Music

A Review of The Overview of Steven Wilson

Steven Wilson has released a new album, The Overview. Always surprising, rarely disappointing, Wilson is one of our favorite artists. Producer, songwriter, guitarist, singer, and remixer of countless classic albums, he truly is a man who can do it all. Brad Birzer and Tad Wert share thoughts on his latest opus.

Tad: Brad, you and I both have had a love/hate relationship with Steven Wilson. His almost obsessive focus on dark themes bothered me years back, but I couldn’t help but be seduced by his songwriting. The man writes and performs some of the most beautiful melodies ever recorded. His past few albums have been very good, in my opinion, albeit each very different. I’m interested in your thoughts on his latest, The Overview.

Brad: Thanks so much, Tad.  Glad to be reviewing with you!

I know I’ve had the chance to tell this story before, but I first encountered Steven Wilson through Porcupine Tree.  My wife and (then) two kids were shopping in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and a local alternative station was playing “Trains” from In Absentia.  This would’ve been the fall of 2002.  I immediately went to a local CD store and bought not only In Absentia but also Up the Down Stair.  One of my excellent students, Chase, found out about my new-found Porcupine Tree obsession and gifted me with the PT compilation boxset, Stars Die: The Delirium Years.  It was one of the coolest gifts I’ve ever received, and I was smitten.

From there, I dove into everything I could find related to Wilson and Porcupine Tree.  So, I’ve been a fan for twenty–three years now, and I’m amazed how much of my CD collection revolves around Wilson.  Whether it’s Porcupine Tree, No-Man, Blackfield, Storm Corrosion, Bass Communion, IEM, solo material, or one of the billion albums Wilson has remastered, my home is a repository and archive!  I also have several books on Porcupine Tree, Wilson’s deluxe autobiography, and a huge number of deluxe editions of the album releases.

You’re right, though, I do have a love/hate relationship with Wilson.  Let me note: I admire the man deeply.  But, a few things he’s said and done drive me a bit crazy.  It’s really hard to be his fan as he constantly wants to distance himself from us.  Even when we follow him album to album, genre to genre, he has to make skeptical comments about us, implying that we demand too much of him and hold him back musically.  And, from any objective standard–whether it’s Grace for Drowning or The Future Bites–the man just exudes progressive rock.  He’s always exploring, always changing, but he has tried to distance himself from the label.  I don’t get it, and I find his attitude incredibly frustrating.  Maybe he simply has a really restrictive view of progressive rock.  To me, progressive means exploration.

I also thought that as much as I loved The Raven Who Refused to Sing, the album seemed very much a remake of a Tangent album without acknowledging or giving Andy Tillison all due credit.

As far as I know, Tad, these are my only complaints.  And, given how much joy Wilson’s music has brought to me, they’re incredibly minor complaints.  Of all my loves re: the present scene of music, Steven Wilson is certainly at the top–along with Big Big Train, IZZ, The Tangent, Glass Hammer, and a few others.  I would especially rank Hand.Cannot.Erase as an all-time top five album for me.


And, I’ve not even gotten to The Overview yet. . .  Tad, what are your thoughts on what you like and dislike about Wilson?

Tad: Well, Brad, my experience was much the same as yours. I saw that Alex LIfeson played on Fear of a Blank Planet, so I got it cheap from BMG Music Club (remember those?), and I was hooked. I grabbed everything I could find that Wilson was involved with. I loved Porcupine Tree and Blackfield; NoMan not so much (at least until they put out Schoolyard Ghosts).

As I said earlier, I wish he would lighten up a little in the lyrics department. Life isn’t all bad! I guess that he finds depressing subjects more inspiring. On the plus side, I think he is an excellent guitarist and singer. His production work is unparalleled; I don’t think anything he’s produced will ever sound dated – it’s all timeless and of incredibly high quality.

Okay, let’s talk about the subject at hand: his new album, The Overview. It’s two long tracks, one more than 23 minutes long and one more than 18 minutes. You can’t get more proggy than that, can you? I think he wants the listener to hear this as an album, and not a playlist of tracks. Given this is the age of Spotify, that is pretty countercultural! 

On first impression, I think the section entitled “Objects: Meanwhile” is one favorite. It has a nice piano motif that builds throughout. The lyrics, well, they’re pretty depressing:

The tiniest lives fill their hives up with worry
To make it to church, well, she needs to hurry
When late she will bow down contrite
While a meteor trunks out the light

And there in an ordinary street
A car isn’t where it would normally be
The driver in tears, ‘bout his payment in arrears
Stll, nobody hears when a sun disappears
In a galaxy afar

That seems to be the overarching theme of this album – how insignificant humans and their concerns are, compared to the vastness of the universe. Wilson makes this explicit in the section “Perspective”, where a woman narrates ever-increasing numbers on a literal astronomical scale.

“A Beautiful Infinity/Borrowed Atoms/A Beautiful Infinity II” is the best section of the album, with its Floydian slide guitar and seductive melody. I love it. However, “A Beautiful Infinity II” continues the general theme of nihilism and hopelessness:

There’s no reason for any of thi
Just a beautiful infinity
No design and no one at the wheel
Just an existential mystery

I swear, if I ever got the chance to meet Mr. Wilson, I think I would share with him Psalm 19, which begins, 

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.

That said, this section is some of my favorite Steven Wilson music ever. I have listened to this album from start to finish many times now, and this is the part I enjoy the most.

