book for lovers of all kinds, especially book lovers. Where better to set a book about a bookseller than along the banks of the Seine, whose Left Bank is lined with book stalls? The Seine is also home to a number of barges tethered to the shore and connected to the utilities grid. Author Nina George takes us to a special place: a riverside barge that is home to Jean Perdu, who also operates a bookshop and dispensary of non-prescription pharmaceutical supplies. Perdu—French for lost—fancies himself a “literary apothecary” who can take the measure of a person, discern what ails the soul, and prescribe a book that will cure it–and not necessarily a classic either. Perdu loves books so much that he doesn’t discriminate between a medieval medical text, a pulp romance, a Harry Potter novel, or a tome that is fodder for the literary canon. But can Perdu find his own way and heal himself?

Later in the book Perdu will encounter a lovesick Italian chef named Cuneo, whose life is summed by the advice he dispenses: “Eat well, sleep well, make good friends, and have good sex.” None of that is happening for Perdu, who eats out tins, suffers from insomnia, is a loner, and hasn’t had sex in over 20 years though he’s only middle-aged. Jean’s curmudgeonly ways are shaken when he’s prevailed upon to donate a small table from the apartment he seldom uses to a furniture-poor new tenant: the equally lonely and easy-on-the-eyes Catherine. She finds an unopened letter in the table drawer that reveals the depths of Jean’s despair. I don’t want to give anything away so I’ll just say that it deals with the mystery of why the love of his life left him. One of the many joys of George’s novel is how literature and life collide. Her name is Manon, and if you know anything at all about French literature and film you will recognize  Manon as the name of the avenging protagonist in Marcel Pagnol's Jean de Florette saga, a work considered by many to embody the very soul of France.   

George's Manon is not an avenger, but she is certainly a woman of secrets, which George parsimoniously doles out. Call Manon Jean's muse. Or is she more of a Siren? That's precisely what Jean—note the first name—must figure out as he embarks upon an improbable voyage to Manon's native Provence. His spartan voyage to find himself parallels Huckleberry Finn lighting out for the Territory, with Jim replaced by a tag-along famous author, Max Jordan, whose affected quirkiness is his self-remedy for writer's block and disgust with celebrity. Along the way, the two pick up Cuneo–another lost soul. Will this be a healing journey, or the voyage of the damned? Will Manon's secrets be cooling waters (Manon des Sources) for Jean's parched soul, or a dry well? The Little Paris Bookshop begins as a quirky book about eccentricity and evolves into a story about love and grieving. Romance or tragedy?

Read mes amis.  As you read, you can enhance your pleasure by keeping a good literary reference work by your side You will detect references and homage to scores of writers: Pagnol, E.M. Forster, Douglas Adams, Herman Hesse, Franz Kafka, Catharine Millet, Muriel Barbery, Robert Musil, Anais Nin, and lots of others that were unfamiliar to me, including numerous German authors whose work hasn't been translated. George's novel has been called a work of "magical realism," though in my view such a label rests too narrowly upon Jean Perdu's uncanny literary apothecary talents. The book is certainly 'magical' in the spell it weaves upon readers, but I found it less a work of unexplained phenomena than one that probes the human heart with such surgical precision that we come to understand how ordinary people can be flung by love, longing, and circumstance into the extraordinary and sublime. It is, simply, beautifully written–the sort of book in which the reader vicariously experiences the tastes, smells, heartaches and hopes of its characters. In short, it's a triumph–truly one of the year's best. For emotional impact, it gets my vote for one of the best I've read this century.   Rob Weir

Postscript: Nina George is quite an interesting person in her own right: a German national who dropped out school and has worked as a caterer, journalist, crime writer, novelist, and non-fiction writer. She has written numerous books under her own name, plus several pseudonyms, including Anne West, the latter used for books on eroticism and sexuality. The Little Paris Bookshop is said to be semi-autobiographical. 

