In Against the Day, Pynchon’s Icelanders season their ‘meat olaf’ with a violently-hot salsa labeled “Cuidado Cabron!”

I’m such an easy laugh.

Pynchon remains the best example of what a human being can do with launguage, sentence to sentence, and I have a feeling that many of this book’s reviewers may have been too stunned by its invention to consider it for what it is: an alternate history of the United States, and time itself, and science itself.

Call this one Pynchon’s rebuke of reality. Hence the title. Cultural signifiers juggled, manifest destiny perverted, capitalism and other political thought satirized to extremes, physics sent sputtering down false tributaries. And maybe a justification of fiction as … huh: fiction. Made-up shit. That means you, James Frey.

(and yet still, like a shot of rare whiskey, I have to chase Against the Day with the imported Austrian beers of Jonathan Carroll’s White Apples and Glass Soup. Like Angela Carter crossed with Elmore Leonard.)

And cuidado, cabron, Cocorosie’s new album is as exactly awful as Pitchfork predicted. I guess that four song promo Touch and Go sent out a month or so ago wasn’t to prevent album leaks ,but rather to protect the album from being heard before release. It’ll probably still sell, though, their fans being of the coffeeklatch and indie film set.

I hope Paul Duncan’s forthcoming ( or just leaked?) Above the Trees, on Home-Tapes, sells lots, but it won’t, although this Brooklyn-via-Texas resident (#2343) has so much going on for himself I doubt it’ll matter. Here’s to hoping he never cures his OCD. I’m enjoying his prog-country (prog-country? kill me now) and you know what? It’s the strings. The first track has already been everyhwere, but get it from me if you haven’t heard it yet.

Yeah, very Wil Oldham, but 1997-’00 Oldham, with a guitar in that second track that reminds me of Popol Vuh’s infrequent use of the electric. Also sounds Verlaine-mongering, and similar to Wilco’s forthcoming effort of country + noodling. Maybe Nels Cline dropped into Duncan’s Chicago sessions.

Paul Duncan – Red Eagle
Paul Ducnan – High in the Morning (had to remove it. Oops indeed.)