Fleet Foxes

Artist: Fleet Foxes
Album: Fleet Foxes
Label: Sub Pop
Release date: June 3, 2008
Genre: Folk rock

Any music critic will tell you it takes something, usually unquantifiable, for a band to stand out among the deluge of new releases that come out every week. An odd album name, too-clever lyrics, nudity in the cover art — sometimes just being associated with another act is enough (what else sets Chris Walla apart but his resume?) But when the sheer power of an album bowls you over, when it makes you stop what you’re doing, minimize your chat windows, close your eyes and just listen, that’s something rare. And the Fleet Foxes wield that power.

The first song, “Sun It Rises,” opens with some twangy a capella about a “red squirrel in the morning, red squirrel in the evening” and you think maybe you’ve slipped in the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack by mistake. A minute and a half in, though, and the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young harmonies hook you. Then comes “White Winter Hymnal,” which, being the masterpiece that it is, 1) is too short at 2:27 and 2) you should try to enjoy before it gets picked up and run into the ground by a coffee commercial.

The Fleet Foxes are a quintet from Seattle but could feasibly be from a backwoods town at the foot of any mountain east of the Mississippi. The ethereal nature themes are as evocative and colorful as anything by Wallace Stevens, and the texture of Robin Pecknold’s voice brings the woodland creatures, trees, sunshine and snow to life in such a way that you want to know everything about that squirrel, and you inexplicably invest yourself in its hopes and dreams.

Not rockin’ enough to be “rock” but too intense to be “folk,” the Fleet Foxes let their voices do most of the work, with some layered guitar and tambourine for help. But even for its simplicity, it’s an astonishingly complex work for a debut. Let’s just hope the same craftsmanship can be applied to subsequent albums.

My heart is shaped like a tomato…

When I was asked to start writing about my gardening escapades I felt some real insecurity. I’m not a writer, in fact I told Katie (the editor-in-chief) that I would preface my first entry with my favorite saying about myself;

“I can’t spell, I can’t grammerate, and I make up my own words”

That pretty much defines who I am, even when it doesn’t involve writing.

Since I’m not a writer I was immediately plagued with the thought of where to start, what is the most appropriate way to jump into this huge topic, what should I talk about first? So I figured there is no better place to start than where it all started, with my father.

I grew up in the suburbs where all the houses looked the same. Within that suburban landscape was my home, a home that looked just like all the others, a home that sat on a small piece of land just like every other neighbor within arm’s reach. The only thing that set us apart from all of our neighbors was that the small piece of land that our nondescript house resided on didn’t go to waste. Growing up with a person like my father probably set me up for my interest in gardening and whole foods. When my mother said that she needed a tomato, she ran out back, not to the grocery store.

My father has grown and still grows most of his produce on a piece of land that isn’t even measured in acreage but in square feet, and yet there is still room to let my dog run on weeknight visits and plenty of lawn left to mow. With proper planning and some patience, and of course years of experience, my father has grown a long list of things that we have either eaten, tried to eat, or looked at with questioning glances. As a child and young adult I had the luxury of knowing exactly where most of my produce came from.

When I finished high school I ended up moving to Orlando Florida with my boyfriend (now my husband) to attend college. This move would prove to be a rude awakening when it came to my food culture. I grew up picking tomatoes off the vine; I now found myself staring into the pale red flesh of a rock hard “tomato” under the florescent lights of an Albertson’s Grocery store, struggling with the fact that I was about to pay a ridiculous amount of money for something that I wasn’t even sure was edible. Even worse, there were people buying those tomatoes that had no clue what that tomato should be.

I have a big place in my heart for a good tomato, so please don’t hold it against me if I focus on that. There were other atrocities as well, grapes that were all brown and soft, squash that tasted like cardboard boxes sprinkled with brown sugar, onions that smelled like onions but tasted like nothing, green beans that were soggy and limp; this list could go on for another page if I let it. But the point is that I was staring into the face of what the large part of America thought was a tomato. Little did they know what they were holding in their hands wasn’t even close.

