Belloc on Chesterton

On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters
Hilaire Belloc (Sheed & Ward, 1940)
84 p.  First reading.

Belloc published this essay several years after the death of his friend G.K. Chesterton.  In it he attempts — if Belloc ever merely attempted anything — to enumerate those special qualities which Chesterton brought to his writings, and to assess his likely place in English-language literature and culture.

It might be a good exercise to begin by asking ourselves how we would assess Chesterton, before looking to see what Belloc has to say.  I suppose it is a debatable point today whether Chesterton has a place — a stable, solid, enduring place — in English letters.  He has his admirers, of course (and a happy band of warriors they are), but mostly he is ignored, especially by those who command the heights of our culture.  This may not have bothered him on the literary front, for he had few pretensions in that direction and loved his penny dreadfuls, but he devoted many pages to the promulgation of arguments, and today those arguments, despite their frequent relevance and insight, are all too rarely heard.

Yet we should not overstate his marginality either.  It is often said today that Chesterton is best known for his Father Brown detective stories.  This claim has the effect of inflating — if it is possible to further inflate Chesterton — the benign and jovial scribbler, while submerging the obstinate and jovial controversialist who so unerringly defended politically incorrect causes.  Interestingly, however, the claim seems to be untrue.  A look at which books people actually have on their shelves at home reveals that his most popular books today are, by a good margin, his phantasmagoric nightmare novel The Man Who Was Thursday, and Orthodoxy, his spiritual autobiography.  His most sustained work of religious argumentation, The Everlasting Man, competes in popularity with Father Brown, and then the long tail begins.  Meanwhile, new books on Chesterton and new volumes in the enormous Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton continue to appear.  He is not going away just yet.

Belloc identifies six special Chestertonian qualities which together define the (presumed) place he has in English literature.

In the first place, he was a national writer.  Chesterton was an Englishman to his bones.  Like Dickens and Johnson, his spirit struck roots and grew in specifically English soil.  “He is a mirror of England,” says Belloc, and “he writes with an English accent”.  His attachment to the English way of life was such that it was, for a time, an obstacle to his conversion to Catholicism, as being something that, since the 16th century at least, has been something foreign to the sensibility of his nation.  Allied to his national spirit is his special relationship to the English language.  His epigrammatic wit found expression through wordplay and rhythm.  Belloc goes so far as to claim that Chesterton cannot be successfully translated into other languages.

The second quality is precision of thought.  This might seem to casual readers of Chesterton an odd note to strike, for Chesterton is notorious for his digressive, diffuse literary style.  Aquinas he is not.  Yet it is true that he had a healthy impatience with ambiguity, and a rousing contempt for relativists and “free-thinkers” who would not take a position or say what they really meant.  I recall one of his epigrams: “The purpose of an open mind, like an open mouth, is to close on something.”  It is undoubtedly true that Chesterton had definite views and sharp insights.  Belloc’s point is a fair one.

Third, Belloc notes “the weapon peculiar to Chesterton’s genius”: his prodigious capacity for analogy, or what Belloc calls “parallelism”. A central element of Chesterton’s method of argumentation is to show the value of an argument, for better or worse, by constructing a parallel argument on another topic.  Belloc says that this ability to construct analogies was not just a literary gift, but something which Chesterton frequently introduced even into ordinary conversation.  I would add that this penchant for analogical reasoning is a consequence of Chesterton’s more basic ability to see connections between things.  He never, it sometimes seems, thought of one thing, but always of a thing in relation to other things. His digressionary tendencies were perhaps a consequence of this manner of thought, but it also, I believe, contributed to his robust good sense, for it is easier to retain one’s balance when one stands not just on one or two legs, but on several.

