Crossings a Weird and Unique Novel

Crossings (2019)

By Alex Landragin

St. Martins Press, 384 pages

★★★★

Crossings, the debut novel from Alex Landragin, has a bit of everything: pure fiction, literary fiction, science fiction, romance, mystery, anthropological observations, and paranormal activity. It spans 150 years of time, but implies things ancient and inexplicable.

The novel opens with a clever device. It’s opening lines are, “I didn’t write this book. I stole it.” Baroness Beatie Ellingham visits a respected Belgian bookbinder and advises she will send a book by courier with instructions and materials on recovering the text. She makes him promise that he will not read it. All bets are off, though, when the bookbinder discovers several days later that the baroness is dead, the victim of a grisly murder in which her eyes were cut out. As the bookbinder peruses the volume, he observes that the baroness has made notes on how to re-sequence the chapters. And so, it is left to each reader to decide whether to read it straight through as originally written, or as Baroness Ellingham re-arranged it.

The first path will take you through three interconnected novelettes: “The Education of a Monster,” reportedly an unknown ghost story from French poet and essayist Charles Baudelaire (1821-67); “City of Ghosts,” a noir romance whose central character is clearly German philosopher/theorist/critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940); and the third, “Tales of the Albatross,” which involves Polynesian rituals and a (literally) timeless love story. The baroness’ path is more circuitous, but it weaves the three separate stories into a single strand.

Any way you read it–and most will choose one and sample the second–you will wend your way through an amazing, often perplexing tale in which Baudelaire and Benjamin factor prominently. If you take you cues from the baroness, the narrative opens with a chapter titled “This is Where the Story Ends.” A man (Benjamin) encounters a mysterious woman in Paris’ Montparnasse Cemetery standing aside a tomb in which four past presidents of the Charles Baudelaire Society are buried. The year is 1940, Nazi troops are just outside of the city, and Benjamin, a Jew, knows he needs to flee. Yet he lingers as he yet he is drawn to the woman, and over several dangerous days, falls in love with her. It is truly a fatal attraction, though not how you might imagine.

The baroness’ sequence is, however, neither how the story ends or begins. A true beginning requires gleaning from the novel’s most difficult-to-grasp sections from “Tales of the Albatross.” These take place on a Polynesian island named Oáeetee, which we visit first in 1771. There we learn of several unusual rituals, including a tattoo practice restricted to inscribing the body only with inked eyes. More unusual still is the rite of “crossing,” which gives us the novel’s title. Initiates (and sometimes a novice) stare into each other’s eyes and by doing so, exchange bodies. It is such a powerful and potentially dangerous practice that the island’s chief mandate (merely called the Law) is “there be no crossing without a return crossing.” “Blind crossings,” those in which the second party is unaware of the exchange are considered especially dangerous. In 1791, however, a French ship enters the harbor and circumstance drives two lovers, Koahu (male) and Alula (female) to violate the Law. This will set in motion a pursuit across time and the globe in which Koahu will assume six bodies and Alula seven. Baudelaire is somehow in the middle of all of this.

Crossings will put you in mind of David Mitchell novels. This means that it is nearly impossible to describe what happens in a linear fashion. Crossings also involves gender transformations that evoke Virginia Wolff’s Orlando, as well as racial crossing. From here you can start adding elements: a mad bookseller, mesmerism, colonialism, slavery, gold teeth, violence, evocations of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, and the appearance of French designer Coco Chanel. She, Baudelaire, Benjamin, and Jeanne Duval, a former slave who was Baudelaire’s muse and lover, are historical figures who interact with colorful imagined characters.

Is Crossings a vampire tale? Not really. A paranormal fantasy? Maybe. An overdressed romance? Possibly. I don’t mean to be coy. Like a David Mitchell novel, reading Crossings is more experiential than sequential–another reason why it can be read several different ways. It is also one whose internal logic is peculiar to the worlds Alex Landrigan interconnects. Your imagination is the only key that can unlock any of it.

Crossings is also a book one hopes is never adapted for a film. At best, a movie would impose coherence to a book whose magic lies in controlled incoherence. At worst, as was done with Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, a movie would make a complete hash of the novel. Crossings may frustrate you at times–I suggest you keep a list of characters and their avatars–but I heartily recommend that you read it. You are unlikely to come across too many other books this delightfully weird and unique.

