Le Quattro Volte a Perplexing Tone Poem

Le Quattro Volte (2010)

Directed by Michelangelo Frammartino

Venture Films, 88 minutes, Not-rated

★★★

 

 

 

In symphonic music, a tone poem is a work that invokes writing, art, or something else non-musical. The film Le Quattro Volte has been described as a tone poem to one of Pythagoras’ lesser known theories. Describing the film is akin to asking how one would make a movie about music. I don’t mean a musician; I mean the music itself. Italian director Michelangelo Frammartino made such an attempt back in 2010. Le Quattro Volte garnered great praise from film buffs and intellectuals. Based on its worldwide box office of just $255,000, they were probably the sum total of its audience.

 

First things first. You don’t need to speak a single word of Italian, because no one else does either. It is not a silent film per se–we hear goat bells, barking dogs, the huff of an underpowered truck climbing steep Calabrian hills, wind, and background human voices–­but there is no dialogue of any sort. So, what’s it about? That’s not so easy to describe either. It translates as “the four times,” and this is where Pythagoras comes into play.  

 

Pythagoras (570-495 BCE) is remembered mostly for his mathematical theorems, especially the one relating to the area of right triangles. He was also a philosopher of what today we’d call an esoteric bent. He thought that he had lived multiple lives, but not in the way one associates with Hindu reincarnation. His view was related to what is sometimes called the transmigration of souls–though it has a fancy name, metempsychosis–but he did not think the soul’s fate could be altered by any force such as karma. His four “times,” or migrations, go from human to animal to plant to mineral. Okay, try putting that in a movie.

 

Maybe an easier way to comprehend Frammartino’s film is to view it as a circle of existence representation in four acts. This helps make sense of an unexplained opening scene in which men with shovels flatten steaming holes in what looks to be a miniature volcano. The true first act, though, involves an elderly shepherd. He is wracked by a persistent cough and is clearly dying, but he and his dog faithfully shuttle a large flock of goats between their tin-and-wood pen and tufted pasture lands each day. He also peddles snails to local villagers for their cooking pots, but mainly he’s so frail he can hardly be bothered to brush away the ants that crawl over his face as he rests beside a tree. At night, he treats his cough by drinking dust from the church floor mixed with water.

 

Act two, after the goatherd’s death and an eerie religious procession that looks like a colorized scene from a Bergman film, involves the birth of a goat kid, its weaning, and its separation from the flock. It rests beside a tree before night falls and the screen goes black. We next see a wintery landscape and a tall fir swaying in the breeze. At this juncture, the fate of the tree takes over. Call it act three. Act four moves us to the mineral realm.

 

Each act ends with blackness, and each is also a metaphor for other things. The tree, for example, stands for cultural remembrance. I will not pretend that this film is for everyone. There is no true narrative of any sort, it’s often open-ended perplexing, and the pace is deliberately slow. How else to represent the passage of time? The languid pacing, though, provides cinematographer Andrea Locatelli with a rich canvas upon which he paints the languorous rhythms of life in a poor Calabrian village. Although human souls toil largely without machines and sometimes work hard, no one seems rushed. Maybe no one is in a hurry to become a mineral!

 

At times Le Quattro Volte reminded me of Terence Malik’s The Tree of Life, but mostly it’s simply unlike anything else. Is it profound, or intellectual posturing? That’s really up to the viewer to decide but, to come full circle, it helps to imagine it as a tone poem, not a conventional film. Think of its silences as meditative and its sweeping pan shots as immersion within nature and its transformations. If you give it a try, be patient. You could even watch it in individual segments, walk away, and repeat. But I must emphasize that if you like movies with wall-to-wall action, steer well clear of this film.

 

Rob Weir

 

Citizen Reporters a New Look at Muckraking

 

Citizen Reporters: S. S. McClure Ida Tarbell, and the Magazine That Rewrote America (2020)

By Stephanie Gorton

New York: Ecco 288 pages + back matter.

★★★★

 

 

 

What’s the difference between investigative reporters and muckrakers? Usually, if you agree with them, they’re reporters; if not, they’re muckrakers. That’s how it played out for Samuel S. McClure, his namesake magazine, and those who wrote for him during the golden age of investigative reporting (1890s into the1920s).

