February Music Cleanout: McKay, Steep Canyon, Motsenbocker, Covenhoven, Wainwright, Trojano

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Three words to remember: John Griffin McKay. His American Fantasy (Noisetrade) is a small masterpiece that captured me with its opening lines: Don't want to read another novel/About the story of a man/How he loaded up his rifle/And brought peace throughout the land/Don't want a Holy Ghost revival/Made by the greediness of man/It's not about the soul's survival/But the money in your hand. McKay hails from Waco, Texas, but he's having nothing to do with country music clichés, faux morality, or nostrums. His style is acoustic country with occasional rock interludes, but his lyrical sensibility put me in mind of artists such as Ari Hest and David Ramirez, who write songs for adults. McKay calls himself "a broken man writing songs for broken people" and we certainly hear that in quiet dark songs such as "Poison in Our Veins," or in the thick bass/crunchy power chord rock of "Lay Down Your Gun." Yet there's also a sweetness to much of McKay's music–the gentle acoustic backing to "The Pain's Right Here," the ringing harmonics of "More Than Living," and the memorable hooks of "Before I Sleep," the last with the poignant line: If hope is where the heart is/Then I'm a hopeless wanderer. You simply must check out the deliberately paced 6:32 title track, which is heavy on atmospherics and is deliciously enigmatic. I have a feeling we'll be hearing more from this artist.

 

Naming a favorite bluegrass band these days is about as easy as choosing a favorite flavor at a Ben & Jerry's scoop shop, but I'll take a big dish of Steep Canyon Rangers any day of the week. They've got a new CD, On the Radio (Rounder) that exudes why so many of us love this band. There is, first of all, the refreshing honesty of the title track, which admits they're revivalists, not hillbillies from the hollows: I was raised on the sound of the radio/When I need to go back, I turn it up loud/And I'm ready to go. Then there are the polished lead vocals of Woody Platt that are all about the melody, not putting on an affected twang. "Blue Velvet Rain" is simply a great tune and it's made all the more so by Mike Guggino's sizzling mando licks. If you'd prefer a foot-stomper, try "Nobody Knows You," with breakout banjo from Graham Sharp and Nicky Sanders adding fiery fiddle while Charles Humphrey (bass) and Mike Ashworth (box percussion) establish such solid foundations that neither Sharp nor Sanders can knock them down. Or maybe you want some gospel evocations ("Stand and Deliver"). This band is flat-out great.

Tyler Motsenbocker has a new CD about to release and if it's anything like his 2013 EP Rivers and Roads (Tooth & Nail) it will be a cause for celebration. In the interim, Rivers and Roads is yours to download for a tip, and you can sample it first just to make sure it's your cup of tea: http://www.tysonmotsenbocker.com/listen/ Motsenbacker hails from Washington State, but hit the road when his mother died and hiked the coast south to California, where he now resides. Along the way he used his pen to work out some grief, identity issues, and values. Motsenbacker generally works with a resonant acoustic guitar and had a voice that at times has smoothness evocative of a youthful Phil Ochs. This is especially true on "Path in the Weeds." It, like other introspective songs such as "I Still Have to Go," explores the tension between longings for home and the realization that the answers to vaguely defined questions lie elsewhere. There's an impressive amount of stylistic variety on this five-track collection–everything from the crestfallen vocal/sparse piano "Blink Behind the Leaves" to the thick arrangement of "Footfalls," the latter a real crowd pleaser that's the optimistic antidote to melancholy : Open your eyes you're alive/Another fine night near the ocean/Please don't cry, it's alright/You're always going to be my darling.    