Rob Weir  

       

Mastersons, Railroad Earth, Asleep at the Wheel, and More

Just before COVID shut down live music for the foreseeable future, I attended a show headlined by Wilco. They were merely okay, but I was quite taken by The Mastersons, who opened the evening and enlivened its ending when they joined Wilco on stage. You might recognize the husband/wife duo of Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore, even if you don’t know their solo work; they’ve been part of Steve Earle’s band The Dukes, and have also worked with Jack Ingram and Son Volt, among others. The Mastersons have got a new album coming out, No Time for Love Songs, which has a pretty good pedigree; it’s produced by their friend Shooter Jennings (son of Waylon and Jessi Colter). Unlike Shooter, though, their music tends to be more optimistic than the usual outlaw country fare. The title song touches on holding onto a relationship when the world conspires against it, but also leaves some wiggle room for hope. As Red House Records puts it, the album “explores the emotional challenges of a morally compromised era.” There is great energy and synergy throughout, with a typical song built around Masterson’s robust guitar and Whitmore’s let-‘er-rip vocals. On “Spellbound” she sings: I told you nice and I’ll tell you again… Some say life is a means to an end…. We’re all looking for answers and I know that you’re hurting/Tell me what you’re searching for. She hits similar themes on “So Impossible” when she challenges, Everything that goes up must come down/No one is immune to what goes round/More lost than found/You’re so impossible. That one is sung atop Tyler Chester’s piano and is like a blend of torch music and Melanie Safka. I have a slight criticism of the record. The first four tracks have the same high octane feel and blend into each other, though I did like Masterson’s guitar swirl on “Circle the Sun,” which gives it a subtle country acid rock feel. The last six–beginning with “The Last Laugh”–mix things up more by taking things down a notch. “There Is a Song” to Sing” is acoustic and folky, “The Silver Line” is dynamic, and “King of the Castle” a backdoor love song. Perhaps it’s best to think of the first half as music to make you move and the second, music to make you muse.  

Railroad Earth has a devoted following among bluegrass fans. If you’re not familiar with them or if you are and wonder what’s next, you can catch three songs from an upcoming project All For the Song. Railroad Earth is a large ensemble–often as many as seven for tours–so they can make some noise, though they are generally more of a jam band that lays down melodies crisscrossed with keys, percussion, and lots of strings (fiddle, mando, banjo, guitar, bass). They’ve released a single from the new album titled “Great Divide” that showcases exactly what I’ve just said. The tune is catchy, instruments flow in and out with ease, and Todd Sheaffer’s vocals are solid and inviting. “Slippin’ Around” has the hard-driving edge of a runaway train song, though if you watch the performance, you’ll be surprised by what inspired it! You also get to hear the title track, which is a nice slow waltz tempo.

It seems like a million years ago when I saw Asleep at the Wheel. I think that founder and front man Ray Benson is the only remaining member from that concert. The band is the pride of Paw Paw, West Virginia–I’ve been there. Don’t ask! –but Asleep has been viewed as a Texas band since it first took the stage back in 1970. Fifty years on, Brown is still doing his thing and doing it well. A Paste Studios concert consists of three songs, including their 1976 hit single “Route 66,” which is actually a cover of a Glenn Frey composition. They do it a bit like a backroad version of Manhattan Transfer. “Miles and Miles of Texas” is evocative of Bob Wills, and “I Guess I’ll Call It a Day Tonight” sounds like something out of a late 1950s variety show. Retro ought to be Benson’s middle name. As you might expect, this is one tight band.

Remember "Teenage Dirtbag?” It was a cult hit for Wheatus in 2000 and you get to hear it again. Much like Asleep at the Wheel, only its lead vocalist and guitarist Brendan Brown remains from the original lineup, but Wheatus now features what it calls its “classic lineup.” (Can an alt.rock band have a ‘classic’ anything? Just asking.) Karlie Bruce and Gabrielle Aimée Sterbenz are back to anchor backing vocals, which is a good thing. You’ll also hear “Break It Don’t Buy It” and “Valentine,” the last two from their 2013 record Valentine.