I suppose Wilson is saying that in an honest overview of the cosmos, humanity isn’t really worth much. In that regard, he echoes the psalmist who asks, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” Brad, I promise I didn’t begin this review planning to quote psalms, but they seem kind of appropriate, given the majesty of this album’s music!

Brad: Tad!  I love it.  The Psalms, BMG Music Club, nihilism.  Yes, I don’t disagree as I think the lyrics are depressing as well.  That’s par for the course with Wilson, though.  From what I can tell–in interviews and through his autobiography–he’s actually a really kind, upbeat person, but his art is always dark.  It’s dark, often, in terms of chord structures, and it’s dark in terms of his lyrics, and it’s generally dark in terms of the art that accompanies his album releases.

I suppose it’s one reason I love HAND.CANNOT.ERASE so much.  It’s dark, but it’s also deeply redemptive.  There’s a very healthy humanism at the heart of that story.

Despite the darkness of the lyrics on The Overview, I am pretty taken with them.  As probably you and most readers know, Andy Partridge of XTC wrote a chunk of the lyrics on the first track.  As such, they’re clever as all get out, while also being cynical.  Frankly, though, I like the perspective Partridge and Wilson offer–that as we go about our lives, making minute decision after minute decision, the universe in its incomprehensible majesty goes about its business as well.

I especially like these lyrics on the second track:

Snow is falling but it can’t be seen from here

And back on Earth, my loving wife’s been dead for years

I see myself in relation to it all

What seemed important now like dust inside the squall

Each moment for me is a lifetime for you

For whatever reason, they resonate with me.  It’s not that his wife’s death is any less tragic, it’s just that it’s placed against the backdrop of what seems infinite.  If anything, I actually found this a hopeful lyric.  After all, the man’s love for his wife continues, despite her absence.

I also really like Wilson’s musical approach to the whole album.  The way that he places various parts of the song together reminds me very much of Paul McCartney’s side two of Abbey Road.  Wilson, interestingly enough, has stated that while he admires the Beatles for what they accomplished, they were never an influence on him.  Still, it seems that in the construction of The Overview, they were, at least to a certain extent, an inspiration.

I did think that Rotem’s spoken word parts on the second track would wear on me, but, even after innumerable listens, I’m fine with it.

So, being a true Wilsonite, I bought the deluxe edition of The Overview.  It comes with a booklet as well as a blu-ray.  As I listen to the album, I generally listen to the blu-ray–which seems to bring the best out of the two tracks.  I hear things with the blu-ray that I don’t with just the CD release.

So, Tad, I’m loving the album.  It came out. . . what. . . six weeks ago?  And, I’m now on six weeks of immersing myself in it.  I find each listen a joy, and I keep discovering new things in it.  It’s a treasure.  Again, I would still rank Wilson’s Hand.Cannot.Erase as his best album and I would rank The Future Bites as my least favorite of his albums.  In the big scheme of things (ha–see what I did there!), The Overview sits comfortably close to Hand.Cannot.Erase.

Tad: Ah, Brad, this is why I enjoy these joint reviews with you – you provide proper perspective and rein in my first-take reactions to lyrics! I love your willingness to find hope in Wilson’s words, and now that you’ve pointed it out I can see it as well. I’d rather someone be hopeful than despairing, so I feel better about his emotional health. 

If I had to rank Wilson’s albums, I think I would put his first, Insurgentes at the top, but it depends on the mood I’m in. The Raven That Refused to Sing is awfully good, and To The Bone is a wonderful take on 80s pop/rock. I do agree that The Overview  is one of his best, and I have really enjoyed listening to it the past few weeks.

So, readers, it looks like The Overview gets two solid thumbs up from Spirit of Cecilia! Check it out on your favorite music streaming service, or better yet, buy a physical copy and keep Mr. Wilson in business. Thanks for stopping by!

Music

Airbag’s The Century of the Self: Literate Rock for Freedom Lovers

Greetings, Spirit of Cecilia readers! Brad Birzer and Tad Wert have been impressed with the music of Norway’s Airbag. They combine excellent, Pink Floyd-adjacent melodies with thought-provoking lyrics. In the summer of 2024, they released their sixth studio album, The Century of the Self, which was one of the best albums of that year. Brad and Tad finally get around to discussing its merits – better late than never!

Tad: Brad, I absolutely adored Airbag’s previous album,  A Day at the Beach, and the lead-off track, Machines and Men, is one of the best songs they’ve ever done. Now that they’ve followed up that triumph with The Century of the Self, what strikes you right off the bat with that album?

Brad: Thanks so much, Tad.  It’s great–as always–to be reviewing with you.  Yes, I very much love and admire Airbag, and I have from their beginning, whether on Kscope (briefly) or Karisma.  They confirm what I’ve thought for ages, that is, a prog band is only as good as its bassist.  Great guitarist, too.  Great drummer as well.  Love the keyboards, too.  So, win-win-win-win.  What a great band.  An amazing band.  I had to throw “amazing” into the mix, as I’ve typed “great” one too many times!

Granted, they wear their Pink Floyd love on their sleeves, but, frankly, I think that makes them even better.  Very glad to have some Floydian music still being produced.  And, yet, whatever the Floyd influence, it serves as an inspiration for the band.  They’re not enslaved to it, but inspired by it.  Strangely and perhaps paradoxically, the Floydian influence makes Airbag even more unique.

I didn’t realize they were already on their sixth album.  Given their sheer output, as well as the solo output of Bjorn Riis, I find the music even more astounding.

So, what strikes me right off the bat?  An excellent question, Tad.  After having listened to the album a half a dozen times, I’m struck by two things.  The bass and the lyrics.  Both, extremely courageous.  How about you?