Next, Belloc points to Chesterton’s eminence as a literary critic. Anyone who hopes to influence public affairs needs, in Belloc’s view, a solid grounding in either history or literature.  Chesterton’s grasp of history, though solid enough, and though generally superior to that of his contemporaries, was not, according to Belloc — himself an historian — sufficiently deep and broad.  Instead, Chesterton had a deep understanding of English literature.  Belloc remarks on his particularly keen insight into Pope, Dryden, Milton, and Shakespeare (anyone who doubts the latter should read Chesterton’s superb essay on A Midsummer Night’s Dream).  Today Chesterton is regarded as one of the finest critics of Dickens.  And, of course, he wrote books on Browning, Stevenson, Shaw, and Chaucer.  He is a very fine literary critic, though under appreciated today.

A long and somewhat testy section of the book is concerned with the fifth of Belloc’s chosen points: Chesterton’s religion.  Certainly Chesterton’s friendly attitude toward religion, his defence of the importance of religion, and, especially, his own conversion to Catholicism distinguished him sharply from the leading literary and intellectual figures of his time.  Belloc takes pains to argue for the centrality of religion to history, and to stress the short-sightedness of his contemporaries who dismiss it.  He particularly wants to emphasize the importance of the Catholic Church, which is “beyond comparison the most important fact not only in European history but in the modern world to-day”, and that because of its claim to address the most fundamental concerns of human life and its claim to universality.  Of its very nature, it lays a claim, or ought to lay a claim, to the attention of everyone.  In any case, in human affairs religion is more important than politics or science or literature, and this Chesterton understood.

Finally, and appropriately, Belloc writes of Chesterton’s leading virtue: charity. It has been said that he had no enemies, for his cheerful and generous heart won the admiration even of his opponents.  This, in my judgement, is one of the most appealing things about Chesterton.  There is much to learn from such a man.

A curious omission from Belloc’s list is the Chestertonian wit, which I consider to be one of his most attractive and distinctive qualities.  True, much of his humour and energy is expressed in wordplay, and so is perhaps subsumed under Belloc’s point about his special relationship to the English language.  But that special relationship was associated by Belloc with Chesterton’s nationalism, and it seems odd to have his wit be an aspect of his love of England.  If I had been Belloc, I’d have given more attention to Chesterton’s good humour.

In the end, Belloc refrains from speculation about Chesterton’s ultimate place in the history of English culture and letters, contenting himself with the observation that a man’s eminence depends at least as much on his audience as on his own achievements.  Time will tell whether we are good enough to appreciate this good man.  In the meantime, Belloc reminds us that Chesterton himself can have relatively little interest in the matter, for, as he writes in the book’s closing sentence, “He is in Heaven.”

Messiah, gone terribly wrong

It is the season of the year when every choir in the world plans to perform Handel’s Messiah.  The quality of these performances varies, of course.  It only takes one person to spoil everything.  Listen to this:

[Hat-tip: Unquiet Thoughts]

Best of the Decade: Popular Songs

In a previous post I wrote about my picks for the best popular music albums of the decade.  Today is devoted to my favourite songs of the decade.  In some cases they are drawn from those favourite records, in some cases not.  I have no idea if these songs received radio airplay and were bona fide commercial hits.  I can only be sure that they were well beloved in my house.

I have tried to put them into some sort of ranking, with the best ones first.  Where possible I link to the music itself so that you, should you be so inclined, can listen.

“The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!” (from Sufjan Stevens — Illinoise [2005]): I cannot get enough of this terrific song.  It’s a miniature pop symphony, moving from a gentle innocence to a joyful alleluia to a poignant lament.  It is a song about childhood and friendship.  If you do decide to click below and listen, don’t give up too soon.  This song cannot be judged without hearing it through to its finish.

“The Modern Leper” (from Frightened Rabbit — The Midnight Organ Fight [2008]): I wrote about this record in my album picks.  “The Modern Leper” is the lead track, and it captures most of the good qualities that I find in the record as a whole, most notably a disarming honesty and plenty of urgent rock ‘n’ roll.  There’s nothing pretentious here, just straightforward music from the heart.  (Be forewarned that there is vulgar language in the first stanza of the song.)