The Green Road: Irish Gloom Worth Exploring

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THE GREEN ROAD (2015)

Anne Enright

W.W.Norton, 304 pages, 978-0393248210

* * * *

Though I suspect they 'd happily give up the title, no nationality does gloom and world-weariness quite as well as the Irish. The English are often viewed as the champions at resignation and muddling through life, but it's really the Irish who rule that sad roost. I'm sure it has something to do with Catholicism. Read a novel about a dysfunctional Irish family like The Green Road, and you come away with the feeling that everyone would happily kill themselves—if only it weren't a mortal sin.

The Green Road is similar in style and content to Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread, but without its (usually misplaced) hope that things might get better. If everything I've written so far sounds like you wish to steer a million miles from this book, let me direct you back to it.  Former Man Booker Prize winner Anne Enright (The Gathering, 2007) is a skillful writer who knows how to uncoil a narrative. The Green Road, in fact, is a set of individual narratives that collectively tell the 35-year saga of the Madigan family. It opens in 1980 inside a house named Ardeevin in County Clare—a fictional place (probably just outside of Doolin) located near the Cliffs of Moher. Although paterfamilias Pat is present, Ardeevin's reigning queen is his wife Rosaleen. She tries her hardest to be imperious, but her brood—Constance, Dan, Emmet, and Hanna–give her fits, so she resorts to melodrama when things don't go her way—which is often.

Filmmaker Michael Apted once commented, "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man." In The Green Road, this holds true across gender lines. We see Constance as a controlling child who grows up to be a mother of four who replicates Rosaleen's desire (and failure) to be in control all the time. Youngest daughter Hanna goes off to Dublin to be an actress, fails, suffers from post partum depression, and drinks too much, which means she competes with Rosaleen in the histrionics department. As a teen, Dan announces he wants to become a priest–though he has a sullen girlfriend named Isabelle with whom he's been sleeping. His priestly dreams go awry when he and Isabelle flee Ireland for New York City, where they land at the height of the AIDS crisis. That doesn't stop Dan from pretending he's straight while having it off with every young man attracted to his outward beauty. Emmet is the one who tries to save the world, eventually going off to Mali and burning through a few girlfriends because, as it turns out, he's too sullen and self-centered to be as altruistic as he fancies himself.  

As the complicates their lives the one constant is that only Constance—Does her name doom her?–maintains much contact with Rosaleen and all tend to see her as the root of whatever unresolved difficulty presents itself. Move the needle forward and it's 2005. The economic boom dubbed the Celtic Tiger is already beginning to display signs of being less a Bengal than a sickly domestic tabby, but Ardeevin is well located. Seventy-six-year-old Rosaleen is not only lonely, she's begun to suspect that the only one who ever "got" her was her silent husband and he's been in the grave for several years. Why not sell Ardeevin—after a final Christmas there with her children? Think that will go well?

Enright doesn't invite us to love the Madigans, though she gives character and a strong personality to each of them. Hers is the best kind of tragedy in that it doesn't play upon cheap sentimentality. Characters are realistic in that they have faults and are a mixed bag of traits. Is Dan just a clueless naïf or a manipulative sexual gourmand? Is Rosaleen a spurned woman, or one who reaped what she sowed? Are the Madigans a metaphor form the Irish Republic? You read; you decide.  

Rob Weir

The Slow West: Westerns Retold or a Pretty Mess?

THE SLOW WEST (2015)

Directed by John Maclean

See-Saw Films/A24

84 minutes, R (violence)

* * *

Depending upon whom you ask, The Slow West is either an intriguing foreign take on American Westerns or an eye-catching mess. From where I sit, it's a bit of both. This Scottish/New Zealand film marks the directorial debut of John Maclean, who hitherto was famed for being part of Scotland's Beta Band, an innovative indie band ensemble compared to Radio Head that blended folk, electronica, and acid rock. Maclean may be used to mash ups, but it remains an open question as to whether this is a Tartan/Kiwi retelling of American legends, or an unintentional parody analogous to bad spaghetti Westerns.  