Tad: Brad, you and I agree that a good bassist is essential to a prog band. I think of what Yes might be without Chris Squire, and it would never have been as groundbreaking and influential as it ended up. Or how about Steve Babb’s work with Glass Hammer? He is the key to that group’s greatness.

Along the same lines, Anders Hovdan does a terrific job anchoring Airbag’s music. A lot of their songs take time to fully develop, and Hovdan’s insistent bass lines provide interest for the listener. I love the way the entire group take their time building up a song. They often start out quietly, and they inexorably build in energy and sound until there is a most satisfying release. Their melodies are not overly complex or complicated, but I would certainly classify them as “progressive rock.

That said, I think Bjorn Riis (guitars and vocals) seems to be the main driver of Airbag. His songs always intrigue me. I’ve told you before that I have to like a song’s melody before I worry about the lyrics, but when I first heard the opening track on The Century of Self, I was immediately struck by the lyrics. They’re brief enough to share in their entirety:

Did you come here to find some peace and hide?
Too much confusion in your head at times
Don’t want to bend, conform, you’ll never obey
Don’t want no part of this conspiracy

I see these people keeping their heads down
Denying everything they used to be
Don’t try to touch, don’t ever get too close
They’ll make you suffer and they’ll make you bleed

Who do you feel you are today?
Who will you crucify and slay?
It’s driving me insane

Did you believe they’d ever let you go?
There is no escape, there is no turning back
You’re canceled now, they’ll cancel everything
They’ll make us suffer and they’ll make us bleed

Who do you feel you are today?
Who will you crucify and slay?
It’s driving me insane

source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/airbag/dysphoria

Brad, it seems to me this is a protest against the illiberalism of contemporary “cancel culture”, and that is a brave stand to take these days! So, I went back and looked through some of their previous songs, and there is definitely a consistent streak of individualism and a plea for personal freedom running through them. I think they are today’s version of a countercultural music group, and I admire them for that. I am really interested in your thoughts on their lyrics, since you are able to uncover deeper meaning from them than I usually do!

Brad: Yes, I totally agree, Tad.  There’s something quite special in Airbag’s lyrics that call out for us to be more individual than we’re comfortably being in the current morass of society.  I think Airbag is definitely protesting against the loss of free speech and free ideas that seems to have spread throughout Europe and the western world (America is not excluded).  I suppose part of this is my age, but it’s hard not to look back at the 1980s and especially 1989 as a golden era in western civilization.  Not only were we growing economically, but free societies were trouncing unfree societies.  Despotisms and authoritarianism and totalitarianism were on the run.  A pope and a president were beating the life out of them.  Now, we sit in silence as our “betters” tell us what to do and what not to do.  I wouldn’t have necessarily have expected protest to arise from Norway, but amen.  

Those lyrics are worth repeating, Tad:

Did you believe they’d ever let you go?
There is no escape, there is no turning back
You’re canceled now, they’ll cancel everything
They’ll make us suffer and they’ll make us bleed

And, then, of course, we’re not guiltless:  

Who do you feel you are today?
Who will you crucify and slay?
It’s driving me insane.

Track two, “Tyrants and Kings” continues the libertarian themes:

Join the cause
Say no to everything we fear
Get used to lying
You’re a prisoner now
Take no stand
There are no sides there’s only ours
You shoot to kill
You’re a soldier now

The “get used to lying” line brings to mind Solzhenitsyn’s note that all totalitarianism is built on lies.  The huge lie of the society and all the little lies that one must employ to survive.

Looking through the lyrics of the remaining three songs, they too speak to the loss of individual dignity.

So, bravo, Airbag!  Keep fighting the good fight.  And, thanks, too, for the killer bass lines.

Tad: Brad, thank you for highlighting the lyrics to “Tyrants and Kings”! Yes, Airbag is a band that appeals to me both in musical terms and lyrical ones. That is quite rare these days. And, like you, I’m impressed these Norwegians are reminding the rest of us what is truly important. 

So, gentle reader, if you are interested in excellent progressive rock with a Floydian flavor, and highly literate lyrics, do yourself a favor and check out Airbag’s latest album, The Century of the Self. You won’t be disappointed!

Faith, LITERATURE, Philosophy

Ross Douthat’s Believe: Apologetics for a Skeptical Age

Ross Douthat is a New York Times columnist who opines regularly on issues of morality, faith, and culture. His latest book, Believe, is an interesting entry in the crowded catalog of Christian apologetics. 

Douthat chooses to devote most of his book to making the case for a higher reality than the one we can measure scientifically. As he puts it in the introduction,

Whatever mysteries and riddles inhere in our existence, ordinary reason plus a little curiosity should make us well aware of the likelihood that this life isn’t all there is, that mind and spirit are just an illusion woven by our cells and atoms, that some kind of supernatural power shaped and still influences out lives and universe. (p. 7)

Believe is not a long book – eight chapters, 206 pages – but it is packed with weighty argument and evidence for a “supernatural” reality. The chapter titles outline his thesis:

  1. The Fashioned Universe
  2. The Mind and the Cosmos
  3. The Myth of Disenchantment
  4. The Case for Commitment
  5. Big Faiths and Big Divisions
  6. Three Stumbling Blocks
  7. The End of Exploring
  8. A Case Study: Why I Am a Christian