It might sound pretentious for a solo artist to have his own band name, but Covenhoven makes a lot of sense when you learn that it's the name of a cabin built deep in the Wyoming woods by Joel Van Horne's grandfather. The Wild and Free pays homage to the big spaces that make us both wistful and humble. Van Horne calls his style "symphonic folk," by which he means the arrangements are lush and haunting. Although he's sometimes compared to Bon Iver, to me the album felt like a folked-down version of Snow Patrol, especially in the ways Van Horne's seamless waves of sound soothe and cleanse. Nothing is rushed, lest something important be lost. On the title track, we find Van Horne walking his inner child down the trails of time; in "Blind Spots" he sings:  With our pains replaced with scars/Like planes mistaken for the stars/We set out hungry like borrowed drifter's appetite–his prescription for seeking things not yet discovered. The Wild and Free put me in mind of an Epicurean perambulating through the woods in pursuit of the wisdom that comes from syncing nature and desire.      

Not My Cuppa Tea

Biology is destiny when it comes to the vocal abilities of anyone born into the extended McGarrigle/Wainwright clan. That said, the appeal of Rufus Wainwright eludes me and his Live at Coventry download didn't change my mind. He has written operas and theater pieces that are, in a nutshell, what I don't like about his music. Live at Coventry finds Wainwright behind the piano—especially the bright keys. There's no doubt he's a superb vocalist, but the current repertoire is cabaret-style garish and overwrought. Wainwright has adoring fans and has added new ones since he has come out as gay, but there's a sense of trying too hard to prove his gay cred—right down to affected feyness. Mostly, though, the songs I sampled–"Poses," "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk," and "Foolish Love"–are all-atmosphere-no-substance forgettable, as background piano bar music tends to be. 

Sometimes a new CD arrives by an artist about whom there I some buzz. I listen, shrug, and move on. I've had people whose views I respect tell me about Zak Trojano and I can hear potential, but his CD, Yesterday's Sun (WhistlePig Records), sounded homespun and not in a good way. A few tracks caught my attention, like "Get Me Right," but I'm pretty sure I've heard its central lick in an old country song whose title I can't recall. Another one I liked was the folky "Long Black Vine." For me, though, Trojano's folk songs lack sweetness, his blues lack grit, the vocals are inconsistent, the guitar's bass notes need more contrasting treble, and the production is muddy. 

Rob Weir

Ricki and the Flash: Meryl Can Rock, but...

RICKI AND THE FLASH (2015)

Directed by Jonathan Demme

TriStar Pictures, 101 minutes, PG-13 (drugs and language)

* *

We’ve finally found something Meryl Streep can’t do: wear heavy mascara. In Ricki and the Flash Streep plays an ageing woman who chucked domesticity and responsible motherhood in pursuit of rock n’ roll glory. We first meet her in an LA bar as Ricki Rendazzo, where she’s holding court as the lead vocalist of The Flash, a cover band the likes of which you’re unlikely to hear at a watering hole near you (Joe Vitale, Rick Rosas, Gabriel Ebert, and Rick Springfield). Can Streep sing rock and roll? Yep—with gusto, power, and husk. Can she play guitar? Yep—she learned how for the role. Does she look like a rocker? Well…. the cornrows are a bit much and her black mascara application would only look Goth on a raccoon, but she mostly pulls off the illusion. Springfield is, of course, a legitimate rocker and he takes all the heavy guitar leads. As Greg, he’s also Ricki’s on-again/off-again lover. He’s nuts about her, but Ricki has commitment issues galore.

Would that the rest of the film was as good as the music. Director Jonathan Demme knows how to film rock (Stop Making Sense, Storefront Hitchcock, three Neil Young films) and he’s a good documentarian (Cousin Bobby, Man from Plains), but his Hollywood career has been uneven and seems to have plateaued since Silence of the Lambs (1992) and Philadelphia (1993). Ricki and the Flash won’t get him to the next level. Once you’re done singing along with some of your favorite hits, what’s left is an overwrought rom-com that is more likely to induce eye rolls than huzzahs.