 

McClure’s spotlighted some of the most impressive writers in the history of journalism, including Ray Stannard Baker, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, Sarah Orne Jewett, Jack London, Frank Norris, Emily Post, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Mark Twain, and Ida Tarbell. McClure also featured British writers he cajoled: J. M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson…. It is no exaggeration to say that McClure’s and competitors such as The Atlantic, Century, Colliers, Harper’s, and Munsey’s helped invent the Progressive Era.

 

Citizen Reporters focuses on McClure and Ida Tarbell, the first full-time female features writer in American history. Stephanie Gorton’s eminently readable account flip-flops between the two to give germane biographical details and to offer contrasting points of view. She also interweaves developments and politics of the age–from anarchist terrorism to world fairs, inventions, the New Woman, and the New Journalism. New ideas were in the air.

 

McClure was a master at reinvention. He was a short, wiry man born who grew up in a County Antrim blackhouse and immigrated to Indiana with his widowed mother. Things weren’t much better at first, and McClure did a stint as a pedlar. He managed to get through Knox College, a minor miracle as he spent more time on the student newspaper than in the classroom. His break came as editor of The Wheelman, a trade publication for Pope Bicycles, which he turned into a sporting publication. McClure never really stopped being a pitchman. He managed to woo and marry Harriet (“Hattie”) Hurd, a professor’s daughter, after a dogged pursuit and over her family’s objections.

 

Ida Tarbell was McClure’s opposite, including being tall. She haled from the oil region of Western Pennsylvania, and enjoyed financial comfort before her father was ruined by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil juggernaut. It was only then that he noticed of the ugliness of the region, or how Standard Oil crushed smaller manufacturers. She graduated from Allegheny College, taught briefly, and got her start in journalism with The Chautauquan, a journal for the adult education summer resort in southwestern New York. She moved to Paris when Impressionism was in bloom and wrote of her experiences for American newspapers.

 

Gorton portrays McClure as a man of boundless energy who cooked up one scheme after another. He often traveled to Europe–sometimes for business and sometimes to recover from probable bipolar disorder–and he was not an easy man for whom to work. When one of his half-baked ideas was opposed by more pragmatic staff, he acted as if was surrounded by traitors. The exception was Tarbell, the calm in the storm and his confidant.

 

McClure’s became famous for crusades against corruption. Baker wrote about Coxey’s Army, the Pullman strike, and race riots. Steffens produced an entire series on graft in American cities and covered both the Mexican and Russian revolutions. As for Tarbell, she began by writing biographies (Lincoln, Madame Roland, Napoleon), but gained fame for investigative pieces, including exposés of Standard Oil that led to numerous pieces of Progressive Era legislation and the breakup of Standard Oil. She also placed U.S. Steel and General Electric under her social microscope.

 

Some scholars assert that muckrakers made Theodore Roosevelt. That’s debatable, but Roosevelt certainly helped unmake the muckrakers. Gorton presents Roosevelt’s rants against reformist journalists–he tried to turn Baker, whom he knew personally–as if they were extremists. That was perhaps true of Steffens, who was briefly a communist, but it was not the case for most. Tarbell actually developed sympathy for John Rockefeller, and was conservative in her personal habits, morals, and belief in fair play. She enjoyed easy-going banter with Standard Oil’s Henry Huddleston Rogers, who could be so ruthless he was nicknamed “Hell Hound Rogers.” Tarbell, who never married, was often upheld as a feminist, but she was initially suspicious of it and only embraced feminism in semi-retirement.

 

Gorton suggests that Progressive Era reformers bit the hand that fed them when attacking magazines like McClure’s, but blames McClure for the decline of the magazine. He was small in stature, but large in ego. McClure engaged in several affairs, which the staff tried to scuttle, as such revelations were ruinous at the time. Oddly, Hattie–a more organized business person than her husband–sometimes enabled his philandering. Ultimately, McClure’s erratic behavior and constant attempts to launch new magazines led Tarbell to push back. He dismissed her and she and several other writers bolted to The American Magazine, a competitor. In 1911, the McClure’s board fired their founder and World War One hastened the demise of muckraking journals.