What is welcoming about Douthat’s approach is his invitation to simply accept the evidence around you and acknowledge that some sort of creative intelligence is the likeliest explanation for our universe. He doesn’t even get into why he believes Christianity fits the bill until the final chapter. As a matter of fact, he posits that belief in any of the major religions – Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam – can lead a person to ultimate truth better than nonbelief:

Your choice might be the wrong one ultimately but the right one for you in that moment, or the wrong one but with enough that’s right in it to make an important difference in your life. And if, in the end, your initial conversion doesn’t convert you the the true faith, the religion you enter will have hopefully acquired enough truth and wisdom in its long development to make a ladder upward, from the mire of meaninglessness and the snares of indecision toward whatever the full plan of your life is meant to be. (p. 149)

In The Mind and the Cosmos chapter, Douthat points out that 

It isn’t merely that the universe appears improbably fine-tuned to enable our existence. It’s that our own consciousness seems improbably capable when it comes to discovering that fine-tuning, like a key fitted to a lock. (p. 61)

In other words, it’s a miracle that the universe is habitable for us and we are able to discern that habitability. 

From that basic argument, Douthat builds his case, eventually addressing three “stumbling blocks” that prevent people from believing in God: 

  1. Why Does God Allow So Many Wicked Things to Happen?
  2. Why Do Religious Institutions Do So Many Wicked Things?
  3. Why Are Traditional Religions So Hung Up on Sex?

His answers to these questions are thoughtful, comprehensive, and convincing. 

It isn’t until the last chapter that Douthat makes the case for Christianity as the best explanation for reality and how we should live. As he acknowledges, he’s a Christian because that was the dominant religion of the culture in which he was raised. At no point in the book does Douthat promote Christianity at the expense of the other major religions (although he is careful to warn the reader against getting involved in cults or Satanism!). This fair-minded approach is very effective, in my opinion, making his points hard to refute. 

Believe is the latest in a long line of Christian apologetics (the first of which is probably Augustine’s Confessions, but I’m not sure), but it is somewhat unusual in its acceptance of other ways of reaching the truth. Douthat is primarily concerned with winning people over to a belief in a Creator God who cares about his creation. Once one has made the commitment to that belief, Douthat is confident that a sincere seeker will eventually be rewarded with a greater understanding of how we should order our lives, and, as a result, live much more fulfilling lives.

Republic of Letters

It’s 5/4: Dave Brubeck Day!

It’s 5/4–Dave Brubeck Day!

https://bradleyjbirzer.substack.com/p/54-happy-dave-brubeck-day

The Unessential Brubeck

A review of Philip Clark, Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time (New York: DaCapo Press, 2020). Xvii + 403 pp of text + discography, bibliography, and index.

I do not remember a time in my life when Dave Brubeck’s music did not provide the soundtrack. Indeed, his music is inextricably tied up to and with my own life. Some of my earliest memories come from staring at Brubeck’s album covers—Time Out and Time Further Out by S. Neil Fujita and Joan Miro, respectively—and trying to make sense of the abstractions. And, as family lore goes, even as a kid I loved dancing to music such as “Take Five,” even waking up the entire household in the middle of the night by blaring the stereo system at full volume. As was the case with probably many of us of my generation, Time Out was one of my father’s favorite albums and Brubeck one of his favorite musicians, rivaled only by Herb Alpert. To this day, I have stacks and stacks of Brubeck CDs and boxsets, and his music plays throughout the house and the office. Maybe not daily, but certainly weekly. When my older brother, Todd, and I get together, we still talk Brubeck. Even now, as I pour through various prog and jazz albums, I’m always on the lookout for Brubeck’s influences.  

As a case in point, Pat Metheny’s latest, From This Place—arguably this jazz master’s best—reflects widely and deeply the compositional structure of Brubeck’s best album, 1964’s Time Changes. The resemblance is simply too obvious to ignore. Even the theme is critical. Brubeck’s album was inspired by a short story involving two cellmates and a crust of bread. The religious essence of the album is blatant, with Brubeck trying to find that which ties all humans together, regardless of ethnicity or race. It is, for all intents and purposes, a meditation on human decency and divine agency. Metheny’s latest calls us to be the best we can expect of ourselves as Americans.

In 2012, when Brubeck died around Christmas time of that year, I vowed that I would one day write a biography of him.  Despite preliminary research and reading, I’ve really not dived into this project, but Brubeck remains a profound part of my life, nonetheless. 

Two stories from Brubeck’s own life mean everything to me.

First, at Ronald Reagan’s last summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, held in Moscow in 1988, the Reagan administration insisted that Dave Brubeck represent America as her greatest cultural achievement. Brubeck’s producer, Russell Gloyd, recognized this grand achievement for what it was. “You have to put this in perspective,” he argued. “There was Perestroika, the whole awakening of the Soviet Union, the whole concept of what was taking place at that time in world history. This was the first time there was hope of a real chance for an understanding between the East and the West,” he continued. “For Dave to be the representative artist meant everything to everyone who was close to us.”

The atmosphere was tense.  Reagan was exhausted from his trip, Gorbachev’s security was worried about assassination plots, and it was a ridiculously hot and humid day in Moscow. “I walked in thinking that this was the hardest room Dave had ever had to work in his life,” claims Gloyd. After a number of lackluster diplomatic niceties in the stuffy room, Brubeck walked up to the piano, sat down, and started playing “Take the ‘A’ Train.” “It brought down the house,” Gloyd reports. “People were up and cheering. I’ll never forget Bob Dole—he looked like a little kid. He had his one good hand raised above his head like he was at a football game. He’d turn around, and there was a Soviet general, loaded with medals, doing the same thing! They looked at each other like, ‘You like Brubeck? I like Brubeck! We like Brubeck.” It was, Gloyd notes, “the greatest single twenty-minute set in his life.” The Cold War became much less frigid that day.