The film takes a turn for the worse when Ricki, whose real name is Linda, is summoned to Indianapolis to help her ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline) deal with their daughter Julie (Mamie Gummer, Streep’s real-life daughter), who is suicidal after being dumped by her longtime partner. Julie is both a mental and physical wreck prone to angry outbursts as she parades around in PJs, puffy eyes, and rat’s nest hair. What can an absentee mom do to help? Can she reconcile with Julie and her two estranged sons who delight in cataloging her maternal inadequacies? What about Maureen (Audra McDonald) the step-mom who actually raised Linda’s three children? Did I mention that eldest son Daniel (Ben Platt) is engaged to snooty princess Oma (Charlotte Rae), neither of whom want Linda at their wedding? Or that youngest son Josh (Sebastian Stan) is gay? Shouldn’t there be a fourth child who is physically and/or mentally challenged? Can Linda/Ricki ever accept Greg’s love?

The better question to ask is: Do you see anything remotely new or non-clichéd in any of this? Actually, one of the film’s few non-musical highlights is its voyeuristic look inside Pete and Maureen’s Indianapolis McMansion—a cathedral-like monument to what happens when Big Money meets Bad Taste. Demme could have done a major take-down of American materialism and the shallowness of middle-class dreams were he not so busy trying (and failing) to make a bourgeois movie. All that passes for a message in this film is a hackneyed “Gee, some American families are really wacky, but your mom’s still your mom, no matter what.”  

Here are your take-aways: Meryl Streep can rock. Rick Springfield can both rock and act. Kevin Kline must have needed a paycheck. Audra McDonald is a knockout. Jonathan Demme is lost.

Rob Weir

Adama Yalomba: Malian Riffs for Healing and Dancing

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ADAMA YALOMBA

Waati Sera

Studio Mali Recordings

* * * * *

What makes one piece of music memorable and another instantly forgettable?  Very often it's the riff–those repeated phrases and notes that attach themselves to the temporal lobe and won't let go. Few artists understand this as well as Malian superstar Adama Yalomba, whose eleven-track Waati Sera is a textbook on how to lay down memorable riffs. That Yalomba does so with such dexterity and diversity is one of many marvels of his new release. Waati Sera also has its heart in the right place. In his native Bombara the words translate "The Time Has Come" and it's a plea for troubled Mali to put aside its racial, ethnic, and religious divisions and forgive and heal. To do his part, Yalomba sings in Bombara, Fulani, Bobo, Tamasheq, and French and his lyrical themes are in keeping with his upbeat belief that Malians can find their common humanity.

Yolomba's admirable politics and values notwithstanding, most Westerners will first be drawn to the aforementioned riffs. He takes them a step further than most musicians. On his musical pallette they are not just repetitions that seek to be catchy; they are the foundational colors upon which he paints his songs. "Mali Za" ("The People of Mali") uses a balafon-like series of notes—possibly* played on the n'dan, a lute/harp hybrid–that are like a rain that cleanses everything in their path. The rest of the instruments and Yalomba's honey-sweet vocals drip from the riff as if they are merely differently shaped drops from the downpour. By contrast, "Harkass" uses the kora to establish a hypnotic effect that's similar in spirit to an Indian raga, and "Mido Yiduma" ("I Love You") is full-bore boogie with electric guitar and n'goni laying down hard rock hooks. If that's not enough, 'I Gning Yele" ("Open Your Eyes") feels like acid rock merged with dry gourd percussion, and "Baba" combines crunchy power chords with bluesy riffs that could have come straight out of Chi-town. Whatever Yalomba doesn't do instrumentally, he covers with his glorious voice. Check out his tongue-twisting vocals on "Fesse Fesse" ("reflection") and "Plus Jamais" ("Never Again") in which he aims his words with machine-gun staccato like sweep and aim. In other songs—the title track being among them–he's evocative of Michael Jackson in his pop phrasing, his coolness, and his danceable vibes. What an album! It's, in turns, gritty, sweet as sugar, contemplative, and sweaty dance tempo. This is surely an early candidate for the best world beat album of 2016.

Videos from the new release are still being developed but here's a remarkable 10-minute jam from 2007. (Nothing on the new record is over 4:34.) And here's one song from his website.

Rob Weir

* There are no liner notes with the recording or online that provide further information on the instrumentation or guest artists.