Agnes Obel is a Danish singer songwriter whose music is a Venn diagram of folk, classical, indie pop, and New Age genres. Her new album Myopia is about epistemological perceptions. How do we know ourselves? How can we trust what we perceive and value? “Broken Sleep” is Enya-like in that it is layered, lush and more atmospheric than melodic. Drone-like instruments stand cheek by jowl with rain-like keys, sonorous strings, and enigmatic lyrics such as: Twisted rope, defies all I know/It holds my dreams. “Island of Doom” is more in that vein; “Won’t You Call Me” is smoky and melancholy. Obel has a lovely voice, though it lacks clarity–possibly by design. Is her music cerebral and arty, or just vague and overly processed? You decide.

I loved an Eileen Carey sampler I ran across last year so much so that I said I was looking forward to her upcoming release Finally. Perhaps I spoke hastily. Finally isn’t a bad record, but I was underwhelmed by Taner Tumkaya’s production work. Carey has a strong voice and her past work is marked by grit and a dollop of country bad girl. I couldn’t help contrast that work with the title track and single from Finally, in which Carey sings a paint-by-the-numbers tune in a higher register more befitting a pop star. “Hearts of Times” lifts the opening riff from “Beast of Burden,” and “Don’t Get Me Wrong” is decidedly retro. The one that works the best for me is “That Was Her, This is Now” which has some country attitude, though it could use some lyrical editing to make it tougher. From what I gather, Carey’s career is on the uptick, but from where I sit, she’s taken a step backward artistically.

Rob Weir

Things I Couldn't Get Into

 “The Gambler,” a famed song from the late Kenny Rogers has a line that goes, “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em/Know when to fold ‘em/Know when to walk away.” Good advice. Here are four things I started but never finished,­ and a fifth I wish I hadn’t.

The Topeka School: A Novel (FSG Originals, 304 pages was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award. It’s a bildungsroman­—a work that explores the psychological development of a character—but reads more like automatic writing. The opening spotlights highschooler Adam Gordon, a skilled debater, aspiring poet, and an-oft ignored child of two professional psychologists for something called the Foundation. Once the book jumps from Adam to other characters—each his or her own narrator—it’s hard to connect the strands. Author Ben Lerner was inspired by A Man Named Zeigler, a lesser known Herman Hesse work. I got a third of the way in before bailing on The Topeka School. It's not that I don’t like complex writing; I’m currently re-reading Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, which is no one’s idea of a quick read. To me, though, Lerner seeks to impress rather than entertain. It’s also a bit like Adam: prone to pretentiousness. Adam’s mother, by the way, is allegedly an expert on toxic masculinity. Is that an inside joke? No female character in the book has agency—another reason to avoid this over-hyped piece of self-indulgence.

L.L. Bean is my idea of high fashion. That added to my apprehension about McQueen, a documentary about Lee Alexander McQueen (Bleeker Street Media, 2018, 111 minutes, R for language and nudity). I was prepared to laugh at runway scenes in which the tragically hip oohed and aahed as anorexic models strutted frippery and flashed peek-a-boo looks at their breasts and butts. What I didn’t expect was that the documentary would be so damned boring! McQueen’s family initially rebuffed directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, and their film has the earmarks of being hastily put together before the family changed their minds again. McQueen is a totally conventional pastiche of interviews, home movies, interviews, and runway footage. McQueen (1969-2010) enjoyed a reputation as a flamboyant gay icon and brilliant designer, but he comes off mostly as a bland one-dimensional East End bloke lost in the decadence of the 1980s and ‘90s. After 40 minutes I wondered why I should watch a film about someone I wouldn’t want to engage in a five-minute chat. That’s when this Elvis left the building. 

I love Elizabeth McCracken, but Bowlaway: A Novel (2019, HarperCollins, 407 pages) just didn’t do it for me. It is set in the fictional small Massachusetts town of Salford and opens with promise: Leviticus Sprague, a black doctor and poet originally from New Brunswick, encounters a dazed white woman, Bertha Truitt, sitting in a graveyard. The two eventually have a midlife marriage of the unconventional variety. Alas, the title tells you how the novel spins. It really is about bowling. Bertha owns a bowling alley and the novel becomes a multi-generational Our Town confessional of those who come to the alley and why they bowl. Some stories are discrete; others connect to Sprague, Truitt, and Salford. (Salford is apparently near Boston; the city’s infamous 1919 molasses flood gets some ink.) For reasons not entirely clear, I just couldn’t get into this book. Maybe I struggled with the bowling alley device, or maybe McCracken rolled a 7/10 split.