“Intervention” (from Arcade Fire — Neon Bible [2007]): Arcade Fire were critical darlings during this decade, but I must admit that for the most part I just didn’t get it.  There were a few exceptions to that rule, and “Intervention” is one of them.  (Another is their terrific song “Rebellion (Lies)” (listen)).  From the massive opening chord on the organ, “Intervention” goes from strength to strength, building like a tidal wave.

Here is a live performance from the Rock en Seine festival.  It is amazing for me to see them playing before this huge audience; it wasn’t so long ago that I saw them give a concert in somebody’s living room in Montreal.  Anyway, the song begins about 1 minute in. (The studio version is here.)

“Cattle and the Creeping Things” (from The Hold Steady — Separation Sunday [2005]): The record from which this song is taken is an ambitious concept album that only just missed making my “Best Of” list.  It weaves together the stories of a group of down-and-out drug addicts and prostitutes as they try to live another day of their troubled lives.  The band’s singer, Craig Finn, is a talented and sensitive songwriter, and his songs, while honest in their portrayal of the damage these characters do to themselves and one another, is also compassionate and humane.  You get the feeling that these people are loved anyway, and that they are not without hope.  It’s a feeling that seems justified by the album’s closing track in which Holly, a prostitute, “crashed into the Easter Mass / with her hair done up in broken glass” and asked, “Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?“  But the song I love most from the record comes earlier on.  “Cattle and the Creeping Things” is threaded with Biblical allusions, as two of the characters are reading the Bible and finding echoes of the events of sacred history in their own lives on the street.  It’s a great song.  Craig Finn has developed a kind of New York City sprechstimme, the better to get all the words of his rather wordy songs in.

“Down There by the Train” (from Tom Waits — Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards [2006]: I have loved this song since Johnny Cash included it on his 1994 album American Recordings.  We had to wait until 2006 to hear Waits’ own take on it, and it remains a wonderful song — one of his best, I think, and that is saying a lot.  The song moves against the backdrop of the American folk, blues, and gospel traditions, conjuring up memories and shadows, with a few of those inimitable touches that set Waits’ songs apart.  Over the years he has written a few “gospel” songs that were spoiled by a bit of sarcasm or irony thrown in, but I believe that this one can be taken straight.

“Wise Up” (Aimee Mann, from the soundtrack to Magnolia [1999]): I am cheating a bit here, but only a bit.  In the last week of 1999 the film Magnolia premiered at the box office.  It was a film that made unusually effective use of music, and one of the crucial sequences was set to Aimee Mann’s song “Wise Up”.  The song is unavoidably tied up in my mind with that moment in the film, and its context in the film makes it a better song, but I think (I think) it is still a good song without those associations.  Anyway, it has been one of my favourites these past ten years.  The song’s final line is open to various interpretations.  One might consider it a counsel of despair; I believe it conveys real moral wisdom.  Here is the sequence from the film in which the song plays.  I cannot take the time here to explain the situations of all the characters, but suffice it to say that the use of this song at this point in the film is really brilliant:

“Set Out Running” (from Neko Case — Furnace Room Lullaby [2000]): Neko Case wrote a lot of great songs during this decade, but this is the first song I ever heard her sing and it has remained a favourite.   My goodness, what a voice this woman has!  It makes my skin tingle and my hair stand up.  She’s pretty too.

“Bridal Train” (from The Waifs — Bridal Train EP [2004]): I love a good story song, and this is the best one I have heard in a while.  “Bridal Train” tells about a group of Australian women who, having married American soldiers, are embarking by ship to the United States to join their husbands.  It is a tear-jerker, so have a hankie handy if you decide to listen to it.

“Sweetest Waste of Time” (from Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson — Rattlin’ Bones [2008]): Ever since Tammy Wynette and George Jones recorded their classic albums together, the country music duet has been a high-stakes genre.  There have been some great duos over the years: Emmylou Harris with Gram Parsons, and Iris Dement with John Prine come immediately to mind.  In the 2000s I give the palm to Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, whose album of original duets is really excellent.  They sound great together, and they have an ear for the classic country sound.  This is sweet, sweet music to my ears.