 

Gorton gives us a look at the inner workings of a magazine whose reformist fires burned briefly, but brightly. She is to commended for taking us beyond stereotypical views of such publications. As suggested in the lede, muckraker is a loaded word. Congress and the White House often get too much credit for the Progressive Era correctives. It is hard to imagine reform would have been as sweeping without journalists such as S.S. McClure and Ida Tarbell.

 

Rob Weir

 

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue a Page-turner

 

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020)

By V(ictoria) E. Schwab

Tor Books, 444 pages.

★★★★

 

 

 

Music, novels, and legends are replete with tales of meeting the Devil at the crossroads and striking a bad bargain. Somehow, the story never grows old and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is another good one.

 

It begins in the village of Villon-sur-Sarthe in the northwestern part of France. Addie LaRue is a free-spirited jeune fille with a mind of her own and is more drawn to her woodworker father than her severe, tradition-based mother. When you live in the 17^th century though–the story begins in 1698–tradition is not something one can simply ignore. Yet Adeline is more determined to do so when her father takes her with him to peddle his wares in Le Mans, a giant city for a country girl. Fast forward to 1714, and Adeline is now of marriageable age. Her parents have picked out her husband-to-be, Roger, a solid guy, but one Adeline has no desire to wed.

 

Adeline has spent time with Estelle, an eccentric old woman and spinner of yarns, who tells her about the old gods. Adeline is fascinated, but Estelle offers a sober warning: “No matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.” These gods, Estelle admonishes, are fickle and exact a steep price for answered prayers. Can you say “Pandora’s box?” Faced with an impending bond with Roger, Adeline slips into the woods and violates Estelle’s advice. This is her first encounter with Luc. Adeline tells him that she wishes to be “free” and without attachments.

 

Lesson Two: Semantics matter. Luc grants her wish, but with the spin is that no one will remember Adeline. The moment she leaves someone’s presence, that person cannot recall who she is. She can’t write her story or name; the words disappear on the page. Luc also owns her soul when she’s done with it. Soon, she has trouble saying her own name; hence she becomes Addie.

 

By now, perhaps you suspect that Luc may be Lucifer. That’s never really spelled out, but some Biblical scholars think that Lucifer was one of the old gods. (Satan, Mephistopheles, Lucifer, and Beelzebub are often conflated in the Old Testament, so these are debates over identities of each.)

 

Addie revels in her freedom, though Luc pays periodic visits to see if she’s ready to keep her part of the “deal.” Addie ignores him and experiences many things: the French Revolution, the building of the Eiffel tower, opera in Munich, Chicago during Prohibition, two world wars, Frank Sinatra when he was a new phenomenon….  She even returns to Villon, but each time it is less familiar to her. She has lovers of both sexes, who discover her anew each day, and meets fascinating people who forget who she is when she walks into another room. Oddly, she and Luc become close; she is “my dear Adeline” to him, the only being who remembers her, and is perhaps in love with her. Luc tells her, “You move among them like a ghost… not really human,” and in her darkest moments she thinks, “Living in the present, and only the present… is a run-on sentence.” How does Addie leave any sort of a mark?

 

In 2014, she is in New York City and meets Henry Strauss, a smart but unambitious man who works in a used bookstore. For some reason, he remembers her. Why? How? Addie is head-over-heels in love with Henry, and maybe with Luc as well!  The latter presses her to spend eternity with him, but that would mean consummating their deal and handing over her soul. You can’t change a deal with a god, can you?

 

Although I would not call The Invisible Life of Addy LaRue a great work of literature – whatever that means – it’s certainly a proverbial page-turner. It works because it touches upon an existential human dilemma: insofar as we know, we are the only species on earth consciously aware of its own mortality. Many humans fear death and yearn for immortality of some sort. Addie LaRue works for the same reason readers devour stories about vampires. In each case, the question is what would you give up to be immortal, or to get what you most desire? Would you accept gifts from a visible deity, or hold onto vague promises from one who never appears?

 

Like vampire tales, Addie LaRue is full of romance and dread, discovery and danger, thrills and terrors. Schwab certainly knows how to spin a great story and hers is a fresh look at both the crossroads legend and the encounter between Jesus and Satan in the Wilderness. Schwab spins us across 300 years of history, and deposits us in the 21^st century. What would you trade to see the 22^nd, 23^rd, and 24^th?