I was also disappointed by The Starless Sea, the sophomore novel from Erin Morgenstern (2019, Random House, 512 pages). I adored her delicious debut, The Night Circus, which messed with our perceptions of illusion versus magic. The Starless Sea has been compared to the game of Myst. Cross that with an unrealized version of Alice in Wonderland and a bloodless Neil Gaiman fantasy and I’d agree. Zachary Ezra Rollins is the son of a fortuneteller who reads a misshelved library book called Sweet Sorrows, concludes it’s about his own childhood, and grows obsessed with reaching the Starless Sea, which might be his imagination or might be an otherworld. There are pirates, portals to other worlds, a sea of honey, a cloak made of ice, and tons more. I suspect all of this made more sense in Morgenstern’s head than on the page. There was nothing in the 100 pages I read that made me wonder about the next 400.

Have you ever watched a classic film and wondered if “classic” meant “antique?” The Searchers (1956, Directed by John Ford, Warner Brothers, 119 minutes) was one of the first 25 films the Library of Congress added to the National Film Registry. Some consider it one of the 100 greatest American films of all time. There is a prairie full of ways that this film is now offensive: glorification of the Confederacy, whites portraying Native Americans, racism, macho males, docile women….

John Wayne is Ethan Edward, a loner who shows up at his brother Aaron’s West Texas ranch years after the Civil War. He’s psychologically damaged and filled with hatred for Yankees, Indians, and non-whites, including his brother’s adopted son, Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) who is half Indian and is courting a white woman (Vera Miles). Ethan is fond of his nieces Debbie and Lucy, but a Comanche trick sends Ethan and Texas Rangers led by an ex-Confederate captain (Ward Bond) on a wild goose chase. They return to find that Comanches burned the ranch, killed Aaron, his wife, and son Ben. Lucy and Debbie were abducted. Thus begins Ethan’s long journey to find his nieces and confront his inner demons.

It would be wrong to say he overcomes them. Imagine his rage when he finds that little Debbie is now a grown woman (Natalie Wood) assimilated into Comanche culture. The Searchers is at best corny and much of it is deeply offensive. I had also forgotten what a wooden actor Wayne could be. Wilson Hoch’s cinematography dazzles, but the archives is where The Searchers belongs. 

Rob Weir

The Joker a Surprisingly Good Film

The Joker (2019)

Directed by Todd Phillips

Warner Brothers, 122 minutes, R (language, violence, brief sexuality)

★★★★

I grew up with comic books and still enjoy them, even though they’ve been upgraded to “graphic novels.” I’m not, however, a fan of tinkering with established franchises, especially all the Superman multiverse narratives. For me, Batman was the only reboot that worked. Frank Miller’s Dark Knight is more compelling than the original DC Comic Caped Crusader, and is infinitely better than the campy TV show (1965-68). Still, I avoided The Joker when it was released for fear it would be another alt.universe tale the likes of which I’ve had my fill. Mea culpa. The Joker is a really good flick and I can see why Joaquin Phoenix won a Best Actor Oscar.

The Joker gives Batman’s nemesis a credible backstory that makes him more than an evil clown. Is evil in-bred or the result of bad socialization? In the case of Arthur Fleck–The Joker’s identity–it’s a toxic mix of both. He lives in a squalid apartment with his disabled mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), who writes endless letters to her former employer: Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), whom she insists is Arthur’s father. Arthur also carries a physical handicap that’s like a reverse Tourette’s; he cannot control the impulse to laugh manically in inappropriate situations. (I had to look this up; it’s a real thing: pseudobulbar affect, or PBA.) Arthur’s cackle is about as pleasant as the sound of a dental drill and invites thrashings. His disabilities even impact his demeaning job as a party clown. He’d like to be a stand-up comic, but he has no aptitude for it, though his single-mother neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz) encourages him. Arthur’s one gig is so bad, though, that someone filmed it and it airs as a can-you-believe-this-guy? segment on the popular Murray Franklin Show. (Robert De Niro plays Franklin.)

Toss in rejection from Wayne, betrayal by a colleague, and discovery of his mother’s secrets, and Arthur is a classic case of a guy getting kicked around until he snaps. Phoenix is brilliant in his portrayal of a troubled man on slow burn. He plays Arthur as a man leaking weirdness all of a social carpet that he’s about to pull from under our feet. An old sociological maxim holds that social outcasts react across a spectrum of options that stretch from resignation to lashing out. Arthur chooses the latter path and allows himself to descend into a madness made manifest by an amoral and sanguinary disregard for human life.