“Roots” (from Show of Hands — Witness [2006]): The Chestertonian song of the decade must be this one, from a relatively obscure British group.  It’s a song about loving one’s own land and country, and a lament for the erosion of British culture because of political correctness and mass entertainment.  It’s a simple song, but sincere and effective.

That rounds out my Top 10.  Here are a few runners-up:

• “Keep Your Distance” (From Buddy and Julie Miller [2001]) [listen]
• “The Beauty of the Rain” (From Dar Williams — The Beauty of the Rain [2003]) [listen]
• “Aint’ Talkin’” (From Bob Dylan — Modern Times [2006])
• “American Girls” (From Counting Crows — Hard Candy [2002]) [listen]
• “The Man Comes Around” (From Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around [2002]) [listen]

We don’t like children anyhow

According to Diane Francis in Canada’s own Financial Post this week, the whole world ought to adopt China’s brutal one-child policy.  Damned inconvenient, those messy little kids, leaving their dirty carbon footprints all over the place.  Far better to strap their mothers down, stick a vacuum cleaner up there, and get rid of the little buggers before they have a chance to ruin our lives.  If getting rid of people is the answer to our problems, I respectfully suggest that Diane Francis and the editorial board of the FP lead the way.  We’ll send the little children after them.  Honest.

Interview with René Girard at NRO

This week the French literary critic and anthropologist René Girard is being interviewed at National Review Online.  I don’t quite know what to make of Girard, but he is certainly a very interesting and original thinker.  I first encountered him some years ago through a long set of interviews on CBC Radio’s Ideas.  His thoughts are not easy to summarize briefly; we would have to talk about desire and imitation, cultural violence, scapegoating, sacred order, and apocalypse.  But this interview seems to cover the basic ground fairly well.

The interview is in five parts.  Each part is about six or seven minutes long:

Part 1: Mimetic desire

Part 2: Scapegoating

Part 3: “Christianity destroys mythology”

Part 4: Apocalypse

Part 5: The meaning of Christmas

A few months ago First Things published an essay by Girard: On War and Apocalypse.

Great moments in opera: Handel

If this little series of posts were called “Great operas” I would not be inclined to include Handel.  His operas, like most baroque operas, are long-winded and dramatically lame.  But since the theme is “Great moments in opera”, small-scale glories are enough to raise an opera to our notice, and Handel produced small-scale glories in abundance.

The opera for this week is Rinaldo.  It was the first opera that Handel wrote and produced when he went to London in 1711, and he certainly wanted to make a good impression.  He had no trouble making a big impression: Rinaldo is over 3 hours long.  The story is based on Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, the libretto having been adapted first from the original Italian into English, and then again from English back into Italian.  (London audiences of the time apparently had no appetite for anything but opera in Italian.)   Tasso’s epic, you will recall, recounts the conquest of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, and this is the theme of the opera as well.  Rinaldo is the greatest of the Christian warriors, and, though the contrived and torturous convolutions of the opera’s plot would be impossible to summarize in short compass, it is essentially concerned with Rinaldo’s unhealthy romance with Armida, an Islamic sorceress.  The story is faithful to Tasso’s original insofar as fantasy and magic are central to it.  In the end, the Saracens are conquered and are baptized as Christians.  In other words, a happy ending.

The opera is dotted with lovely arias, as one would expect from Handel.  The lead role was written for a castrato, specimens of which are now all too rare, and so the part is normally sung instead by a soprano or counter-tenor.  (I listened to this recording in which Rinaldo is sung by a soprano, Vivica Genaux.)  A few years ago a film was made about the life of Farinelli, one of the greatest of the castrati, and it included a number of sung arias, including, conveniently enough, two from Rinaldo.  They are “Venti, turbini” (“Tempests, whirlwinds”) and “Lascia ch’io pianga” (“Let me weep”).  They are both sung in the clip below (with the second aria beginning at about 3:10).  Note the strange costuming, which I assume is intended to be authentic to the period.  The voice here, in an attempt to reproduce the unique qualities of the castrato voice, is an electronic amalgam of soprano and counter-tenor.  I apologize for the violence in these scenes; I’d have chosen different ones had it been possible.

Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 2009

I very much like today’s readings from the Divine Office.  Here is a passage from the second reading, taken from a sermon of St. Anselm:

The universe rejoices with new and indefinable loveliness. Not only does it feel the unseen presence of God himself, its Creator, it sees him openly, working and making it holy. These great blessings spring from the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb.

Through the fullness of the grace that was given you, dead things rejoice in their freedom, and those in heaven are glad to be made new. Through the Son who was the glorious fruit of your virgin womb, just souls who died before his life-giving death rejoice as they are freed from captivity, and the angels are glad at the restoration of their shattered domain.

Lady, full and overflowing with grace, all creation receives new life from your abundance. Virgin, blessed above all creatures, through your blessing all creation is blessed, not only creation from its Creator, but the Creator himself has been blessed by creation.

One of the sung texts for today’s liturgy is Tota pulchra es, Maria (though one’s chances of finding a parish that sings it are quite poor).  Here is the music, with an audio link below:

Alleluia!  You are entirely beautiful, Maria, and the stain of original sin is not in you.  Alleluia!

(sung by Stile Antico, from Song of Songs [Harmonia Mundi])

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Jane Austen and Seth Graham-Smith (Quirk, 2009)
319 p. First reading.

It’s a gimmick, but a pretty good one as these things go: collide the conventions of a civilized comedy of manners with those of a blood-soaked horror flick, and enjoy the diverting results. Miss Austen’s illustrious novel has been trimmed down and streamlined to make way for scenes of slaughter of marauding hordes of the undead.  The Bennet girls, though still keen to land handsome husbands, pass the time brandishing swords and honing their hand-to-hand combat skills in the family dojo.  Even venerable old Lady Catherine de Bourgh goes about accompanied by ninjas, and she conceals formidable strength and a will to kill under that matronly gown.  You get the idea.

I read the first quarter of the book with attention, and then began to skim through to see what Grahame-Smith had done with my favourite scenes.  This isn’t laugh-out-loud humour, as least not most of the time.  It will raise your eyebrows and perhaps provoke a grimace.  There’s a definite camp element at play, and the primary effect of the interpolations is to open up an ironic distance between the reader and the story. The main arc of Austen’s original is left largely intact, but of course the charm of the story, which is substantially in the tone, cannot really survive all the abrupt interruptions. The moral centre of Austen’s writing is destroyed utterly. Even so, there is something modestly likable, and very contemporary, about the audacious humour of the book. I would be surprised if a film version is not in the works — ah yes, it is so.

Here is my favourite of Grahame-Smith’s contributions:

“How nicely we are all crammed in,” cried Lydia.  “I am glad I bought my bonnet, if it is only for the fun of having another hatbox!  Well, now let us be quite comfortable and snug, and talk and laugh all the way home.  And in the first place, let us hear what has happened to you all since you went away.  Have you seen any pleasant men?  Have you had any flirting?  I was in great hopes that one of you would have got a husband before you came back.  Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I declare… [She goes on and on in this fashion, which I omit for the sake of brevity.] … We had such a good piece of fun the other day at Colonel Forster’s.  Kitty and me were to spend the day there, and Mrs. Forster promised to have a little dance in the evening; (by the bye, Mrs. Forster and me are such friends!) and so she asked the two Harringtons to come, but Harriet was ill, and so Pen was forced to come by herself –”

Elizabeth presently drew her Katana and cut off Lydia’s head, which fell into the open hatbox.

Atta girl, Lizzy.

Best of the Decade: Popular Music

The year is swiftly drawing to a close, and it is time once again to write about the best music, films, and books that I have had the pleasure to hear, see, or read.  Normally I look back over the previous 12 months, but this year, as we are nearing the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it seems an opportune time to cast a wider net.

I am planning a series of five posts, on popular music records, popular music songs (“hit singles”), classical music, films, and books.  In previous years I have admitted for consideration anything I heard, saw, or read during the year, regardless of when it was originally released or published, but this year, to make things manageable, I will confine myself to things which were actually released or published between 2000 and 2009.