Like most college students, I didn’t have an excess of money and I was living in an apartment with nothing nearby that resembled grass. I honestly had no real knowledge of gardening, whether I had the space or not. I spent about 4 years living in Florida, eating like most of the United States, processed foods, milk from who knows where, and produce from Mexico that has been cross bred for travel endurance, not for flavor or nutritional value. This type of eating took its toll on me. I started having the worst case of acne I could have ever imagined, my cheeks actually hurt if I smiled at times, that’s how crazy my face got! I gained about 60lbs when I moved away from home; I instantly had stomach problems, and the fact that my stomach wasn’t fitting into my pants was the easy one to deal with. Needless to say, this switch to mainstream produce and boxed foods had some negative effects on my body, my mind, and my self esteem.

After living in Florida for about 2 years longer then I would have liked, my boyfriend and I moved back to Maryland, where I had grown up, where we had met and fell in love, and where my body liked to be. Upon moving back, Justin and I were about 2 months away from our wedding. We were hoping to buy a home, and my parents were generous enough to allow us to move in with them while we prepared for these huge changes. I was instantly back into the safe arms of my mother’s cooking and my father’s vegetables. My skin was slowly healing, with a little help from Proactiv, my weight was slowly dropping, and I mean slowly, and my mood was stable (aside from wedding planning and home buying). I was finally seeing a glimmer of sunshine in the distance of what had been a 4 year rain storm. I was having the realization that you most certainly are what you eat. I consciously saw these changes in myself and realized that I was never going to do to my body what I had done to it in Florida.

While we were house hunting Justin insisted on having some room to move, he wanted some land, God Bless him! He also eventually admitted that he wanted to be able to pee outside? (That question mark is appropriately placed, I grammerated that on purpose.) Justin grew up in military bases all over Europe and eventually settled in Florida for his adolescence. Moving away from Florida when I was finished with school was pretty hard on him, but he was a complete gem about moving back to Maryland. So I refrained from arguing with him or talking to him about how long it was going to take him to mow the lawn. If my new husband wanted some land, he was getting some land, and honestly rural settings pull on my heart strings. We eventually purchased a farm house that was built in 1870 set on a piece of land that is a little under 1 acre. Now that’s not a lot of land compared to most farm standards nowadays, but in comparison to what he and I both grew up with, this was a large chunk of God’s country.

We have now lived in our house for about 2 years. Last year was a failed attempt at creating a successful garden, due mostly to me not being patient and improper plant locations (those need sunlight to grow, did you know?).

So when I was asked to write about my gardening I was completely excited, because this year is my first real attempt at a garden that has been planned. So I will be documenting my steps along the way. I’ll post pictures and things that I learn, as well as some insight that my father may provide since he’s helping me this time around. Although I have a large plot of land for gardening, I beg you to keep in mind that my father has done much more with much less.

Issue # 2, 18-24 May 2008

Show: The Big Bang Theory
Episode: “The Tangerine Factor” (1×17)
You Can Watch It: Mondays at 8pm on CBS

The first season of the brilliant half-hour comedy The Big Bang Theory ended Monday night with—ah, I hate to say it, but…a big bang. All season long, Leonard has been pining away for his new across-the-hall neighbor Penny, desperately wanting her to notice him for more than just the geeky company he keeps. But Penny, up until this episode anyway, has been keeping busy with a stream of hunky-yet-dumb types. Until one of them uses their sex life as material for his blog. Penny blows a gasket in the middle of Leonard and Sheldon’s apartment. While Wolowitz heads to the nearest laptop to track down the blog and Koothrappali scores with the now ex-boyfriend’s iPod Penny smashed in the street (“I’m going to sell it on eBay as ‘slightly used’!”), Penny retreats to her own apartment to do some serious wallowing. Continue reading »

Mates of State

Artist: Mates of State
Album: Re-Arrange Us
Label: Barsuk
Release date: May 20, 2008
Genre: Pop rock

There are many bands that try to outdo themselves with every new album. Likewise, there are many critics who bemoan that a band falls short of expectations or entrenches itself in a well-worn musical rut when a new release doesn’t appear to pole-vault over every project it’s done up to that point. But the Mates of State are not in the former category, nor am I in the latter.