Second, though he came from a Presbyterian family, Brubeck converted to Roman Catholicism as an adult. “I never had belonged to any church. I was never baptized before,” Brubeck remembered. “I was the only son in the family who wasn’t baptized a Presbyterian. It was just an oversight.” To be certain, religious music—from the African-American community as well as from the white/European community—had always intrigued and influenced him. He wrote liturgical-jazz pieces about Easter, Christmas, and Martin Luther King. 

Though he had written a number of specifically religious themed albums and pieces, however, his greatest expression of his Christianity came when Our Sunday Visitor (headquartered in Huntington, Indiana) commissioned Brubeck to write a Mass.  He, in very Brubeck fashion, entitled it, To Hope! A Celebration, and performed it—with Gloyd conducting—at Washington National Cathedral. The premier music review website, Allmusic, writes of it: This stunning work incorporates jazz interludes into the hypnotic Responsorial “The Peace of Jerusalem” and “Alleluia,” a particularly challenging section for the choir. The vocal soloists are impressive; tenor Mark Bleeke’s feature “While He Was At Supper” is especially moving. The overall effect of this beautiful work is absolutely stunning; it resists being labeled in any one category, it is simply great music.” Fundamentally optimistic about the human experience, Brubeck had said in a commencement address in 1982: “What is really important in the community, in the worst of times, is often music. It’s the cement for the community that holds it together, and the thing that gives it hope.”

Sadly, neither of these stories can be found in Philip Clark’s just published “biography,” Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time (New York: DaCapo Press, 2020).  Though the cover proclaims this to be “the definitive investigative biography of jazz legend Dave Brubeck,” there is not a single mention of Brubeck’s 1988 trip to Moscow or his conversion to Catholicism. Just how definitive is this biography by Clark? Bizarrely, Brubeck is not even born until page 302.

When I first learned of the existence of this book—on February 19—I purchased it at a Books-a-Million within a few hours of the news. Rather than wait for the cheaper Amazon.com version, I had to have the book immediately. I was thrilled it existed, and I dove right into it. Alas, rarely have I been so disappointed by a book.

When it comes to writing—on a sentence by sentence basis—Clark is outstanding.  According to the dust jacket, he has written for a vast number of music periodicals as well as for the London Guardian and the London Times. There’s no doubting his grammar or style. But when it comes to composing a book of this length, he is. . . to be polite. . . lacking.  It turns out that Clark knew Brubeck relatively well and had interviewed him a number of times in the last twenty years of his life. Though we learn nothing of Brubeck’s Catholicism or his trip to Moscow—both so essential to his life—we do get editorial comments such as

“As the bus breaks for the London border, with the motorway to Brighton stretching ahead, [bassist] Moore falls into earnest conversation with Iola Brubeck. Heads nod remorsefully, then Moore’s grotesque caricature of President George W. Bush’s nervy Texas drawl hits a manic crescendo reminiscent of an operatic made scene.”

Or, this tidbit: 

“As I wrote all these years later, that Brubeck’s accounts of his country’s gravest shame should have such damning relevance to Trump’s America felt unbearably poignant and tragic—time overlaps, but it is also cyclic.”

I am certainly no fan—in any way, shape, or form—of Presidents Bush or Trump, but I very much fail to understand why these things matter in a biography of Dave Brubeck, who was so much better and worthy of so much more than what Clark presents in this book.

Clark is at his best in the book when not writing the biographical parts.  Indeed, Clark excels at explaining Brubeck’s techniques, his influences, and his influence. During parts of the book—especially Clark’s section on Brubeck’s influence on rock and progressive rock—I was riveted.  Clark is also good when it comes to Brubeck’s defying the horrific racialist laws, habits, and customs of much of 1950s and 60s America. Brubeck was not only an optimist in his view of humanity, he was deeply humane in his understanding of the dignity of the human person. He never backed down from what he believed correct, and his actions on race relations are nothing short of heroic in his own lifetime.

If you’re looking for a fan-boy appreciation of Brubeck’s talents and his understandings of race relations, Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time, is a fine outing.  If, however, you’re looking for the “definitive, investigative biography of jazz legend Dave Brubeck” run as far away from this book as possible. One of the greatest talents to come out of 20th-century America, Brubeck deserves so much better.

Until someone actually does the critically hard work of looking closely at Brubeck’s life through his music as well as through his letters and papers and getting into the very bright and endlessly creative soul of Brubeck, no definitive biography yet exists.  The best book on Brubeck remains Fred M. Hall, It’s About Time: The Dave Brubeck Story (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996). It’s an excellent book, and the stories above come from Hall’s work.

Or, just listen to Brubeck’s music. He poured himself into his art—into every note.

Music

In Concert: A Great Orchestra, A Hot Conductor, A Thrilling Night

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Friday, May 2, 2025.

It had been more than 15 years since I had heard the Chicago Symphony Orchestra live – and nearly 25 since I had heard them on their home ground, Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center. So last year, when the CSO announced that young conducting phenomenon Klaus Mäkelä (referenced in my highlights of 2024 post) had accepted the post of Music Director Designate, I decided that a renewed acquaintance with one of the USA’s top orchestras was long overdue.