In this first post the topic is popular music.  My initial short list consisted of about 40 albums.  After long hours of re-listening I whittled the list down to 10 stellar records, along with a few runners-up.  I tried ranking the final 10, but the rank order was unstable from one day to the next, so I have settled on a simple chronological list.

Without further ado:

16 Horsepower — Secret South [2000]: It would not be true to say that the music of 16 Horsepower had no antecedents.  Country singers had been shouting about God and the Devil for a long time, but not often with the fervent intensity that the band’s singer, David Eugene Edwards, brought to his songs.  He came from Denver, but he sounded like he’d come out of the woods, down from the hills, and he bore an unwelcome message for our troubled times: repent, every one of you, for the Almighty is near, and He is not tame.  The sonic backdrop for Eugene’s wild-eyed evangel was a swirl of twangy banjos, wheezing accordions, and reeling fiddles, often in minor keys and dark tones.  This unique sound has since been given a label — “Gothic Americana” — and a long parade of bands have lately begun to ape it, but, as is so often the case, the originators do it best.  Of 16 Horsepower’s 5 full-length albums, Secret South is the strongest — indeed, it is terrific from start to finish. In some ways it is mellower than their other work, but the songs have great atmosphere. It includes, in “Praying Arm Lane”, one of my favourite gospel songs of recent memory, as well as two very good cover songs (the traditional “Wayfaring Stranger” and Bob Dylan’s “Nobody ‘Cept You”, another gem from his warehouse of unreleased songs).  This record is not to be missed.

Songs: “Clogger” (listen); “Poor Mouth” (listen); “Praying Arm Lane” (listen)

Leonard Cohen — Ten New Songs [2001]: Everybody knows that Cohen is a great songwriter. The quality of his specifically musical inspiration, not to mention his taste in arrangements, might sometimes justly be in doubt, but when the words are as carefully wrought as his there is something to be said for not letting the music distract too much.  On Ten New Songs the music and the delivery are relaxed, even cool, but this doesn’t prevent the songs from being intense and probing.  There is nothing here to rival the political and cultural critique that we heard on The Future, but somehow this record goes even deeper into the longing and brokenness of the human spirit.  Ultimately it is a beautiful and hopeful collection of songs, his strongest since 1967’s Songs of Leonard Cohen.  It would be difficult to think of higher praise (unless it be that my wife votes this record “Album of the Decade”).

Songs: “A Thousand Kisses Deep” (listen); “Alexandra Leaving” (listen); “The Land of Plenty” (listen)

Gillian Welch – Time (The Revelator) [2001]: Country music from the borderland of sleep.  It’s mellow and ruminative, perhaps sometimes in danger of becoming somnolent, but if you’re in the right mood this is a really terrific record.  The songwriting, which takes a few hallucinogenic tips from Dylan’s playbook, is uniformly strong and evocative.  Though Welch gets top billing this is really a partnership, with her austere voice tastefully but very imaginatively supported by David Rawlings’ intricate guitar playing. I won’t say this record surpasses 1996’s Revival, but it is a near thing.

Songs: “Revelator” (listen); “Everything is Free” (listen); “I Want to Sing that Rock ‘N’ Roll” (listen)

Tom Waits – Alice [2002]: Tom Waits released two records simultaneously in 2002: Alice and Blood Money.  The latter was the noisier and more violent of the two, and I have not returned to it often.  Alice, on the other hand, I have found to be a winsome record, very much worth getting to know.  Apart from the eruption of phlegm that is “Kommienezuspadt” (a song which properly belonged on Blood Money), Waits filled this album with quiet and moody melodies, gently sanded by his graveled voice, and music that sounds like an old, creaky house.  As he is wont to do, he populated the songs with oddball characters whom, it seems, would be more at home in a circus funhouse than in the real world.  In some cases this leads to genuinely disquieting results (“Poor Edward”), but more often, on Alice at least, it is sweetly endearing.  I think this is one of Waits’ best records.