Re-Arrange Us doesn’t break new ground; it’s familiar; it’s more laid-back; and maybe it even wanders into twee territory at times. But what’s wrong with that? The Mates don’t write bad songs, and the edgy blend of husband-and-wife duo Kori Gardner’s and Jason Hammel’s voices never gets old. For fans, it’s comforting and a minor thrill to hear new material, and for newcomers, there’s plenty to be excited about (especially if you like the New Pornographers).

The biggest difference fans will notice is the absence of the electric organ, which Gardner has replaced with a regular piano. The overall sound is synth-happy enough, but the noticeable lack of the Hammond B-3 pounding in the background means the creation of songs that tread more lightly, like “My Only Offer,” a swift but serious foray into the land of grown-up decision-making. The highlight might be “Now,” a cosmic bubble bath where adult concerns find resolution in a temper tantrum.

The themes of childishness and maturing are natural, considering the pair recently experienced the birth of their second daughter. But trading in atonality for sweetness and staccato for slickness doesn’t mean the end or even a low point for the Mates. For an indie-rock staple on their fifth release, they’re still going strong.

Dear Readers:

I’m one of those people who doesn’t know when to stop. I’m in dissertation territory of my master’s degree now, and about two months ago, faced with the prospect of having some free time when the semester was over, I decided, ‘Hey, starting a magazine sounds like a good plan!’

Well, it was. But MAN, no one ever tells you how hard it is to start a magazine. I imagine that’s because not many people are certifiably out of their minds. But seriously. I knew this would be a challenge, I just had no idea of the scope of it. New things that need attention pop up literally every five minutes. I’m an organized person, but I’m finding that even my usually very tidy brain can’t keep up.

This has been an exercise in patience with myself. I have to keep reminding myself that things don’t have to be perfect to work. Not at first, anyway. And I’ve got some seriously awesome people working on Lucy with me. If it wasn’t for Sara, this magazine wouldn’t even have a name, let alone content. And Lindsay has been my second set of eyes on the design front. All the other writers, contributors and editors have really stepped up and done a lot of work for free, just because they wanted to. This is nothing short of amazing to me. I never imagined so many people would be interested in starting a little magazine.

I figure a letter from the editor is supposed to be some sort of insight into life or writing or something like that, but that’s not what you’re going to get here. Maybe next month. At this point, I’m furiously pounding this out right before emailing everyone to say we’ve officially gone live. I’ve spent the past 48 hours doing bug fixes, editing photos, and inputting various codes and snippets of text to get this thing ready for the public. I want this to look good. Not just for me, but for the people who gave up their time to write and edit.

When I started thinking about this project, I figured it would be a great way for me to stay in touch with my friends back home, and it has been. I live in Scotland now because it’s where I love to be, but I’m awful at keeping up on emails and correspondence in general. Lucy has made me pay attention to my inbox like never before. I’ve had Skype conferences and Google chat conversations that have been almost ongoing. And it’s fantastic.

Moving to another country so soon after leaving college was what I wanted, but it was a big strain on my personal relationships. Being so far away from people can be extremely alienating, regardless of the technology that connects us all. With Lucy, I found something that excited the people I wanted to stay in touch with most. My hope is that it will excite readers just as much. There aren’t enough honest voices in women’s publications, and there’s no excuse for us to be stuck with magazines that are a bit of fluff when we have the internet to do and say whatever we want for free.

I hope you’ll enjoy Lucy as much as I’ve enjoyed creating it with all of these excellent people, and I hope you’ll tell us what you like about it and what we can add or make better.

Thanks for reading,

Kate

Issue #1, 11-17 May 2008

Show: Brothers & Sisters
Episode: “Prior Commitments” (2×16)
You Can Watch It: Sundays at 10pm on ABC

The second season of Brothers & Sisters closed with a boom—a baby boom. Saul’s outing of himself and the Kevin/Scotty wedding were both completely overshadowed by the news of even more WWIs (William Walker Infidelities). It seems as though our not-so-dearly departed William had not one, but two mistresses (at least). While Rebecca found out three episodes ago that she is not his lovechild after all (“Double Negative,” 2×14), Kevin ditched his new groom on their wedding night to help Sarah put together clues surrounding that damn photo of the mystery baby. It seems William had a son named Ryan, and now Sarah thinks that finding him will be the legal loophole she was looking for to get Holly out of Ojai’s business literally and forever. Continue reading »