March of the Balloon Animals

Despite my love of hilarity and jovial nature, I don't much care for novelty. And it's hard not to peg Dengue Fever as a novelty act. Or at the very least, an artist so steeped in one particular aesthetic that they are indistinguishable from it. In their case, it was a long-winded schtick - California music nerds, hipped to the fuzzed out sounds of 1960s Cambodia by a series of much-loved 90's bootleg comps, form their own approximation, going so far as to recruit a local Cambodian singer. And for several albums they've done OK with that, drumming up some interest from record store clerks and the people who love them. I saw them once at GAMH, and they seemed like a band I would be more into if I was friends with them. Because if your friends formed a Cambodian fuzz band, that'd be pretty awesome. Doesn't mean I want to pay $18 to see someone else's friends do it.


Recently however, they've begun to transcend that simple classification and are increasingly an interesting band in their own right. They filmed a documentary called "Sleepwalking Through the Mekong" about a trip to Cambodia, recording their collaborations with local legends for a surprisingly excellent soundtrack. It's their best work by leaps and bounds, particularly the title track, which should vie with Amadou & Mariam's "Sabali" and Animal Collective's "Summertime Clothes" for song of the year. It's hard to put my finger on what's better about it, the formula is exactly the same. Maybe they've just been practicing.

Last night they did the latest in an annual series at the SF International Film Festival, performing a live soundtrack to a silent classic, in this case The Lost World. And it was great, with enough reference points from their catalog to provide signposts, and distorted, echoey chugga chugga instros to power dinosaur attacks all night. Should they change their name? Can a band called Dengue Fever just be a great band? Hope so.

Dengue Fever
"March of the Balloon Animals" (mp3)
from "Dengue Fever Presents: Sleepwalking Through the Mekong"
(M80)

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This Machine Kills Fascists

What the hell with the umbrellas with nine foot wingspans. Are you intentionally trying to blind me, or are you so consumed with self-importance that you are unaware that you are stabbing me in the head? My orange normal-sized umbrella is like a molotov cocktail in this sea of deadly black rain reflection. It's not even raining that hard, you assholes, and half of you are wearing dumb boots anyway.

And then there's this dick. I hope it swallows her whole like a giant nylon venus flytrap in reverse.

RED HOOK HAWK

A few weeks ago I was pitterpattering on the computer, diligently filing my unemployment insurance, snooping on ex-girlfriends on facebook and pondering my desolate financial future. My desk (which is really the kitchen table in Danny’s apartment from whom I rent a room and kitchen/office access) faces out into the quasi-wilds of a Brooklyn backyard.

Something stirred off in the far corner of the yard, behind the decrepit hydrangea by the stone wall. I hauled myself away from the table/desk with a put-upon sigh and peered out. What was that, a pigeon? Yes, a pigeon was involved. There was a flap of a grey and white pigeon wing. But looming over the thrashing wing was something much bigger. I couldn’t see through the branches and the brush. A few inches of mottled white underbelly, a long arching brown wing, a flash of light colored underwing, more pigeon fluttering, blood. I must’ve tapped accidentally against the glass (or perhaps the “what the fuck?” wasn’t so under my breath) because it looked me dead in the eye.

A hawk was staring at me with a strip of pigeon meat dangling from its beak. I shifted slowly behind the curtains partially so as not to disturb it but, to be honest, partly because the fucker scared me. There was something accusatory in his glare and the fact that he had meat in his curved sharp beak and a pigeon was taking its final twitches in his talons made me feel like I was invading his backyard which, if you want to get all naturalist about it, I was. Judging me not a threat (hey!) he turned back to his biological duty – disassembling the pigeon piece by piece. I dialed my friend Coleman, a former ornithologist turned environmental lawyer (and beer drinking buddy). I got his voicemail and whispered a (probably inaccurate) description into his voicemail hoping he would call me back to identify the species as though that would somehow legitimize this bizarre event. Next I called my parents who retired from New York years ago to the country so they could see this kind of thing all the time. Suckers! I didn’t have to drive anywhere for a quart of milk AND I had Marty Stouffer’s Wild America LIVE without having to move at all. Again I left a whispered description into an electronic voicemailbox.

With no one to share this with I settled in to watch as, over the course of nearly forty minutes, this hawk meticulously stripped every morsel from the lesser bird. Finally he seemed satisfied with his work, like his job was less to eat the meat and more to clean the bones in some sort of pigeon disassembly plant. He turned, at last, away from me and I saw his rusty-red tail feathers jutting out from under his folded wings. Red tail hawk! Red tail hawk! My sighting now had species specificity and was therefore legit! He gave me one more threatening glare, a little Mafia warning to keep my trap shut about what I’d just seen, extended his wings and flapped off over the buildings, and the B.Q.E. towards Red Hook.

I cautiously slid open the patio door and crept out to the site. The pigeon had been quartered into the exact same parts that you get in a bucket of KFC. The ribcage had been split in two and the narrow ribs picked clean. The pink little feet lay crossed one over the other in a pile of soft down that had been ripped away to allow access. One wing lay fully extended in a beautiful arc. I had taken no pictures, no youtube videos. The only evidence of my witness to this beautiful, bloody act of nature was the pile of down and bones at my feet. I stared at the CSI scene before me. I swept what I could into a doubled plastic bag and put it in the trash can in front of the house with the empty Amy’s Organic Pizza box and Trader Joe’s burrito wrapper, not sure if today was trash day or recycling day. I returned to my kitchen desk, my computer, my pitterpattering, and my unemployment insurance.