 

Rob Weir

 

"Harriet " a Nice Intro to Harriet, but Hold the Melodrama!

 

 

Harriet (2019)

Directed by Kasi Lemmons

Focus Features, 126 minutes, PG-13 (violence, racial slurs)

★★★

 

Harriet tells the story of one of history’s more remarkable individuals: Araminta (“Minty”) Ross (1822-1913). Don’t recognize that name? How about Harriet Tubman? That’s the name she chose when, in 1849, she fled on foot from bondage from a plantation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and made her way to Philadelphia.  

 

That journey would have been enough trauma for most escaped slaves, but instead Tubman became a major “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. The diminutive Tubman–she was barely 5’ tall–made 13 returns across the Mason-Dixon Line and liberated an estimated 70 slaves. Once the Fugitive Slave Act went into effect in 1850, she also helped smuggle those without freedom papers into Canada. (The Canadian Federation, as a British Commonwealth partner, abolished slavery in 1833.) Tubman went on to become the first African American woman to command Federal troops and led an 1863 raid in South Carolina that freed an additional 750 slaves.

 

Director Kasi Lemmons–who also cowrote the screenplay with Gregory Allen Howard–concentrates on Tubman during the years 1852-60, with a coda concerning the South Carolina raid. Kudos for casting Cynthia Erivo as Harriet. Erivo portrays Harriet as equal parts country girl, spitfire, and fiery adversary. We don’t get much information about her childhood, and the source of the visions she endured is merely alluded to. (An overseer hurled a metal weight at another slave, missed, and instead struck Harriet in the forehead. Tubman suffered painful headaches that one biographer suggests were epilepsy.)  For Minty, the breaking point came when she married John Tubman in 1844. Documents surfaced that showed that she and her mother was supposed to be freed when the latter turned 45. Minty approached her master Edward Brodess, but the documents were ignored. The last straw was the sale of her three sisters, which occurred after Edward died and left his widow Eliza (country singer Jennifer Nettles, looking a lot like Amy Poehler) with crippling debt.

 

In Philadelphia, Minty became Harriet Tubman after meeting black abolitionist William Still (Leslie Odom, Jr.), who coordinated Underground Railroad raids. She would eventually also meet William Seward, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown. (She took  part in planning for Brown’s ill-fated 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.) Tubman even returned to Maryland to liberate her husband (Zackary Momoh), only to learn he assumed Harriet was dead, had taken another wife, and didn’t wish to flee.

 

This is all very dramatic stuff. Lemmons assembles a good cast, but she slips when drama becomes melodrama. A major subplot involves Harriet’s dealings with Gideon Ross (Joe Alwyn). Alwyn is very good as a blue-eyed son of privilege who tries to keep Minty in line when she’s on the plantation and pursues her when she flees. There is frisson between the two that implies past closeness with hints it might have been sexual. Is Gideon looking out for her safety, or is he the Devil in disguise? It doesn’t matter; he is not an historical character. Gideon is at best a composite; at worst he’s like Harriet’s elegant Philadelphia boarding house keeper Marie Buchanon (Janelle Monáe): a complete fiction. Also on the melodramatic side is Lemmons’ elision of time. The suggestion is that Harriet was constantly bursting into Still’s office to demand another raid to free more Maryland slaves; in truth, her ventures took place over an 11-year period.

 

I give Lemmons a (half) pass on the latter, given that it’s very difficult to bring biography to the screen. All movie biographies shrink time and, when done well, we seldom notice. I noticed. There are a few other invented characters as well, including black slave catchers Bigger Long (Omar J. Dorsey) and Walter (Henry Hunter Hall), though such individuals were real enough.

 

If you don’t know very much about Tubman’s life, Harriet is a decent introduction. I would, however, encourage you not to let this film substitute for learning more. What you see on the screen can be mostly trusted, but despite its tough subject of slavery, Harriet sometimes plays against its full horror through Hallmark-like sentimental interludes. A question that constantly perplexes me is why screenwriters feel the need to embellish when history hands them ready-made drama.

 

As a final aside, it is important at this moment in our own history to step back from notions that African Americans freed themselves. What the Underground Railroad did was remarkable and Harriet Tubman is a personal hero, but despite a spate of works–grounded more in now than then–the total number of slaves who escaped was around 100,000. That is impressive, but a small dent in the 4 million who remained in bondage. It took a civil war to end slavery.