Orchestra Hall, dating all the way back to 1904, is a unique venue in and of itself: its wide but thin stage and steeply raked balconies make for a intimate (if not always comfortable) concert experience. Renovations in the 1990s added gallery seats above and behind the stage, as well as a suspended shell to soften and deepen a challenging acoustic. So it wasn’t hard to imagine the musicians feeling like they were in a fishbowl as they clambered atop multilevel risers in front of a full house.

But beyond the typical pre-concert buzz, there was a question in the air. By and large, Mäkelä has made his reputation in post-Romantic and 20th-century music — well-regarded recordings of Sibelius and Stravinsky, Chicago guest shots focused on big pieces by Shostakovich and Mahler. Would his take on the core classical repertoire — works the CSO has performed since its start in the 1890s, conducted by everyone from founding conductor Theodore Thomas to previous Music Director Riccardo Muti — measure up?

That question was answered in a flash, as Mäkelä and CSO Artist in Residence Daniil Trifonov whipped up a fresh, appealing reading of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2. None of the overbearing, ponderous sludge that unimaginative historians accuse Brahms of here! Trifonov’s playing was always flowing, supple and strong, with no hints of pounding or cloudy tone; CSO principals Mark Almond (horn) and John Sharp (cello) made the most of their lyrical solo moments with warm tone and deep expressiveness; and the orchestra sounded lithe and limber in the extended opening, energetically playful in Brahms’ scherzo, chastely gorgeous in a delectable Andante, and delightfully bouncy in the closing Allegretto. All the while, Mäkelä was sculpting the overall sound, focusing balances, dynamics and timing for maximum emotional impact. The scattered spontaneous applause after every movement (the grinning conductor and pianist had to restrain themselves before pouncing on the finale) was proof that the music hit home, even before the final ovation and the outsized reaction to Trifonov’s encore (a Chopin prelude lasting less than a minute).

After intermission came a centennial tribute to the CSO’s late Principal Guest Conductor Pierre Boulez (who conducted the orchestra the last time I’d heard them — a dark, lush program of Ravel and Bartok in Ann Arbor, back in 2010). Well executed by brass septet and precisely conducted by Mäkelä, Boulez’s Initiale lived up to its billing — a tart, postmodern appetizer announcing itself pointedly, quickly tying itself into contrapuntal knots, then breaking loose for a final flourish. Complete with a tuba mute (which always makes me smile)!

But it was the last work on the program, Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7, that really showed what Mäkelä and the CSO can accomplish together. The orchestra’s tone was at its richest, its dynamic range wider and its rhythmic flow freer than in the Brahms. Mäkelä threw himself into the piece with greater animation and more sweeping body language — but also with a greater willingness to let the players take the reins, dropping his beat to focus on accents and phrasing for surprisingly long stretches. The powerful resonance of Dvořák’s opening themes and their punchy development, the breadth of feeling in his Andante, the infectious swing of the Scherzo’s cross-rhythms, and the hard-won, dramatic climax — they were all there in vibrant technicolor, fully formed, overflowing with life and vigor. You could tell that Mäkelä dug leading the CSO, and they obviously dug playing with him. And the audience absolutely loved it, leaping to its feet as Makela acknowledged the symphony’s featured musicians, brought the orchestra up for their bow — and modestly pointed to Dvořák’s score as the applause continued.

When he becomes the CSO’s Music Director in the fall of 2027 (while at the same time taking over Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra), Klaus Mäkelä will be 31. Based on last Friday night’s concert, he’s got an amazing head start — both on a lifetime of personal musical growth, and building a potentially astounding rapport with one of the top orchestras in the world. Believe me, I’ll be back to Chicago much sooner next time!