Director Todd Phillips also offers a look at the anomie-filled petri dish that breeds Arthur. Phillips’ Gotham is 1970s New York on crack–garbage strikes, looting, and street violence so rampant that the Joker’s earliest bloody rampages are embraced by rioting anarchists. (Dressing them in Guy Fawkes masks was an inspired choice.) Not since Day of the Locust has an out-of-control mob been so scary.

The Joker is made when Bruce Wayne is still a child, but the Wayne family is not heroic in the film. Thomas Wayne is a disinterested millionaire and political huckster seeking to disguise his need for self-aggrandizement behind hollow promises that he alone can fix Gotham’s problems. (Sound familiar?) Batman fans will recognize that Bruce’s witness of his parents’ murder is where the comic book and movie intersect. DC Comics didn’t harp on what Frank Miller illuminated in The Dark Knight: The Joker is pure id doling out pain and Bruce Wayne/Batman is a conflicted superego dispensing vigilante justice.

Don’t make my mistake; see The Joker if you’ve not already done so. You can, if you wish, ignore the sociological and psychological dimensions and view Arthur simply as the making of a monster. But revel in Joaquin Phoenix’s astonishing performance and in Hildur Guðnadóttir’s Oscar-winning score. Any way you play it, though,The Joker is a dark card.

Rob Weir

Sorry We Missed You a Reminder of Class Bias

 

Sorry We Missed You (2019)

Directed by Ken Loach

Entertainment One, 100 minutes, Not rated (language)

★★★★

What does it mean to be an undereducated worker in a society with weak labor unions? Can you trust CEOs, line mangers, and investors to look out for your interests? How come Whole Foods employees called a strike? Why has Amazon replaced Walmart as the symbol of a heartless clutchfist corporation? Why is the working class so angry? Watch Sorry We Missed You and you’ll have your answer. Then be thankful we still have 83-year-old Ken Loach to remind us what fools we are to entrust our well-being to unbridled capitalism.

Perhaps you think being your own boss solves capital/labor conflict. That’s what Ricky Turner (Kris Hitchen) thought. He and his wife Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) were thrown into debt when the 2008 housing market crash stole their dreams. They went from homeowners to down-market renters swimming in an ocean of debt, but they are trying to do their best for their kids, Sebastian (Rhys Stone) and Liza Jane (Katie Proctor) through the hard work politicians tout as salvation. (They also claim to care about people like the Turners, but that’s a campaign gambit. Secretly they loathe pumping the flesh with the working class.) The Turners are spinning their wheels. Abbie is a home healthcare worker who gets paid by the job, not by the hour; Ricky works with his hands.

Who could blame Ricky for wanting to vault off the treadmill? Especially when a delivery firm promises he can be an independent driver who calls his own shots. He likes what he hears from distribution center head Maloney (Ross Brewster): “You don’t work for us, you with us. You’re master of your own destiny…. Like everything around here, it’s your choice.” If anyone ever says those words to you, walk out the door. Do not look back. This is forked-tongue bizspeak that sidesteps attached strings like needing to sell the family car for a down payment on a van, 14-hour days, taking responsibility for finding a replacement driver if you can’t do your runs, or having to juggle within-the-hour deliveries that would strain a track star. Nor is there mention that the warehouse supervisor can impose £100 fines, dun you £1000 if your scanner is lost or damaged, and tell you that you can’t use your van on off hours because it has the company logo on it. Plus there’s your £400 monthly payment for said van. Want time off to pick up your son from the police station because he was nicked for shoplifting? Split child care with your exhausted wife? Need time to heal because you’ve been mugged by hoodlums who smashed your scanner and left you bandaged and bloodied? It will cost you. Need to work fewer hours because you family is falling apart? In Maloney’s words, “That’s not my fucking worry, mate.” 

Loach’s film is set in Newcastle, England, but lest you think none of this happens in the United States, let me remind you of those Whole Foods and Amazon workers. Or the 1997 UPS strike. This is not just a movie; let the credits roll and you’ll see that Loach based the film on interviews conducted with actual delivery van drivers–most of whom withheld their names for fear of reprisal. Sorry We Missed You is Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times on wheels. In each case, workers are replaceable cogs in machines fueled by greed, not need. It makes us uncomfortable to consider it, but contract and gig workers are akin to immigrant labor; they do the jobs no one else wants.