 

Rob Weir

Dead Man Don't Wear Plaid Ages Better than a Suit

 

 

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

Directed by Carl Reiner

Universal Pictures, 89 minutes, PG

(In Black & White.)

 

 

 

If I told you that you could see 25 Hollywood legends in the same film, would you watch it? And, no, I’m not talking about some self-congratulatory industry-made documentary. I’m talking about a feature film. Could you, for example, resist seeing Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, and Barbara Stanwyck in the same picture as Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Cary Grant, and Burt Lancaster? Okay, how about if I throw in Steve Martin and make it a comedy?

 

Say what!? Some of you may know that legendary director, writer, and actor Carl Reiner passed away in June. Back in 1982, he directed Steve Martin in a spoof of film noir/detective films and titled it Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. It got mixed reviews back in its day, but from the perspective of 2020, Reiner’s film wears much better than its titular clothing ensemble. In today’s mashup culture, Dead Men is the cinematic equivalent of photo stitching. It involved just eight contemporary actors of their day, and only three of them: Martin, Rachel Ward, and Reiner had major roles. Reiner filmed in black and white, because it allowed him and film editor Bud Molin to switch seamlessly between his “live” actors and clips from 19 films from the 1940s–most of them from Hollywood’s film noir days.

 

If you’re shaky on what film noir means, the word noir is French for black. Film noir was heavy on the use of moody black tones, fog, silhouettes, dreamy ambience, and low-key lighting. It was perfect for crime pictures, especially those involving hard-broiled detectives. The basic idea was to bathe the screen in atmospherics appropriate for films bristling with deception, sexual tension, psychological strain, and unexpected violence. In other words, a murder mystery that can only be cracked by a jaded gumshoe who straddles the line between criminality and respectability. Reiner mined a trove of noir films–including The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, and Suspicion–and  his movie bears some resemblance to Notorious, though not every film he used is considered a classic. And, of course, a younger Steve Martin (37 at the time) is there to make sure things stayed on the silly side.

 

 In brief, Juilet Forrest (Ward) hires private investigator Rigby Reardon (Martin) to investigate the disappearance and presumed murder of her father, Dr. Forrest (George Gaynes), a renowned scientist and cheesemaker. (Yes, you read that correctly!) Martin first asks his partner (Bogart) to search for clues and soon two cryptic lists emerge: Friends of Carlotta and Enemies of Carlotta. But who is Carlotta? As Rigby wades more deeply into Dr. Forrest’s misfortune, Rigby falls for Juliet, the case gets hotter, and something very nefarious emerges–possibly involving Nazis.

 

At this point I should say that few comedians can get away with as many “cheap” jokes as Steve Martin and make us laugh so damn hard at them. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid sports breast and “willie” jokes, bullets being sucked out snakebite-style, Martin in horrifyingly bad drag, cups of Rigby’s “world-famous Java,” and cleaning lady “trigger”references,. These are just the tip if the bullet. Don’t think too much; just go with the flow. They work because Martin simply oozes so much put-on smarm that it becomes charm. Aussie Rachel Ward was then on the cusp of her big moment–she would star in the TV series The Thorn Birds the next year–and she appears fresh, spunky, and up for the challenge of performing with a spontaneous talent like Martin. Carl Reiner shows up later in the film, but he was already a comedic giant who, in many ways, paved the way for guys like Steve Martin. Don’t be surprised to see Reiner nibble at one corner while Martin munches at the other when it comes to scene-chewing.

 

I really liked Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid when I saw it in the cinema back in 1982. I positively adored seeing it again on Netflix. Reiner’s film is the difference between making an audience laugh at moronic humor and making comedies for morons, the latter being my candid assessment of about 90 percent of every comedy made since 1990. Dead Men is both funny and a capsule look at 1940s films that will also make you wish to see some of them. You should, as they too are lessons; in this case they illumine the gap between craft and mere production.

 

As a final note, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid was the final film dressed by Edith Head. Ms Head (1897-1981) was, simply, the most famous costume designer in Hollywood history. It was also the final film for composer Miklos Rozsa, and also featured music from Steve Goodman, who died shortly after the film opened. Goodman was a brilliant singer/songwriter.