At just 84 minutes, the film is certainly worth a gamble if you're intrigued, but be warned: the title is both a play on the "Old" West and a statement that the pace will be languid with breaks of action, not vice versa. It opens in Scotland, where 15-year-old Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is trying to court Rose Ross (the luminous Caren Pistorious) and must dive under the bed when her protective father, John  (Rory McCann), arrives home early. As movie convention tells us, that's a terrible place to hide, but as John is giving young Jay a brogue-laden tongue-lashing, the local laird arrives to demand rent the Roses don't have. When he has the discourtesy to slap Rose, her father gives him a crofter's fatal heave-ho onto an inconveniently placed rock. This was capital offense stuff in 1869 Scotland; hence father and daughter go on the lamb—to America.

Move the clock forward one year and besotted Jay is making his way across the American West in search of Rose. Every bounty hunter in the region seems to know what Jay does not: that there's a trans-Atlantic $2,000 dead-or-alive bounty (about $37,000 in 2014 dollars) on John and Rose. It's an understatement to say that Jay, a 16-year-old romantic innocent, isn't terribly prepared to negotiate the lawless West.  Luckily he runs into Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender), who offers to be a pay-for-service guide. Silas is a classic Western loner of few words about whom the only thing we learn for certain is that he once traveled with a motley gang headed by Payne (Ben Mendelsohn). Is Silas a free spirit, a stubble-faced paternal do-gooder hidden behind a crusty exterior, or is he playing Jay like a cheap accordion so he can collect the bounty on the Rosses? The two make their way across the indeterminate West—we're never told exactly where we're supposed to be–against a backdrop of casual violence, desperation, hostile Natives, cutout bad guys, majestic backdrops, and capricious nature before secrets are revealed. All of these, of course, are also standard Western tropes, as is Maclean's blood-soaked denouement.

It's surprising to see Fassbender amidst this cast of relative unknowns, though to their credit, most of them are very good. Pistorious (Rose) is especially strong in the limited role she plays. Her bearing alone suggests Jay might be on a foolish boy's errand; in the intervening year, Rose has transformed from a coquette into a confident young woman with weighty things upon her mind. The bigger question is whether the film works, or if it demonstrates little more than Maclean's fascination for Big Sky Country based upon an incomplete understanding of it.

Once again, both readings are possible. Maclean chose New Zealand's South Island (near Twizel) as a stand-in for the edge-of-the–Rockies West. It's not accurate: The Remarkables are more lush and green for a start, nor will you find a preponderance of lupine-filled riverbeds or walls of yellow gorse in the Rocky Mountain plains as one does in the Canterbury (NZ) Plain. Does that matter? Yes if you think a film about the West needs to pay John Ford-like reverence to the landscape. No; if you think Maclean's point is that humans are but pretty puny and fragile dots upon nature's pristine carpet of grandeur. We must also give Maclean credit for avoiding one hackneyed Western trope: the violence he shows is pointless, not redemptive or cleansing. (Note to Maclean: No one used Colt-45s in 1870, as it wasn't invented for another three years.)

This is an odd film in that it looks beautiful and is well acted, yet feels unrealized. It's been a bomb in US markets (under $230,000 in receipts) but you might want to give it a look. If you come away feeling as if it's just a glossier version of an early 1960s TV show, I'd not dispute you, but I'll gleefully watch gloss filmed in New Zealand.   Rob Weir

Archie Fisher's Mature, Bittersweet "Silent Song"