The Turner family is emblematic of families across the globe blown to bits trying to practice the hard work ethos preached by monied interests from the comfort of their McMansions on the hill. The only break Loach gives viewers is that he subtitles the film for those unaccustomed to Newcastle accents. On the other hand, he does not romanticize the Turners; they are victims, not heroes. The easy out would be to blame them for their own bad choices. Yeah, and were this a criminal case, they’d get off for entrapment. The term “wage slave” has fallen from fashion in our (overly) PC times. Some assert that the word slavery is reserved for race-based chattel bondage. I respectfully disagree; families like the Turners are bound by economic shackles that make them the de facto property of their debt holders.

Perhaps this review doesn’t make you want to see Sorry I Missed You. Don’t turn away. Ken Loach dares remind us that social class is still a thing. You need to understand this, or don’t be surprised if the losers in the class war don’t give a damn about someone else’s oppression or turn to demagogues who at least agree that they’ve been tossed to the bottom of the social heap.

Take you medicine and watch this film. It’s gritty, sad, raw, and real. Like all Ken Loach films, it bleeds. And if you whine the next time a package is late, shame on you.

Rob Weir

Note: This film is still in theaters, which are closed because of the COVID-19 virus. Google to see who one in your area is offering it on pay-for-view. Amherst Cinema is one and you need not be a member to watch it.

Nels Andrews Artist of the Month April 2020

Sometimes I wonder if there is any subtlety left in the world. I’ve read a few reviews of Pigeon and the Crow, the fourth recording from Nels Andrews, that bemoan its minimalist approach. One even complained that it is a “dirge.” My response to that is that if you don’t like or understand folk music, you should be honest enough to admit it.

Pigeon and the Crow is indeed quiet and moody–you know, unlike all those other chirpy upbeat folk songs. Both of them. Folk songs are mostly about stories and melodies, not clichés or dance-your-ass-off rhythms. So, let’s start off with the title track. It is Andrews’ reimagining of a true story, that of Gabi Mann, a young girl from Seattle who began to feed her backyard crows when she was four. In turn, the crows left her presents. Before long, Gabi had quite a collection of things the crows left her–everything from shiny stones to rusty screws. You don’t need to tell her that corvids are intelligent. Andrews’ take is wrapped in a gorgeous melody that sounds vaguely Celtic. He’s actually American-bred and now lives in Santa Cruz, but he’s traveled a lot and has admirers in the UK. The Celtic flavor of this track has much to do with the fact that the album was produced by Ireland’s Nuala Kennedy and that’s her flute you hear wafting through the mix. Andrews’s lyrics and enigmatic and mysterious, an appropriate touch for human/wildlife encounters in which much is communicated but much more remains cloaked. Pete Harvey’s cello burnishes the deeper mysteries.

“Memory Compass” also has a Celtic flair to it. It’s doleful and introspective–my memory compass is always headed south/Bay leaf and cinnamon in the back of my mouth–and evocative of the kind of songs Richard Shindell writes. “Table in the Kitchen” has more drive to it, but is also self-reflective. It’s about looking inside while looking at others in a restaurant: Watching the people watching each other/Thinking I want what he has got. “Welterweight” is a live track that shows you don’t need much if you have a soothing voice, a lovely tune, and something to say. In this case Andrews muses on fading lives within a scrambled counting song: It’s ten, eight, nine/You should have seen me in prime…. “Embassy to the Airport” is also live and sends off some of the same vibes, while “Scrimshaw” explores how to stay constant in a long-term relationship. That’s Anais Mitchell singing with him.

One of the many things I admire about this recording is that it’s a mix of sparse and textured songs. You will fiddle, electric guitar, squeeze boxes, mandolin, steel drums, and more in the instrumental mix. Supporting vocalists include not just Mitchell and Kennedy, but also A. J. Roach and Anthony Da Costa. Fiona Apple is a Nels Andrews fan and has sung on other albums. I’ve heard rumors that she’s on this one as well, though she’s not listed in the credits.

Ignore the cynics; Nels Andrews fits snugly amongst the finest in the folk tradition.

