The Constantines: "Shine a Light." This, my friends, is grit; this is power; this rock and soul at its most vital; this is music that invites you in and then kicks you in the face. Many reviewers have already done a great deal of name-dropping, and whether you like that kind of thing, find it useful or not - believe me, you can feel the influences. At the same time, you know that the Constantines aren't ripping off any of the bands or singers that you hear in their music - this record is both an homage and a new creation.
On tracks like (my favorite) "Insectivora," when the lead is growling about "learning to survive on earthworms and houseflies"; or in… Read more
Along with the rest of the civilized world, my wandering memories often lead me back to two of my favorite childhood movies, "The Neverending Story" and "The Last Unicorn." Practically all I could remember of the latter was some skull yelling "Unicorn! Uuuunicorn!" That image and that voice have left a lingering discomfort in the back of my mind for years. A while back, I found a little time to investigate Michael Ende's novel, "The Neverending Story," and just recently, I managed to come across a copy of "The Last Unicorn," and I couldn't help but read it. In both cases, these novels have more than repayed my childhood memories, giving my adult mind philosophical and literary substance… Read more
Honoré de Balzac's 1834 novel, "Le Père Goriot," is a novel of strange and fascinating power. As the doorway into his interconnected cycle, La Comédie Humaine, it presents as much welcome to interested readers as Dante's fateful "abandon all hope..." entrance to Hell in the Divine Comedy. "Le Père Goriot" gives us a fallen world, driven by self-interest, where all ties of genuine human feeling seem to be relegated to a no longer existent past, or to the rarely-glimpsed pastoral countryside. Balzac presents the stories of Eugène de Rastignac - a young law student from the southern provinces, Jean-Joachim Goriot - a former pasta merchant who gave all he… Read more