 

Rob Weir

The Cold Millions: Fine Novel/Great History Lesson

The Cold Millions

By Jess Walter

Harper, 352 pp.

★★★★★

 

 

 

An old labor song asks, “Which side are you on?” Not everyone is taken with The Cold Millions by Jess Walter. It’s often a tough book. If you believe America is and has always been, a middle-class society, Walter rubs reality in your face. Some (all-too-young) bloggers are unaware that this historical novel is indeed “historical.” It takes us to Spokane in 1909, the center of one of the more traumatic labor uprisings of its day: a free speech battle led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

 

Spokane was a classic boom town. A burgeoning timber industry and the discovery of rich deposits of gold, silver, and lead extending from eastern Washington into Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene region swelled Spokane’s population from 350 to 104,400 in 30 years. Do not imagine for a nanosecond that the need for laborers meant decent wages or respect for working people. Spokane was also a place in which a relative handful of investment capitalists grew fabulously wealthy, built a nouveau riche enclave for themselves and bourgeois supporters, and considered their workforce as no more valuable than mules, shovels, or dynamite. For the hoi polloi, Spokane was burlesque and vaudeville halls, brothels, flophouses, bars, job sharks, and hobo camps. Naturally, it bred socialists, anarchists, and assorted other radicals. Bet on the fact that not all of the dynamite will be used to blast rock, but don’t assume you know who will be using TNT for nefarious purposes. Spokane was also home to private industrial armies, labor spies, crooked cops, and agents provocateurs.

 

Walter’s novel is built upon fictional characters who interact with historical figures. It centers upon two orphan brothers from Montana, 16-year-old “Rye” (Ryan) and 23-year-old “Gig” (Gregory) Dolan, who join the legions of drifters in search of work. By the time Rye catches up with Gig in Spokane, the latter is already a Wobbly (member of the IWW) and is devoted to a cause neatly summed by a line in the Preamble of the IWW Constitution: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” Rye is better educated than his brother, though Gig is working his way through War and Peace in a self-improvement campaign. Rye’s hope that he and Gig can also improve themselves economically is challenged by local cops who routinely treat working stiffs and drifters as trash to be beaten for sport. Victims include their gentle friend Jules, who is part Native American, and a tramp named Early, who advises them to stop listening to IWW fantasies, embrace anarchism, and resort to violence.

 

That’s not their way. Gig has his eye on Ursula the Great, a burlesque singer who performs with a mountain lion; and Rye meets Lemuel Brand, a mining tycoon, and doesn’t quite know what to make of him or life from the top rail. When the free speech conflagration breaks out, they must figure out which side they are on. In brief, the IWW strategy–which worked brilliantly elsewhere–was to defy local ordinances banning large rallies. Wobblies saw it as a violation of the First Amendment and recruited out-of-work laborers to hop railroad cars and flood the streets. Wobblies mounted soapboxes, gave speeches, were arrested, and were thrown into jail. Success came when it cost cities so much to feed the prisoners that ordinances were repealed, strikes continued, and employers were forced to negotiate. That’s not how it went down in Spokane, where elites reacted with unspeakable brutality.

 

Another reason why some have struggled with The Cold Millions is that Walter wants readers to do their homework. He uses period lingo, IWW slang, and labor terminology without translating it. (They’re usually obvious from context, but there are phrases that might send you to Google.) Walter also expects you to sort fictional characters–such as the Dolans, Urusula, detective Dal Daveaux–from real ones like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Frank Little, Clarence Darrow, Joe Hill, and Wesley Everest. One should read up on the IWW and its free speech battles–Flynn was later a cofounder of the ACLU, then a communist–but you can get by if you think of everyone as either real or a composite of historical figures.

 

Walter is a superb writer who knows how to spin a tale. He enhances The Cold Millions by interjecting lots of which-side-are-you-on dilemmas and wrapping  them in an unorthodox mystery. All of these–plus his use of the falls on the Spokane River as an inanimate character–keep readers off balance. Walter’s sympathy for the underdog earns him comparisons that I and other reviewers have invoked: John Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and John Steinbeck. It is a thrilling read deliberately written in a retro style reminiscent of the aforementioned.