Rob Weir

Small Towns: Niagara-on-the-Lake Ontario

Is it too much to assume that by summer we can travel again? Maybe it’s not a good year to hop on a plane, but if you’re up for a drive, why not head for Niagara Falls? Much like the Grand Canyon, there’s not much one can say about the falls except, “awesome!”

Far too many people, though, make the mistake of staying within sight when they visit Niagara Falls. There’s no nice way of saying this, so I’ll let it rip: Niagara Falls, New York is the pits–a mini Detroit with a water feature. It used to be that all one needed to upgrade a trip to the Niagara Gorge was cross the Rainbow Bridge into Canada and stay there. It’s still nicer than the U.S. side, but Niagara Falls, Ontario, has also grown tacky and crowded. Your best bet is to keep driving for 25 minutes and stay in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, a tidy town of 17,500 that’s such a delight that it’s far more than a place to sleep. 

 

As its name suggests, it’s on the mouth of the Niagara River, where it empties into Lake Ontario. On clear days you can peer across the lake and see Toronto in the distance. It’s just 27 kilometers as the crow flies, but it takes a few hours to drive there because one must drive around a lake that’s not called one of the Great Lakes for nothing. You might, however, find enough to do in Niagara-on-the-Lake that you won’t be tempted to go big.

The first striking thing about the town is that it’s just not necessary for people to live like pigs. It is sparkling clean, has lots of gardens and parks, ree-lined streets, and attractive Victorian era homes, inns, and shops. Sure, money helps, but even modest homes are well-maintained. The town’s most active area is along Queen Street, but if you want a break from tourists and shopping, all you have to do is stroll a block or two in any direction and you’ll have plenty of solitude. But before you duck out, be sure to sample British pastries downtown that you won’t find in the States, like Eccles cakes and Lamingtons. Also stop at the Niagara Apothecary for a sometimes-disconcerting look at how folks treated ailments in the days before drugs were tested and regulated. (I can only imagine what would have been done to coronavirus sufferers.)

As for things to do besides shop, in the summer Niagara is home to the George Bernard Shaw Festival which, as of this writing, is still slated to happen. There are several other playhouses that have changing productions, prompting some to compare its theater offerings to those of the Berkshires (which probably won’t happen this year). There are also historic homes and churches throughout the town. For many runaway slaves, Niagara was the first taste of freedom on the Underground Railroad; as a British colony, Canada officially abolished slavery in 1834, 31 years before the United States. Ontario, then called Upper Canada, informally abolished slavery decades earlier still. You will find markers and other reminders in Niagara.

Niagara was a strategic place during the War of 1812, hence another local tourist spot is Fort George on the very spot where the river dumps into the lake. It’s a classic earthen redoubt that added stone works as it grew. This doesn’t make U.S. history textbooks very often, but Americans captured Fort George during the War of 1812 and when they were ousted, they burned great sections of the town before leaving. This occurred in 1813, before British troops returned the favor and burned Washington, DC. If you want to brush up on the War of 1812, on your way to the falls you can visit the homestead of Laura Secord, who is a Paul Revere type in Canada who warned that the Yanks were coming! There is also the farming town of Queenston nearby, where there are monuments to Canadian heroes and martyrs during the War of 1812. Don’t be surprised if locals joke that the War of 1812 is “the only war Canada ever won.”

Aside from going to the falls, you can enjoy lots of scenic splendor in and around Niagara-on-the-Lake. The drive along the Niagara River is amazing and the town is in the very heart of a booming wine industry. Niagara wines used to be swill, but they have had a decided upgrade. Even Wayne Gretzky has a vineyard there and it has several areas related to his hockey memorabilia. Our favorite, though, was Stratus–not the cheapest you can drink, but maybe the best. The vineyard certainly does things right; the operation is practically a showcase in green viticulture.

If there’s anything better than the wine, it’s Niagara cherries and peaches. Stop at Greaves downtown and buy some cherry preserves; they are my favorite ever. The reason the region is so (ahem!) fruitful is because it is on Lake Ontario, not Lake Erie like Buffalo, your likely border crossing. Lake Ontario has quite different weather systems. You could even visit in the winter, as the yearly snow total is roughly what Buffalo gets in one bad storm. Check it out Niagara-on-the-Lake whenever you go to Niagara Falls. Did I mention that the falls are awesome?   

Rob Weir