Wow, five weeks in already. Doesn't feel as if it's been that long. Just think, when I started this series we were fresh off a win over Michigan. Happy MLK day, everyone. Hope you're making the most of your day off (if you have a day off, my poor roommate still has to lug wealthy hotel guests' suitcases into elevators while everyone around him plans a day to the beach). I debated with myself whether to make something of Martin Luther King Jr's holiday in this medley, perhaps making it a special Black History edition, but instead decided to leave that for February and proceed with our regularly scheduled content. Although I should admit, this is something of a primer for next week's International Edition, and some of the song choices reflect that.

Up first we've got a two sonic fists of Pagan fury to crush your eardrums all the way from Mother Russia. This band is called Arkona, and they're my favorite folk metal band since Agalloch sadly broke up. Named after the last Pagan-held fortress in Europe to fall to the crusading Christian armies during the Northern Crusades. First thing to know about Arkona is that all their lyrics are in Russian, except for the case of the magnificent song Na Moey Zemle where Swedish, Latvian, Lithuanian, German, and Dutch are also sung by guest musicians. Another thing to know about them is that their lead singer is a small blonde woman with horrendously powerful pipes, capable of both soaring, shamanistic chants and demonic gutturals that most male growlers couldn't replicate. I learned this the hard way when I saw Arkona in concert in 2015 in Tampa. I stood five feet away from the spot of stage where lead vocalist Masha "Scream" delivered an incredible performance which, combined with braying bagpipes and a blitzkrieg of drums left with short term hearing loss. My ears rang for two weeks straight. The night of the concert, I left Tampa around half past midnight and drove all the way to Miami, arriving home at sometime after 4 AM. This coincided with the orange supermoon, which lent an atmosphere to my long drive back that, combined with the ringing in my ear and my overactive imagination, inspired a poem which I will include further down, after I've shown you the songs.

Without any further ado, this is Liki Bessmertnykh Bogov (Faces of Undying Gods) by Arkona:

Next up, a nice change of tone. Sufjan Stevens is an interesting musician. I'll admit I don't know that much about him, and to this day I only really listen to one of his albums (Come on Feel the Illinoise). What I do know is that at point in his life he decided to embark upon an audacious and ambitious vision of a string of concept albums--50 of them to be exact, one album for each state in this country of ours. How did that go for him? Well, he made albums for Michigan and Illinois, and then gave up. Maybe he never really meant to make all 50, or maybe he began with the purest intentions and then did the math and realized that even if he released two albums a year he'd be doing this for a quarter century. Whatever the case, the music from those two albums is top-notch work. This one is from the better of the two albums, Come on Feel the Illinoise. I give you Sufjan Steven's "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us."

Das Racist! Now there's a name that takes me back to my callow youth. The year was 2011, I had just moved away from my hometown of Niceville to attend classes at FSU. At this time, me and my brothers were fans of the New York-based rap duo (well, trio if you counted their hype man Dap, AKA Dapwell, although his duties extended only to dancing around on stage and helping them smoke weed in their tour bus) Das Racist, composed of Victor Vasquez (Kool AD) and Himanshu Suri (Heems). We never thought we'd get the chance to see them live, but then lo and behold, a tour date in Tallahassee was announced. It was my first live show ever and has a special place in my heart for that reason. It was also the last chance I'd ever get to see Das Racist live, as they broke up about a year later. Also at the show were Danny Brown and Despot, making it a truly excellent night of rap. This music video is a true gem, featuring footage of an actual video game that Das Racist helped create (I've never played it, I've heard it's incredibly difficult to beat). As a sidenote, "Shoplift Irony Beer" is probably the best game objective prompt I've ever seen. Here's "Who's that Brown?" by Das Racist:

So this next inclusion was a matter of deep, spirited debate between the voices in my head. Not whether to include the following artist, but rather which of his songs to trot out. Mohamed Hamaki I'd probably describe as Egypt's version of Justin Timberlake. His music varies between club bangers and soft ballads something like Middle Eastern R&B. I decided to make a compromise and include here one of his bangers, with the promise that in a later edition I'll include one of his ballads. Ahh who am I kidding? He'll crop up more than a few times. Anyway, here's a song from his newest album (Omroh Ya Meghib), "Agmal Youm." You'll notice I'm sure the subtle influences of 70s funk among other things in the overall composition of the sound.

Last up is a song that I wouldn't exactly call overlooked (lots of people know about it) or underplayed (I hear it on the radio rather frequently, especially on classic rock stations), but that reflects a sound that was perhaps underused by its progenitors. One of the great questions for me about the Eagles is why they never used Joe Walsh on vocals more. Nothing bad about Don Henley--he's a rock icon and deserves all the accolades he's ever gotten, and I don't pretend for a second that Walsh could have sung his part of Hotel California half as well--but I do feel that Joe Walsh was underused, and this song I'll play for you now, Pretty Maids all in a Row, is testament to that.

Anyway, here's that poem I mentioned earlier (credit to the Indianola Review, which published it in their second issue): 

 

Driving Back from a Russian Folk-Metal Concert, I think of You, Nabokov

 

Traveling knight-wise, east then south,

across the Florida peninsula in pre-dawn gloom

the stars are witness to my hurtling

toward the biggest and orangest of moons.

I hear you telling me I can do better.

A thick, sopping, juicy tangerine slice?

No, you’re still not impressed.

2:30 AM and I find myself thinking of you,

your capacious mind, vaulted and vari-chambered,

provisioned to bursting

with butterfly wing diagrams,

chess openings, and all the permutations

of Erlkönig translations.

Here you are,

in the passenger seat, also face to face

with moon. My road companions,

the few other east-bound motorists,

they too are face to face with this night.

I ask you if you ever saw such a moon.

Perhaps once as a boy in Siverskaya

such a brimming gold crescent shone down,

nestled in the boughs of a cherry tree

or balanced on the eaves of your father’s dacha,

or perhaps once as an adult

on a nocturnal stroll across Berkeley’s campus

to shake loose stubborn words.

We watch the colors change with the ascent,

from orange to pallid lemon wedge

to argent-white.

            I tell you about the keening

in my ears from the concert’s blast beats,

a persistent cicada-like sibilance;

I tell you that I can look at this moon

and pretend that it isn’t the feedback

of dying cells; of a range of sound never

to be heard again; that rather

it’s the sound of moonlight falling;

washing over my windshield,

rolling down the tread of my tires.

The sentiment pleases you,

doddering synthesiaist that you are.

            Picture you with me at the show,

covering your ears, stumbling and bumbling

in your tweed through the moshpit,

absorbing elbows with your gut

and losing the flower from your lapel.

As the leather-hooded shamanness on the stage

growls praise to pagan gods

over the blast of drums and braying bagpipes,

you tug my elbow, and try to tell me:

“It only half recoups in spectacle

all what it cedes in sophistication.”

and I say, “Yeah, is it great isn’t it?” 

            Now you are with me in the gas station,

stooping over an oblong slick of gasoline,

wondering why I imagined you with sight and sound

but not with working olfactory functions;

how you miss the heady fumes of petrol;

how you wish to wrinkle your nose one more time.

You know this will end soon,

that I will stop thinking of you

and reshelf you with other nothingness,

but for now at least you can point

to the puddle of gasoline,

and note how it’s become a portal

to the night.