Willoughby Tucker I'll Always Love You.
There's a chapter in David Lodge's Art Of Fiction where he highlights a passage in John Updike's Rabbitt Run which focuses on the concept of epiphany. A moment of almost ecstatic clarity where we can be taken out of the humdrum tread of momotonous experience and are transfixed by the uea and sensation divine.
I had a moment that felt not unlike epiphany yesterday. Well OK lets not overstate it. I 'm doing so for effect but hey. Call it writer's license. I heard something I liked very much but momentarily it felt like this too. I walked into the record shop across the road from me after my lesson on the way to the shops. There was a pretty young woman behind the counter that I hadn't seen previously. A weird and affecting track was playing over the soundsystem.
I asked her about it and said how much I liked it. A web of enchantment had accumulated like a bank of smog above a city. The young woman opened up and spoke of her enthusiasm, for Ethel Cain the artist in question. About how this album wasn't typical and that she produced a range of stuff. Ambient. Lyric and mood and narrative driven. About how she waas going to see her soon. Her excitement was tangible.
This is all news to me. Like Lana Del Ray she has gathered traction and attention in recent years by offering a more mythic and romantic narrative experience than the standari. Willloughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You, her latest album moves slowly but resonates powerfully. Why not fill your space with it as you prepare your breakfast.
Pervert:
Hold the front page ! Phone your best friend. This doesn't happen very often. Ethel Cain is set to be Artist of the Year on It Starts With a Birthstone and we're only midway through August. It's only been a week since I sang her praises on the release of Willoughby Tucker I'll Always Love You. . Now I'm back already for a second serving wuth a listening headphones party of my own for her altigether stranger but strangely alluring Perverts from earlier on this year.
Not much happens it must immediately be said but I've been to a Book Club meeting where people were praising 500 page Arnold Bennett borathons to the heavens because nothing was happening there as if something happening was a key factor to enjoyment and emotional investment when delving culturally. I'm sorry, but something has to happen in a 500 page book. . Reader, I had to leave the Book Club.
Recirds though are a different kettle of fish. This is ambience and whispering and the like for ninety minutes if that's your cup of tea. The best records you get out of it what you put in. I found to my delight this truly was my cup of tea. It's thick with Southern atmosphere like a chapter of Faulkner or Carson McCullers.
You even get an occasional song. Personally I found the overall experience calming rather than disturbing. A stillness descended upon me as I made my way from one to two and a couple of hours with a charming cigarette salesman from Chareslroi which he assures me is quite the least attractive town in Belgium . I must make a point of visiting one day.
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