ARCHIE FISHER

A Silent Song

Red House 235

* * * *

On October 23, Scotland's Archie Fisher will celebrate his 76^th birthday. My goodness, where does the time go? Fisher has long been a lion of the Scottish folk scene. He hails from a musical Glasgow family, has been performing since 1960, and Fisher compositions such as "The FinalTrawl," "Witch of the West-Mer-Land," and "Dark-Eyed Molly" are such a part of the folk repertoire that many people think they are public domain songs. Fisher is also part of a generation of guitar players that includes John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, and Martin Carthy whose strong cadences mixed with light lyricism practically reinvented how acoustic melodies were played and sung. Fisher even hosted radio programs and folk clubs that revived flagging interest in Scottish music. The only thing he's not done a lot of is recording; Silent Song is just his 7^th solo venture. It's also just his 3^rd since 1976 and the first since 2008.(My personal favorite Archie Fisher song is "The Cullins of Home" from an earlier album.)

The album is aptly named. We can hear a little shake to his voice, though his buttery baritone hasn't soured. T'is a wise man who knows his limits, though, and Fisher doesn't even try to impress with vocal pyrotechnics; as the title suggests, this is a quiet and personal album—the kind one might play on a wintry day curled by the fire with cocoa in hand. In that spirit, Fisher opens with "Waltz Into Winter," which is simultaneously bright and fragile--akin to the delicacy of an early December icicle. The album's dozen songs are a collection of traditional tunes, covers, and originals, but each track has a timeless and personal feel. Personal favorites include his cover of John Jacob Niles' "Lass from the Low Country" in which Fisher's deep tones are echoed by Luna Skye's sonorous cello; his rendition of the classic Scottish poem "Bonnie Annie Laurie," which he learned from his father; and his take on Ian Davison's "A River Like You." (If you know anything about the Scots, a love song to a river is as natural as peat on the fire.) Perhaps best of all is Fisher's own "Lord of the May," with that staccato vocal/guitar mix mentioned earlier. I can foresee this one becoming the next Fisher composition to be mislabeled as a  "traditional" song. Ditto his "You Took the Day," a bittersweet address to those who've departed, complete with the unsettling thought, "I won't be far behind." It's hard not to get a bit choked up when he follows that one and rounds off the album with "The Parting Glass." Appropriately, nearly everyone thinks that's an ancient Irish song, but it was penned by American poet Judy Goodenough (1942-90). Fisher used to sing this one when he toured with Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy. Was that really 40 years ago?

Archie Fisher will appear with Garnet Rogers at the West Whately Chapel as the season finale of Watermelon Wednesdays. This one, though, will be on a Monday: October 5. Call ahead, though, as it's officially sold out.

Rob Weir

Red Rising: Pastiche or Pilfering?

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RED RISING  (2014)

By Pierce Brown

Del Rey, 416 pages, 978-0345539809

* * *

Pierce Brown's gripping dystopian sci-fi novel raises important questions about the lies leaders tell. It also raises less substantive ones such as: Is there a line between homage and rip-off? There are echoes of Harry Potter, Ender's Game, and Lord of the Flies in Red Rising. It's also a secularized version of Roman mythology, but it borrows so much from The Hunger Games that the phrase "intellectual plagiarism" lurks in the back of the mind even as one greedily devours the pages.  

Red Rising is set in the future. Its protagonist, 16-year-old Darrow, is a "Helldiver" on Mars, a miner who works in a bulky pressurized suit in underground chambers populated by poisonous pit vipers and explosive gas pockets. He already has a young, rail-thin wife, Eo, because life on Mars is short, brutish, and nasty. Not only do atmospheric conditions take a toll on the body, but food and other comforts are (allegedly) in short supply on a planet that's stratified by skin pigmentation. (Think the districts in The Hunger Games.) Darrow and Eo are Reds, a low stratum in a society ruled by taller, smarter, more muscular Golds. The Golds, whom we quickly surmise are analogous to an elite version of a fascist-style military junta, maintain strict discipline—right down to doling out rewards, controlling food supplies, and imposing the death penalty for certain songs—but they also draw upon species loyalty. As the tale goes, earth's atmosphere was ruined, hence mankind had to colonize other planets. The materials Helldivers such as Darrow are mining will help humankind terraform other worlds and construct sustainable atmospheres so that future humans can live outside of their bio-domes. The untold truth is that the secret for doing both was discovered centuries earlier and the well-fed Golds are living in luxurious cities on the Martian surface. Eo shows this to Darrow by taking him into a forbidden chamber and then publicly singing a forbidden song so that she will be martyred and Darrow will fulfill what she sees as his revolutionary destiny. In true Hero's Journey fashion, Darrow very reluctantly takes up the challenge.