— Rick Krueger

Biography, History

Paul Johnson’s Creators – Praise for Artists of All Kinds

Paul Johnson is my favorite historian (my dear friend, Brad Birzer, is my favorite living historian!). Johnson takes complicated subjects, makes them understandable, and he does it in an entertaining way. He’s British, but he has written a fantastic history of the United States, A History of the American People. Other excellent books of his are The Birth of the Modern: World History 1815 – 1830, and Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties. Creators was written after his book, Intellectuals, received some criticism for focusing too heavily on the hypocrisy of some of history’s most famous and influential intellectuals. As he explained, “I defined an intellectual as someone who thinks ideas are more important than people.” I, personally, appreciated learning about the moral failings of Rousseau, Marx, Ibsen, Sartre, and other thinkers who have been lionized by our intelligentsia. It’s the eternal story: “Do as I say, not as I do.” Anyway, Creators is, on balance, a more positive and inspiring collection of portraits. In it, Johnson gives us brief descriptions of Chaucer, Durer, Shakespeare, J. S. Bach, Turner and Hokusai, Jane Austen, A.W.N. Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain, Tiffany, T.S. Eliot, Balenciaga and Dior, and Picasso and Walt Disney. Throughout these portraits his admiration for these artists’ work shines clearly. Johnson is the master of providing the interesting anecdote that humanizes and makes real his subject. For example, he writes that the composer Wagner
required a beautiful landscape outside his windows, but when he wrote music, the silence had to be absolute and all outside sounds, and sunlight, had to be excluded by heavy curtains of the finest and costliest materials. They had to draw with “a satisfying swish.” The carpets had to be ankle-deep; the sofas enormous; the curtains vast, of silk and satin. The air had to be perfumed with a special scent. The polish must be “radiant.” The heat must have been oppressive, but Wagner required it. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 9). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Johnson praises Chaucer for creating the very idea of English literature. Before him, all politics and creative arts were conducted in French and Latin. He was the first to proudly use English in his poetry, and his portrayals of various classes of people are unparalleled. In my opinion, Creators is worth reading for his chapter on Shakespeare alone. Johnson does a wonderful job explaining how a man with humble beginnings could attain such incredible heights of literary excellence. Interestingly, he makes the case for Shakespeare not being an intellectual. In other words, for Shakespeare, people  were more important than ideas.
He [Shakespeare] rarely allows his opinions open expression, preferring to hint and nudge, to imply and suggest, rather than to state. His gospel, however, is moderation in all things; his taste is for toleration. Like Chaucer, he takes human beings as he finds them, imperfect, insecure, weak and fallible or headstrong and foolish—often desperate—and yet always interesting, often lovable or touching. He has something to say on behalf of all his characters, even the obvious villains, and he speaks from inside them, allowing them to put forward their point of view and give their reasons. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 54). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
I also learned that no one has created as many words and phrases that have entered common use as Shakespeare. Some estimate he coined as many as 6700 new words! Like Harold Bloom, Johnson has nothing but praise for the two Henry IV plays and Hamlet. Johnson’s explication of the psychological and moral dilemmas explored in Hamlet  is fantastic.
It is characteristic of this stupendous drama that the long passages of heroic reflection, which never bore but stimulate, are punctuated by episodes of furious action, the whole thing ending in a swift-moving climax of slaughter. No one can sit through Hamlet and absorb its messages—on human faith and wickedness; on cupidity, malice, vanity, lust; on regeneration and repentance; on love and hate, procrastination, hurry, honesty, and deceit; on loyalty and betrayal, courage, cowardice, indecision, and flaming passion—without being moved, shaken, and deeply disturbed. The play, if read carefully, is likely to induce deep depression—it always does with me—but if well produced and acted, as Shakespeare intended, it is purgative and reassuring, for Hamlet, the confused but essentially benevolent young genius, is immortal, speeding heavenward as “flight of angels sing thee to thy rest.” It is, in its own mysterious and transcendental way, a healthy and restorative work of art, adding to the net sum of human happiness as surely as it adds to our wisdom and understanding of humanity. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 75). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Johnson’s next subject, Johann Sebastian Bach, was a solidly middle class man who was confident in his extraordinary ability to compose music, even if he wasn’t recognized for it during his lifetime.
Bach was by far the most hardworking of the great musicians, taking huge pains with everything he did and working out the most ephemeral scores in their logical and musical totality, everything written down in his fine, firm hand as though his life depended on it—as, in a sense, was true, for if Bach had scamped a musical duty, or performed it with anything less than the perfection he demanded, he clearly could not have lived with himself. It is impossible to find, in any of his scores, time-serving repetitions, shortcuts, carelessness, or even the smallest hint of vulgarity. He served up the highest quality, in performance and composition, day after day, year after year, despite the fact that his employers, as often as not, could not tell the good from the bad or even from the mediocre. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (pp. 82-83). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
It’s almost a miracle that we have as many works of his today to perform, as they were scattered amongst his descendants after he died. If not for the efforts of Mendelssohn to restage Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1827, we might not have had the revival of his music that we enjoy so much today. Johnson uses this event to share another fun anecdote:
Afterward, at Zelter’s house, there was a grand dinner of the Berlin intellectual elite. Frau Derrient whispered to Mendelssohn: “Who is the stupid fellow sitting next to me?” Mendelssohn (behind his napkin): “The stupid fellow next to you is the great philosopher Friedrich Hegel!” Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 93). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The chapter on the artists William Turner and Hokusai is very interesting. Both began drawing from the age of three. Turner was somewhat controversial because of his new and unusual way of painting light, but he ended up one of the most popular and wealthy artists in history. Unfortunately, time and bungling “restorers” have kept us from appreciating his radical use of color. Even his contemporaries could see how his paintings faded not long after he finished them. Hokusai never profited much from his prodigious output, always begging benefactors for money. According to Johnson, he pretty much invented landscape art in Japan. He was quite a character:
There was a restless rootlessness to him, reflected in the fact that he changed his name, or rather the signature on his works, more than fifty times, more often than any other Japanese artist; and in the fact that during his life he lived at ninety- three different addresses. The names he used included Fusenko, meaning “he who does only one thing without being influenced by others”; “The Crazy Old Man of Katsushika”; and “Manji, the Old Man Mad about Drawing.” After he fell into a ditch, as a result of a loud clap of thunder, he signed himself “Thunder” for a time. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 108). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Johnson’s chapter on Jane Austen is the slightest one, not because of any fault of Johnson, but because we know so little of Austen. Her family suppressed most of her personal correspondence, and they tried to make her into a Victorian woman, rather than the Regency one she was. However, according to Johnson, we can glean some personality traits from the letters and reminiscences that do exist and conclude that she was fun-loving young woman, which was the source of her genius:
Laughter was the invariable precursor, in Austen’s life, of creative action—the titter, the laugh, the giggle, or the guffaw was swiftly followed by the inventive thought. Once Austen began to laugh, not with the melodramatic novels she read, but against them, she began to look into herself and say, “I can do better than that.” Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (pp. 130-131). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Pugin and Violett-le-Duc were both architects, the former responsible for the Gothic revival in England. We have Pugin to thank for the beautiful Houses of Parliament in London. The chapter on Victor Hugo is a very interesting one. In it, Johnson poses the question,
That Hugo was phenomenally creative is unarguable: in sheer quantity and often in quality too, he is in the highest class of artists. But he forces one to ask the question: is it possible for someone of high creative gifts to be possessed of mediocre, banal, even low intelligence? Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 156). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Johnson does not have a lot of admiration for Hugo, pointing out how contradictory his political opinions were, depending on what party was in power. He also kept many mistresses, well into his eighties! Mark Twain comes in for more respectful treatment. Johnson posits that his genius was as a storyteller – to truly appreciate his work, we need to hear it “performed”. He also had a knack for making great literature out of almost nothing:
His creativity was often crude and nearly always shameless. But it was huge and genuine, overpowering indeed, a kind of vulgar magic, making something out of nothing, then transforming that mere something into entire books, which in turn hardened into traditions and cultural certitudes. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 171). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
T. S. Eliot was a paradox – very conservative in his personal life, yet revolutionary in his poetry:
Eliot was never once (except on holiday) photographed without a tie, wore three-piece suits on all occasions, kept his hair trimmed, and was the last intellectual on either side of the Atlantic to wear spats. Yet there can be absolutely no doubt that he deliberately marshaled his immense creative powers to shatter the existing mold of poetical form and context, and to create a new orthodoxy born of chaos, incoherence, and dissonance. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 204). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The turning point in Eliot’s career came when he met Ezra Pound, who introduced him to lots of European literary stars and convinced him to emigrate to England. He married Vivian Haighwood, but it doesn’t sound like the relationship was much fun:
From the early days of their marriage they engaged in competitive hypochondria. Both became valetudinarians and were always dosing themselves, complaining of drafts, and comparing symptoms. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 213). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
However, this dismal marriage, coupled with his job at Lloyd’s bank in London, spurred Eliot to create his masterpieces, The Waste Land and Four Quartets. As Johnson puts it, The Waste Land‘s strength is its elusiveness:
The greatest strength and appeal of the poem is that it asks to be interpreted not so much as the poet insists but as the reader wishes. It makes the reader a cocreator. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 219). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Four Quartets solidified Eliot’s position as the leading poet of the twentieth century, even though, in Johnson’s words, “they are not about anything”. What they are is evocative of a nihilistic mood that dominated mid-twentieth century western culture. The appalling meaninglessness and slaughter of WWI that led into WWII left a cultural elite with almost no hope Eliot was their spokesman. I wish I could have been present at the gathering Johnson describes below!
The Four Quartets were much discussed when I was a freshman at Oxford in 1946, and they, too, were still fresh from the presses. I recall a puzzled and inconclusive discussion, after dinner on a foggy November evening, in which C. S. Lewis played the exegete on “Little Gidding,” with a mumbled descant from Professor Tolkien and expostulations from Hugo Dyson, a third don from the English faculty, who repeated at intervals, “It means anything or nothing, probably the latter.” Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 223). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
In his chapter on Picasso and Disney, Johnson praises Picasso for his incredible creativity and canny judgment:
… Picasso became the champion player, and held the title till his death, because he was extraordinarily judicious in getting the proportions of skill and fashion exactly right at any one time. He also had brilliant timing in guessing when the moment had arrived for pushing on to a new fashion. Although his own appetite for novelty was insatiable, he was uncannily adept at deciding exactly how much the vanguard of the art world would take. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 253). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
But he also exposes a very dark side of Picasso; how he abused women and men, stabbed friends in the back, and seemed to have no moral sense.
He would create situations in which one mistress angrily confronted another in his presence, and then both rolled on the floor, biting and scratching. On one occasion Dora Maar and Marie-Thérèse Walter pounded each other with their fists while Picasso, having set up the fight, calmly went on painting. The canvas he was working on was Guernica. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 256). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Walt Disney, on the other hand, comes in for quite a bit of praise. I really enjoyed Johnson’s detailed explanation of just how revolutionary Disney was when it came to combining sound and animation in a film. Practically all animated content we enjoy today owes a debt to Disney. What was his strength as a creator? According to Johnson,
Whereas Picasso tended to dehumanize the women he drew or painted. Disney anthropomorphized his animal subjects; that was the essential source of his power and humor. Johnson, Paul. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney (p. 258). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The final chapter, Metaphors in a Laboratory, addresses the idea of scientific creativity. Johnson argues that through the use of metaphors, scientists are able to communicate their ideas and spur others to innovate. A lot of this chapter rehashes persons and topics he covers in The Birth of the Modern – how Wordsworth and the scientist and inventor Humphrey Gray were great friends and shared ideas with each other, how the engineer Telford transformed the British landscape with canals, roads, and bridges of simplicity and beauty. Creators is a wonderful celebration of one of the greatest human characteristics: the ability to create. Even though some of the creators were not the nicest people who lived (such as Picasso), their works survive to inspire others.
LITERATURE

John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes: Deep Sea Dystopia

The Kraken Wakes (1953) is John Wyndham’s sixth novel and the first to follow his masterpiece, The Day of the Triffids. Like its predecessor, The Kraken Wakes is the story of an apocalyptic event that threatens the survival of humanity. In this case, it isn’t mass blindness and carnivorous, mobile plants, but rather an unseen yet enormously powerful alien presence that makes its home in the deepest sections of our oceans.

Wyndham begins his tale with the two main characters, Mike and Phyllis Watson, watching icebergs in the English Channel slowly drift past them. Wait, what? Icebergs in the English Channel? Yes, and it isn’t until nearly the end of the book that we learn why that’s the case.

The story is told through the eyes of Mike Watson, a scriptwriter and journalist for the EBC (English Broadcasting Corporation). He divides his account into three large sections, Phase One, Phase Two, and Phase Three.

Continued here.

Music, Books, Poetry, Film