Where to Invade Next Tells It Like It Is (even if you don't want to hear it)

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WHERE TO INVADE NEXT (2015/2016)

Directed by Michael Moore

Dog Eat Dog Films

110 minutes, R (language and naked people jumping into water—Really?)

* * * * *

Two stories we love to tell: (1) The United States is the greatest nation on earth. (2) The world envies us. The first isn’t remotely true and you have to crawl pretty far down the pole for the second to be the case. The USA is number one in the world in military hardware, graduate school education, and medical technology­, and the last two only if you can afford access. As for being the envy of the world, sure, if you’re from impoverished sub-Saharan Africa, a dictatorship, or from a war-torn failed state like Libya, Somalia, or Syria, though some of them are so desperate even the shattered economy of Greece looks pretty good. Still, Americans like to delude themselves into thinking life doesn’t get any better. Maybe that’s a necessary coping mechanism; as Michael Moore shows in his latest documentary—his best to date–it’s pretty damn depressing to consider how far we've strayed from American ideals.

Moore opens with a funny, but cheesy set-up: the military has come to him for answers as to why it hasn’t won a single conflict since World War Two, and okays his plan to “invade” Europe and steal its best ideas. (The US military really hasn’t won a war since 1945, unless you want to count Grenada, a nation with an army the size of the Massachusetts State Police but with less firepower.) Moore sets off for Europe, draped in an American flag, which he intends to plant and claim like a modern-day conquistador whenever he encounters an idea worthy of emulating. His sojourn takes him across Europe and into northern Africa. For the most part, though, Moore isn’t on camera as much as he usually is—he lets the details speak for themselves.

Moore has been denounced as a propagandist. Interesting word: propaganda. These days it tends to mean anything that makes us uncomfortable, even if it’s true. We never call the things with which we agree propaganda; we use nicer terms: advertising, marketing, infomercial, public relations….. So spin these and tell me what’s wrong with them: free health care supported by taxes that are less than what Americans spend on insurance and co-pays (Germany); 80 paid vacation days per year (Germany, Italy); two-hour lunches (Italy); factory owners who think wealth should be capped and welcome employee input (Italy); a government that is half women (Tunisia); or a land without student debt (Slovenia).

Moore’s travelogue reveals things that make American minds boggle. Finland has the world’s best schools, yet has abolished homework and standardized tests; Portugal decriminalized all drugs, saw addiction rates plummet, and now has money to spend on treatment, which is cheaper than prosecution and incarceration. The maximum prison sentence in Norway is 23 years and that only for true sociopaths; most of its jails are like summer camps—even for murderers—and even prisoners to maximum security facilities are greeted by a video of guards singing “We are the World.” French children eat school lunches worthy of top-rated restaurants and are aghast when shown pictures of American hot lunches. (And they eat yummy meals that cost less than US Mystery Meat specials!)

Best idea? Maybe Iceland. The US press was all over its 2008 financial crisis—one endlessly propagandized, sorry—“reported”—by outlets such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal as “proof” that “socialism doesn’t work.” Did they report that a bank owned and operated by women did not engage in disastrous speculation and spearheaded the effort that led to full recovery in less than three years? And did you read about how Iceland jailed the bankers responsible for the 2008 crisis?

Moore’s guerilla documentary style makes a lot of people nervous, but it doesn’t make him wrong! Put down the laissez-faire Kool-aid and dare to ask the hard questions Moore poses: If other countries can do this, why can’t we? Is American business and government too male? Is testosterone poisoning holding back America? Or is just greed? This film made me wonder whatever happened to the attitude that Americans could do anything. When did a “Yes we can!” nation degenerate into an “It’s too hard/It costs too much/It’s not my problem/I blame it on the [fill in blanks]” bunch of whiny losers?  Think I’m overly harsh? Moore asked three Icelandic female business leaders a seemingly simple question: "What would you like to say to Americans?" He was met with stony silence, until one woman finally said, “Tell them I don’t want them to be my neighbors. They are not good neighbors.” Are you fine with the fact that none of the three could think of a single thing they found admirable about US society, its culture, or its people? I'm not and neither is Moore—who is a much better patriot than most of the idiots who wrap themselves in the flag.