 

Walter gets history right, not just in the broad strokes but also in the background details. Reading The Cold Millions is simultaneously a lesson in early 20^th century labor struggles, gender dynamics, anti-immigrant animus, technological development, and class consciousness (emergent, undeveloped, and/or buried). Think of The Cold Millions as a title with multiple meanings. If the novel discomforts you, ask, “Which side am I on?”

 

Rob Weir

Glenn Thomas, Four Year Strong, Debra Devi. Zoe Keating

 

Songs for December I

Westerly, Rhode Island native Glenn Thomas has been kicking around in various groups, including Wild Sun, for quite a while now. Recently he moved to Nashville where, tellingly, he has been praised for his songwriting skills. This may be his best shot at fame for the simple reason that his soothing voice is too light for big venues. His new album Reassure Me There’s a Window is a collection of pensive songs that’s more Elliott Smith than Chris Stapleton. A case in point is “All You Can Do,” his musing on resolutions and how life has a way of throwing a monkey wrench into expectations:  Prayers will be said but they work too slow/When you have to fix things someone else broke. Pop Matters called it a “low-key folk jam,” and that sounds right to me with, perhaps, a bit of The Shins added as a flavor enhancer. “She IsLeaving” is another one wrapped in melancholy and ambience that suggests his new material is in a folk music singer/songwriter vein. Ditto his love song “Catharine Ames,” in which Thomas capos down on his Guild to get some bird-like tones to dance with his voice. Actual birds get to provide some answers on “Oriole.” He asks, So little oriole, what’s there to say when you realize it all fades to grey? I’m in love with the truth but I long for the comfort of lies…. His most “country” song is “Give a Damn,” which is shaped by some studio pedal steel, though to my ear it’s the simple-but-clever wordplay that stands out: I sure as hell give a damn/That I give a damn about you. In all we get ten really good songs that could easily be sung solo on the small club circuit, which is where I hope to catch him some post-COVID day.

The moment I heard “Learn to Love the Lie” from Four Year Strong, I was reminded of the Milk Carton Kids. How not? Gorgeous melody, tight harmony work between Dan O’Connor and Alan Day, solid acoustic pacing, and lines like: I don’t want to be the one to stay/I don’t want to be the one who got away/And if I’m being honest/You couldn’t get rid of me anyway. But the odd thing about it is that the quartet Four Year Strong is a punk band from Worcester. I’ve heard some of their louder material and, in all candor, the soft touch is way more memorable. “Thinking Myself in Circles” has a bit of grunge to it, but it also has an air of Milk Carton Kids. Who among us can’t relate to the title or lyrics like: I keep repeating the same thing without any meaning? Worcester is a tough town, so why not a bit more of the velvet glove?

 

If you want heavier material, Debra Devi can dish it. I’ve reviewed earlier work of hers in which I’ve commented on her let-it-rip guitar and vocals. Her latest project is an EP titled Wild Little Girl. She explains that the title “reflects my desire to encourage girls and women to be wildly creative and free and fulfill their potential to the max.” Give her a mic and an amp, and “max” is where she heads. Don’t think for a moment that a song titled “Butterfly” is going to be touchy-feelie; it’s like a bump-and-grind with blistering electric intervals. “Shake It” pretty much tells you how it’s grounded, “Tired of Waiting” opens soft but leaps into high gear, and “Stay” is hard rock in the same groove. I suppose that “Miles to Clarksdale” is Devi’s token quiet song. Her songs have meaning, but she sure does like to bring her inner wild little girl out to play.

 

Zoë Keating demands your attention and you’d be foolish not to give it. She is a cellist with an esemplastic approach to music. You might find her at a club or in a museum courtyard playing for the glitterati, but she will confound any audience with DYI shows that are both works of art and lessons in programing. “Possible” has deep, rumbling tones, nervy pulses, and drone-like repeated patterns weaving beneath the surface. Collectively they encapsulate the uncertainty implied by her composition’s title. “Out There” leaves us with the question out where? Outer space? Inner space? It has melancholic colorings that evolve into a pace that’s as analytical and deliberate as track hunting. “Optimist” is a series of plucking, bowing, and sawing that awakes from a mysterious fog, gathers pace, and ultimately comes across as uplifting.  You need to be patient, as Keating is working on so many levels that it takes time for everything to cohere. It’s well worth the wait.