The BBC is reporting that Iain Banks died at 59, just two months after announcing he had terminal cancer, and weeks after an update in which he was sounding a tiny bit more optimistic.
A great writer, of both SF and mainstream work, and he will be missed.
I wasn’t really considering a Top 10 Week when I posted yesterday’s Talking Heads list (and I may not do it every day), but I stumbled across this this collection of Criterion Top 10 lists from various luminaries. Among the more interesting are:
Apropos nothing but a stray comment, here’s my ten favorite Talking Heads songs:
Road to Nowhere: Great road music, compulsively listenable, with dark, disturbing lyrical overtones. “There’s a city in my mind/Come along and take that ride/And it’s all right/Baby it’s all right”
Dream Operator: Perhaps their most simple, beautiful, wistful song. “Let go of your life/Grab on to my hand/Here in the clouds/Where we’ll understand.” (The glass harmonica version off the Sounds From True Stories soundtrack is pretty wonderful as well.)
Burning Down the House (live version): I prefer the hard-charging, straight ahead version off Stop Making Sense, but it’s very close, as the spooky, echoey album version has much to recommend it as well. “People on their way to work said, ‘Baby what did you expect?’/Gonna burst into flame, go ahead.”
Heaven (live version): By contrast, the live version of this song is far better than the studio version. Their other wistful, beautiful song (though with far more ironic lyrics). “Heaven/Heaven is a place/A place where nothing/Nothing ever happens.”
The Overload: Dark, heavy and foreboding, with a slow, inescapable baseline and lyrics that bring to mind W. B. Yates’ “The Second Coming.” A song (to my mind) about the end of all things. Compare and contrast with Laurie Anderson’s “Gravity’s Angel.” “A terrible signal…”
Life During Wartime (live version): Another burner. I wonder if combatants in any of the various conflicts going on around the world play this between firefights. “This ain’t no party/This ain’t no disco/This ain’t no foolin around…”
City of Dreams: Talking Heads at their most twangy. I wonder if disc jockeys at country stations ever slip this into the rotation. “We live in the city of dreams/We ride on this highway of fire/If we wake, and find it gone/Please remember this our favorite song.” (“City of Steel,” off the the Sounds From True Stories soundtrack, is even twangier.)
Memories Can’t Wait: A long, deep drink of neurotic paranoia from inside a damaged mind unable to control its thoughts or direction. “Don’t look so disappointed/It isn’t what you hoped for, is it?”
Hey Now: A pure dose of Zydeco-tinged, childlike goofiness. “Buy me a/rubber ball.”
Nothing But Flowers: Byrne’s paean to modern American society, while tweaking radical environmentalists. “I dream of cherry pies, candy bars and chocolate chip cookies!”
Honorable mention: Once in a Lifetime, Nothing But Flowers, Electric Guitar, Psycho Killer (live version), Walk It Down
And this is just the Talking Heads; favorite David Byrne songs would be a separate list.
UK’s Engineer’s deftly tread the boarders of Shoegaze, Dream Pop, and Psychedelia on “Clean Colored Wire.”
Ulrich Schnauss (who seems to be to shoegaze keyboard what Tony Levin is to progressive rock bass) is also part of the current incarnation of the band.
If they were from Australia rather than Sweden, I would think that A Swarm of the Sun was A Beautiful Machine reborn, so close is the very heavy shoegaze sound.