Oh, yeah, ignore Michael Moore. Call him a propagandist. Keep on paying for an inept military that wastes billions daily. We wouldn’t want to build a safety net that would ruin our “self-reliance,” would we? Who needs the rest of the world? I call such thinking narcissism, self-deception, and fantasy. I call it the superhighway to self-destruction. This film should be required viewing.

Rob Weir

45 Years is Quiet and Powerful

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45 YEARS (2015)

Directed by Andrew Haigh

Sundance Selects, 95 minutes, R (for language and suggestive geriatric sex)

* * * *

Call this one "Portrait of a Successful Marriage in Crisis." Geoff and Kate Mercer (Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling) are deep into their golden years and have settled into a predictable and quiet life in their cottage in the Norfolk Broads–a routine in which Kate walks the dog each morning and returns home to down a glass of water, then settle down to a cup of tea and a chat with Tom, who is frail but content among his books and solitude. On the eve of their 45^th wedding anniversary, Geoff receives a package from Switzerland informing him that global warming has unearthed the frozen remains of Katya, his love of 50 years ago who died when she fell into a glacier crevice. The news sends Geoff into a quiet depression so deep that Kate begins to imagine that she's been little more than leftovers for the past four and a half decades.  

At the root of this small domestic drama lurk several of life's big fears: regret, doubt, fate, and what happens when you ask questions whose answers you don't really want to know. Kate disclaims feelings of jealousy toward a woman who died before she and Geoff ever met, but this is a fiction more wispy than the slides of Kayta she discovers deteriorating in boxes tucked away in the loft. Dare she ask the question that's tearing her apart:  If Katya had lived, would Geoff have married her? Such questions, of course, are the ultimate Pandora's Box monster. How does one compete against a ghost? How does one accept Geoff's attempt to defuse a no-win situation by reminding Kate that Katya did die and that it is pointless to muse over hypothetical questions?

The film covers the week leading up to the Mercers' anniversary fete. Geoff and Kate perform a pas de deux upon a stage drenched in the symbolic grayness of a late Norfolk autumn. Circumstantial pathos is made heavier by the subtle but powerful performances from Courtenay and Rampling. Is Geoff's gloom a natural response? Depression over his own impending mortality? Regret for a path never completed? Rampling is even more incredible; she's a seething volcano hidden behind a mask of stolidity.

45 Years comes across as the kind of play Eugene O' Neill would have written had he been English. Make no mistake; this movie is very English in the ways in which emotions are buttoned-down, much is left unsaid, and characters subject themselves to inner torture rather than beat their breasts and rage against the Fates. It is based upon the David Constantine short story "In Another Country" and stretches to 95 minutes by allowing the camera to linger over landscapes, faces, and skies. Impatient viewers might find the pace too languid, but I found it moving and powerful and it's closing scene almost too painful to watch. This is a film for adults–not because of its ridiculous R rating, but because one needs to have lived to quake at its terrors. Rob Weir

Female Voices: Siv Jakobsen, Candy Thief, Larissa Murphy, Granville Automatic

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Let's consider a category I call "Female Singers with Soft Voices." It's a dicey category. The reality of today's music world is that there are scores of young women with pretty voices vying to attract notice and a lot of them simply won't. Call it the female equivalent to the legions of young guys heading off to Nashville with bigger dreams than cowboy hats.

Siv Jakobsen comes from Brooklyn via Berkelee College of Music by way of her native Norway. She calls her current repertoire "dream-folk," a quiet, moody approach with lots of spaces and silence. I have her pegged as a future torch singer, once her voice ripens and she figures out that her tones lack the clarity to command the stage without more texturing. I sampled seven Jakobsen tracks, most of which struck me as too much of a piece. But the contrasts between her original versions of "Dark" and "How We Used to Love" with remixes done with composer/producer Martin Hviid are telling. In each case, Jakobsen alone with the white keys of her piano is too light to make impact. With Hviid, though, she slows the pace, drops down a half tone, and lets her voice ease into more soulful arrangements. Those work for me. Put another way, a song titled "Dark" deserves to feel more sonorous than somnambulant. Might be time to bust out the eveningwear and hit the late night jazz clubs.