First, though, he must undergo a transformation—Red must become Gold—and that's far more complex than a furtive dye job. Darrow is given over to Dancer, a Gold collaborator, who helps him prepare for this role, and to a series of "Carvers," who literally remake his body into that of a demigod. But can Darrow pass socially and intellectually? That's not easy either, as he must undergo rigorous leadership training at a sort of Holgwart's in the sky academy with other ambitious Golds. Moreover, the ruling elite—headed by ArchGovernor Nero au Augustus—also have a trial-by-combat final test to see who will fulfill what role in Gold society and they are willing to accept quite a bit of 'melt' in the form of crippling injury and death to assure that only the fittest survive. If you're imagining an obvious Hunger Games parallel at this point, you are correct—right down to each candidate having a Proctor/sponsor—individuals named after Roman gods in this case. Although there are official teams—Mars in Darrow's case—leadership must be won, not assumed, which means intra- as well inter-rivalries. As in The Hunger Games unofficial alliances form, betrayals abound, loyalties are always ambiguous, and the results are often rigged. Although Brown throws in a few novel twists—including Darrow's growing attraction for a woman from a rival team named Mustang, his guilt over Eo's death, and his rivalry/friendship with a teammate named Cassius—this truly is The Hunger Games with different window treatments. It's analogous right down to being book one of a planned trilogy, so we know that Darrow has to survive no matter what perils he faces.

In addition to being derivative, there are some rather obvious logic errors throughout the book, including the fact that Darrow kept his unusual name and appended it to a made up family history. Why don't snakes need oxygen? More perplexing: How is it that a ruling elite smart enough to keep miners in the dark for 700 years doesn't wonder about a Gold from an unknown family who just happens to have the first name of a Red who went missing right after his wife was executed?

I plowed through the book because Brown is an engaging writer and he threw in enough small details to intrigue me, like how different colors on the planet swore. I also have to admit that having just finished several denser novels preconditioned me for some cheap thrills and escapism. Whether you will enjoy Red Rising depends upon where you come down on the pastiche-versus-pilfering question. I give Brown high marks for writing, but low scores for creativity. I've also had my fix, so I rather doubt I'll read the sequels.

Rob Weir

 

At the Water's Edge an Unglorious Mess

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AT THE WATER'S EDGE (2015)

Sara Gruen

Spiegel & Grau, 368 pages, 978-038523233

*

Here's a novel that has it all: rich people, the Scottish Highlands, the Loch Ness monster, ghosts, a bearded Scotsman, hair's breath escapes from death, sex, violence… It's only missing one thing: an ounce of plausibility. Okay, two things; it's not very well written either. Sara Gruen's latest novel is wildly popular, but then again so are Nora Roberts romances and Thomas Kincaid paintings and for the same reason: if you push all the correct sentimentality buttons, lots of people will consume your work as if it were made of chocolate-covered fried dough.

Like millions, I readily devoured Gruen's Water for Elephants, which I found too charming to muse over its literary merits. At the Water's Edge is a different matter altogether. It's what you'd get if you put Wide Sargasso Sea, Mrs. Dalloway, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Great Gatsby, My Man Godfrey, and a few bodice rippers in a blender, set it to crush, and reassembled the parts haphazardly.

