Small Talk 16 - Recommendations
In difficult times, it helps to enjoy a little art. It also helps to create some art of your own. Our mind can be our worst enemy, weaving tangles of worry—so when you train that naughty brain on something interesting and beautiful, it tends to behave better. Small talk benefits from art too. It's easy to talk with friends about the same frustrating topics, and while it feels good in the moment, you don't feel great afterward. Not good small talk. But when you discuss some music or a sculpture or a play with a friend, that's quality small talk. We feel better. That’s because the point of small talk is connection and well-being. I probably should have mentioned that earlier in this series, but now you know.
It's a strange time to be an artist. Especially if your goal is to reach people, which most artists want to do. On one hand, with a few bucks and a little work, you can theoretically reach everyone in the world. That's the promise of the internet and standard media protocols. On the other hand, it's so easy to distribute content now, and there's so much of it, that it's a struggle to get anyone's attention. An artist I like says that people's attention is our most precious resource. These days, it is certainly the most contested. And unfortunately, most people's attention is dominated by bits of content that don't nourish our souls. In the midst of all this noise, artists labor over their craft and release their creations, hoping someone will take the time to appreciate it.
Now, let's say you decide to put down your phone and turn your attention to some nice, enriching art. How do you decide what to read, or listen to, or look at? Probably not from advertising, surprisingly. Probably you choose something based on a recommendation from a friend, someone you trust. A recommendation is an intimate promise—it says, this thing moved me, inspired me, and I know you well enough to guess that you will like it too. It says, I am taking the risk to endorse this thing, enough to propose that you allow it into your busy life.
My favorite recommendations are for art from people we know. The bar is higher, somehow, to endorse something created by a friend or family. People are skeptical, and we are self-conscious, embarrassed. There is the assumption of bias. Well of course we're biased. We've watched these people pour their hearts into their creations—we bind our love for them with their art. So you have to be careful, and selective, recommending these things. But every so often, someone I know creates something that's so wonderful to me, I feel compelled to share it. Here are two that became available recently:
Fence of Perfect Lines
by The Night Painters
This is a meticulously crafted indie rock album, with melodic hooks that linger in your consciousness. The lyrics are clever and sadly beautiful. It's guitar-and-drum-driven rock, but the production is lush and layered, sometimes building to an emotional crescendo. The vocals are full of character, as you'd expect from indie rock, but there are also lovely harmonies on every song. It's not really like anything else I know, but I found myself reminded, at times, of Death Cab for Cutie, Wilco, Nada Surf, maybe REM. In the band's own words, the album is "A collection of eleven songs that explore life's shifting landscape, the push and pull between security and passion, and the question of whether we're truly in control of our own future." Well, that seems worth a few minutes of attention.
The band is led by Al Knox, song writer, who plays guitar and bass, sings lead vocals, and produces. Seth Young is the masterful drummer, co-writer, and sings backing vocals (plus lead vocals on two of the songs). Meg Knox (Al's sister) adds her seraphic harmonies to the mix. If you only listen to a few tracks, I suggest: Fence of Perfect Lines, Feels Real, Pull Me Down, and Electric City. The album is streaming everywhere—just go here.
The Crisis Tapes
by Charlie Simokaitis
The Crisis Tapes is a small edition photobook, published by the prestigious Italian bookmaker TIS. With a single, black-and-white image on each spread, the artist "grapples with his daughter's gradual loss of sight and its reverberant impact on his family's psyche." The book achieves this thematic scope brilliantly—in pictures of buildings, nature, peculiar objects, you have the sense of a world darkening, crumbling, and narrowing in focus. But in all this entropy, you find astonishing beauty. Although Charlie is a professional portrait artist, there are only two images of people in this book, the first and last picture, of his daughter Faye. The thing I love most about his photography is that every picture implies a whole world, with countless stories. There is purpose to his images. Sometimes there is humor. You wonder, What the heck happened here? Every image commands your attention, ignites your imagination, and it's hard to pull away.
Charlie is also something of a music scholar. At his book launch at a gallery in Chicago, he shared that the mood of the book was embodied by the composition The Disintegration Loops. If you page through his book while listening to this piece, it will chill your bones I tell you. You can buy The Crisis Tapes through the TIS books website. It's likely to sell out, in which case you'll have a collector's item, which isn't really the point, but still nice.
I hope you enjoy some art in the weeks to come. One bright side of troubled times is that they foster a lot of incredible art. Possibly yours.
Have a good one,
Kipling Knox
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