About all I know about Candy Thief is that it's a movable pieces lineup anchored by vocalist Diana de Cabbarus. Now try to find information about her and good luck with that. I think she sews and there are tons of pictures of her on the Web, almost none of which are attached to reliable biographical details. She's allegedly from Staffordshire, but is based in Edinburgh, and apparently has kicked around a lot, but it might all be bullshit. So let's cut right to the music as experienced on an EP called The Starting Gun. It's sort of pop-rock, but with the unusual cadences and moodiness of Cat Power. Songs like the title cut and "Number Five" are like rainy days with bright sunshine interludes. Vocals (with some looping) evoke the chirpiness of The Hollies and the edginess of The Pixies, which makes them hoppy and melodic at one moment, yet strangely unsettling the next. Jangly guitar melts into crunchy power chords and back again. De Cabbarus doesn't have a clean voice either, but she's picked the right genre, whatever it might be! Listening to The Starting Gun evokes being at a party with deliciously weird people who are inventive and odd, yet grounded. I loved this release because it kept me off-balance. Every time I thought I had Candy Thief pegged, another curve emerged.

Larissa Murphy is an interesting new voice in country music if, for no other reason, she too skirts expectations. Her voice is a bit like Patti Griffin when she's being vulnerable, but with the timbre of Lucinda Williams minus the husk, and with the sensibilities of Patty Loveless, but with less fuss and frippery. Got that? How about this–it's not everyone who gets to produce a six-track EP with some of Nashville's heavyweights, and enlist a multiple Grammy Award-winning producer (Ray Kennedy) and John Prine's wife, Fiona, as executive producer. You can sample Speak Your Mind (Bego Music) online and hear for yourself. My favorite tracks were "No Town," which felt like a classic country/early 1960s pop song mash; "Mexican Flowers," a slowed-down sweet song with offbeat cadences; and "Late One Night," which is fragile but with Griffin-like soars. The latter turn is something I really admire about Murphy; she doesn't have a giant voice, but she's not afraid to air out what she has. {Footnote: If you Google her, reference the EP title or your search results will be overwhelmed by a different Larissa Murphy who has been doing Christian testimony about being married to a disabled man. Nice story–but no soundtrack!}

I'm torn about the duo Granville Automatic (Vanessa Olivarez and Elizabeth Elkins). Their latest effort is titled An Army without Music: Civil War Stories from Hallowed Ground (Red Clay Music) and consists of ten original songs rendered in a style that's one part 1970s style country music and one part old-style timelessness that makes the songs sound as if they could have been 19^th century campfire selections.  Many of them are lovely, though selections that break that mold stand out more. My personal favorites were the parlor room feel of "Goodbye Home," the mid-tempo waltz  "Salem Church," and the hoe-down-like ghost story "Grancer Harrison," though the last of these appropriates a bit too much of the tune of Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl." Overall, "pretty" is the adjective that best describes the album and I longed for something more distinctive. My bigger reservations are about presentation. Let me start by saying that referring to grown women (in their promo) as "girls" is a 70s country trait better left non-resuscitated. I also had squirm reactions to the project's Southern bias undercurrents. I've had it up to eyeteeth with Lost Cause romanticism. Although the stated purpose is to tell stories of places threatened by development, the only heroes—unless you count one of Perkins' ancestors who deserted after Day One at Gettysburg–are Confederates, the only Union officer referenced is the odious John Chivington, all the "hallowed ground" is in the South, and the words "secession" and "slavery" are AWOL. Excuse me for mixing politics and music, but my ears grew sticky listening to syrupy revisionism.