The book is set in the waning days of World War Two, a small conflict that apparently escaped notice from members of Philadelphia's upper crust. It centers on a young married couple, Ellis and Madeline, though Ellis much prefers the company of his friend Hank. Although in the pink of health, neither man is in uniform because Ellis is allegedly color-blind and Hank has flat feet. Because they are also the offspring off the idle rich, they are content to dance and drink the war away. Madeline is Ellis' prize/rebellion from when all three were in prep school. She's beautiful in face, but rail thin, despised by her snooty in-laws, and generally treated as if she were suffering from neurasthenia. Already there are problems in Gruen's narrative. The setting feels more 1924 than 1944, and the three central characters come off more like besotted Jazz Age escapees from a rough draft of a Fitzgerald novel. Despite the fact they are supposed to be Americans, Ellis and Hank seem more like upper-class British twits—the sort who wouldn't know how to crack a hard-boiled egg and would leave it to the servants to do.

It goes downhill from here. After a falling out with his rich parents, who cut his allowance and belittle Madeline, Ellis hastily arranges a wartime sail to Scotland. Why? So he can redeem himself by—wait for it—finding the Loch Ness monster! (There is, of course, a brush with near-death on the way.) In Gruen's increasingly ludicrous plot, Ellis' father is none other than the man who took the infamous 1934 "Surgeon's Photograph" of Nessie that was proven to be a fraud. If only Ellis can find Nessie and restore his old man's reputation, maybe all will be forgiven and he'll get to live happily with Madeline. Or not—because this book is filled with so many ham-handed homoerotic hints that we suspect it's really Hank he'd rather bed.

The Scottish sojourn involves checking into the only hotel in Drumnadrochit, the village nearest the waters where Nessie is most often seen. It is run by the brooding Angus, who is having nothing of being ordered about by a group of lazy, loudmouthed Yanks without uniforms or ration books. Ellis and Hank are horrible, inconsiderate louts in every way imaginable–so bad that Madeline begins to see her marriage as a literal trap–one in which Ellis might be plotting to have her declared insane so he can tuck her away in an asylum and lay his profligate hands on her fortune.

Oh, please! Do you have the stomach for more? What's been left out? People aren't who they appear to be on the surface. There are more near-death experiences, but providential rescues by heroes and (perhaps) by ghosts and monsters. Oh yeah. I left out drug addiction, poaching, violence against women, suicide, dead children, steamy sex, and leaden prose. And let's not forget Gruen's descriptions of World War Two, though you could get these by reading Wikipedia. The only redeeming quality lies with depictions of the bleakness of British home front life during the war.

Do not fall prey to this book's hype. It's not akin to Water for Elephants. In fact, it reads like the sort of book that an author is pressured to write to capitalize on the success of a previous best seller. I will reserve judgment about Gruen's literary talents for now, but of At the Water's Edge it must be said that though it's Scottish, it's still crap.

Rob Weir

Simrit, Yael Meyer, Family Folk Revival, Jennell, and Ingird Michaelson

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Time to clean the decks again, so here are a few short reviews to alert readers about new releases.

Simrit Kaur is a Greek-born, South Carolina-raised Sikh, a phrase that probably just set off a few "New Age" alarms. Get over it. Simrit performs sacred chant music, but her musical influences include: Greek legend Nana Mouskouri and ancient Byzantine music, Jeff Buckley, Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, and The Grateful Dead. Plus Loreena McKennitt, which makes a lot of sense because Simrit's dreamy cadences, like McKennitt's or Enya's, often tumble out of frothy mixes. You'll hear bells and angelic harmonies behind her, but also percussion and peddle steel. Songs like "Kal Akaal" are at once deeply meditative, but the bass notes are heavy and vaguely ominous and the feel is evocative of quieter Renaissance folk rock offerings—think Pentangle. "Pure" uses electric guitar for the effect a sitar might induce in an Indian raga, but Simrit's voice has all the power and ornamentation of a pop singer. About that voice—it's one for the ages. Her songs are so gorgeous you might find your pacified mind disconnects from your sashaying body. (By the way, all Sikh women use the surname Kaur in the same way that all males use Singh.)