Rob Weir

Franzen's Purity Has Dirt Stains

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PURITY  (2015)

Jonathan Franzen

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 563 pages

* *

Americans don't read much, but that doesn't stop them from tossing the occasional writer into the celebrity hype and buzz machine. Jonathan Franzen is the literary equivalent of a rock star. This means reviewers generally decamp in one of two tents: sycophants who praise everything he types, or iconoclasts seeking to knock Humpty Dumpty from the wall. The Guardian dubbed Purity—Franzen's first novel in five years–"brilliant," and the New Republic speculated that Franzen might be the nation's greatest living novelist. By contrast, Gawker slammed Purity as high school prose, sniffed as its "placid gutlessness," and dismissed it as a buzz-driven "piece of shit."

Few embody buzz, excrement, and overwrought as well as Gawker, but though I'm tempted to agree with Gawker's takes-one-to-know-one assessment, I'd judge Purity  neither masterpiece nor bovine exhaust. It has occasional insights, but it's mostly just mediocre. It surprises me more, though, that almost no one has picked up on the book's most-intriguing aspect, its title and Franzen's musings upon it. Most reviewers stop with the observation that Purity is the given name of the book's central character, 23-year-old "Pip" Tyler. They miss that every character suffers from existential crises resulting from the pull between purity and grime. These are expressed in ways such as: morality versus desire, character versus celebrity, principle versus pragmatism, prudence versus urgency, and fidelity versus lust.

Our titular character Pip/Purity is the cog of the novel. She's a 23-year-old recent college grad living with a band of misfits in Oakland, and stuck in a revolving door of dead-end jobs that won't make a dent in her college debt. She has good intentions and tries to care for her housemates, a few of which are scarred physically or psychologically, but she also suffers from Millennial self-absorption and doesn't understand why she can't sleep with anyone she wishes, or why somebody won't just give her $130,000 to pay off her student debt. It sure won't be her mother, Anabel Laird, a recluse in the Santa Cruz Mountains who lives like a cross between an ageing hippie and a survivalist. Pip can't even get her mother to stop calling her "Pussycat," tell her who her father is, or reveal a single detail of her life before she had Pip. The out-of-sort Pip is thus intrigued when another housemate, Annagret, an oddball German-born eco activist, recruits her for The Sunshine Project. This, we discover, is a Bolivia-based Wikileaks-like organization run by an East German ex-pat, Andreas Wolf. Like Julian Assange, Wolf is famous, infamous, and wanted; hence the Bolivian address. (We know Andreas is like Assange because Franzen constantly makes that very analogy!)    

All of the major characters' stories overlap. We first meet Andreas in East Berlin two years before the Wall came down, where he's torn between his earnestness as a street angel/church youth counselor for troubled teens, and his libidinous desire to bed them. Annagret, though, is special and he helps her in a way that put both in danger. Before Andreas makes his way to the West, he enlists the aid of a visiting American journalist, Tom Aberant, the one person other than Annagret who knows Andreas' dark secret. Decades later, Andreas has assumed the mantle of a social justice crusader and uses his Svengali-like magnetism to draw idealists to his Web projects. Will Pip also fall to his charms?

Purity leaves opens itself to charges of packing way too many implausible coincidences into one story. Tom reappears–along with an absurd and superfluous back-story involving his father–and with a life partner named Leila, whose purity is compromised by her simultaneous roles as Tom's colleague/lover and her live-in status as the caregiver for a paraplegic husband she was on the verge of leaving before his accident. Through even more bizarre circumstances, all of the characters are connected through Pip. Gawker's overwrought tag has merit, especially in Franzen's deus ex machina approach to resolving dilemmas. 

Add overlong to the book's problems. Must we equate being a "weighty" writer with the quantity of pages churned out? Purity could lose half its bulk and be no worse for it. The central premise is a compelling one. How does one maintain integrity in a world whose stronger currents run the other way? We don't, however, need another long book on this theme–Donna Tartt already wrote and collected a Pulitzer for it. Her Goldfinch also had characters less whiny than Pip, more deliciously Machiavellian than Andreas, more convincingly bohemian than Anabel, more conflicted than anyone in Purity, and with considerably more trust in the readers to connect the dots. I didn't hate this book, but as purity goes, it's more beige than white.

Rob Weir