Speaking of intriguing voices, Yael Meyer is worth adding to singers-you-should-check-out bucket list. In her own way, she's as meditative as Simrit, but she does it more in a folk/pop vein. She's a Chilean-born, Los Angeles-based artist in the indie pop/folk range whose latest release Warrior Heart (Kli Records, 2014) generated some buzz. The title track is a nice mix of lush pop and energetic polyrhythm that creates a solid aural base for Meyer's voice. Hers is delicate palette, but she uses her 'small' voice in confident and interesting ways that make it sound bigger than it is. A personal favorite is "Everything Will Be Alright," an upbeat song with a slightly quirky backbeat and clipped end-of-line syllables on the chorus that punctuate the arrangement and add silent contrast to her light vocals. Meyer won't blow you away with power but—like the TV and movie soundtrack works to her credit—her voice is that background lilt that makes you take notice when you least expect it.

There's a band from Magnolia, Texas that calls itself Family Folk Revival. That's based largely on the fact that three members of the quintet come from the Lankford family, but aside from a few forays into (mostly) acoustic music ("Marfa," "Trash") there's not much on their new record Water Walker (Rock Ridge Music) that evokes a coffeehouse scene. FFF calls itself a "psychedelic rock and roll band" and that doesn't quite cut it either, though lead vocalist Mason Lankford evokes Jim Morrison on songs such as "Dream" and "I Found God." A better descriptor would be to call these guys moody garage country. Thick thwacking bass lines frame the breakdown song "I Drew a Line," and "Darlin'" feels like bluegrass from the place where the mountain stream drains into a swamp. A lot of FFF songs have dark edges and arrangements—the echo chamber used in "Everyone Loves Everyone," the spooky feel to "American Standard," and the grungy guitar and bass of "If It Don't Kill You (It ain't Love)." But yeah, these guys are country. You don't get much more country than a line like line: Now I'm drunk again tonight/Like I was the night before that/And the night before that/And the night before that. But you know what? Slap any label you want on them because they're just damned good. If I were their manager, though, I'd make them get a new moniker. (Try an Internet search on Family Folk Revival and leave yourself extra time!)

Does the music industry ask women to go by one name because it sees them as interchangeable widgets? Here's hoping that a young singer from Wyoming billed simply as Jennell doesn't let Nashville turn her into a replacement part. Her music evokes the indie pop/club music side of things (especially Sweden's Robyn) and her new EP Home is filled with bubbly hooks and energy. You can hear her youth in songwriting way too heavy on ooo-ooo-ooo and woo-ooo-oo filler, but this young woman knows how to use her voice. She can reach up for diva stuff, but she builds to it and has an infectious catch that she uses to good effect. She's strongest, though, when the arrangements ratchet down. "Feels Like Home" and "Pave My Own Way" are winners because she controls the vibe, whereas the other three songs, though they have their virtues, feel more like the mix is controlling her. Lots of promise, though—if she can avoid widget syndrome. [No videos available.]

I can't tell you the number of young women I run into who'd like to be Ingrid Michaelson when they grow up. Small wonder. If you think pop music has to be banal, check out her back catalog. Her sampler A Summer Night Out illustrates why she's an underground goddess. First of all, she owns the arrangements, not vice versa. "Time Machine" is gutsy and bluesy, with Michaelson's voice matching the grit of the brassy horns. In like fashion, she uses heavy bass as the dark counterpoint to her bright voice on "The Way I Am," a song that hold another key to her success: her willingness to take chances—by bringing a cool jazz ambience to pop in this case. On "Warpath" she absolutely abuses what we think about pop by squeezing it into some hand jive and layering it with swamp rock. I could go on, but you really need to hear her—if for no other reason, you'll understand why tweens, teens, and twenty-somethings swoon when her name is dropped. (She's the coolest thing in glasses this side of Tina Fey, by the way.)

Rob Weir