Songs: “Flower’s Grave” (listen); “Poor Edward” (listen); “Fish & Bird” (listen)

Johnny Cash – Unearthed [2003]: Johnny Cash died in the fall of 2003, and we lost one of the truly great figures in American music.  In the decade before his death he had experienced a bona fide late-career renaissance, having made, beginning with American Recordings in 1994, five outstanding records in collaboration with producer Rick Rubin.  Several months after his death Unearthed was released.  It is a 5-disc set of outtakes, alternate versions, new songs, and duets which were recorded during the sessions for his Rubin records.  It is a marvellous collection of songs.  The first disc mainly consists of outtakes from the American Recordings sessions.  Like the rest of that record, it is just Cash and his guitar, singing some great old songs (“Flesh and Blood” and “Dark as a Dungeon” being favourites).  The second disc finds Cash backed up by a full band, singing covers of songs by the likes of Neil Young (“Pocahontas”, “Heart of Gold”), Jimmie Rodgers (“T for Texas”), and Steve Earle (“Devil’s Right Hand”).  The third disc is similar and includes an excellent cover of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” and a duet — a duet, if you can believe it — with Nick Cave.  The fourth disc is the best of the bunch: titled My Mother’s Hymn Book, it has Cash singing a set of old gospel standards like “When the Roll is Called up Yonder”, “Softly and Tenderly”, and “In the Sweet By and By”.  The combination of that tremendous voice with those wonderful songs is something to treasure.  The final disc is a “Best Of” collection of songs culled from the first four Rubin recordings.  (The fifth Rubin record, A Hundred Highways, was released posthumously in 2006.)  By any reasonable measure, this is a major contribution to Cash’s discography, and that makes it a major contribution to popular music.

Songs: “Long Black Veil” (listen); “Redemption Song” (with Joe Strummer) (listen); “I Shall Not Be Moved” (listen)

Sufjan Stevens – Come on, Feel the Illinoise! [2005]: Were I forced to choose an “Album of the Decade” I would probably choose this one.  It’s not perfect, but it is so rich in wonders that I have returned to it again and again with joy.  Sufjan Stevens had released a few indie records before this one, but none of them really indicated what he was capable of.  Illinoise is a pop-orchestral masterpiece, with bleating horns, shimmering flutes, jaunty drums, witty chorus, and Sufjan’s idiosyncratic songs — all of them about the great state of Illinois — holding it all together.   The record’s main flaw is its lack of discipline: it sprawls all over the place, with delicate and finely crafted little songs rubbing up against exuberant circus music and soundscape experiments, and the song titles spilling out uncontrollably, but in the end it is this very surplus of energy that makes it such an enchanting, life-affirming, and joyful record.  It’s a real treat.

Songs: “Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois” (listen); “Casimir Pulaski Day” (listen); “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!” (listen)

Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood [2006]: This decade was a great one for Neko Case.  In addition to an EP and two live albums, she made a string of four excellent records (Furnace Room Lullaby, Blacklisted, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, and Middle Cyclone).  I have had some difficulty deciding which of them to include on this list, but in the end I settled on Fox Confessor.  Case has a lot of things going for her: enigmatic but engaging songwriting, a terrific voice, and good looks.  Her songs have no padding: she gets right to the point, delivers the goods, and then moves on.  At times this can give them a fragmentary feel, their full potential left untapped, but it hardly matters when her inspiration is evidently so fresh and prolific.  I came late in the decade to her music, only in the past year going back and listening to her previous records, and I am very glad that I did.  (Thank you, Nick.)

Songs: “Hold On, Hold On” (listen); “Maybe Sparrow” (listen); “The Needle has Landed” (listen)

Joel Frederiksen – The Elfin Knight: Ballads and Dances [2007]: This is the only record on this list that qualifies as popular music in the strict sense — that is, music of the people.  It is a collection of folk songs and dances from Britain and America, mostly dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  Joel Frederiksen has a resonant and warm bass voice, and he is joined by the singers and instrumentalists of the period group Ensemble Phoenix Munich.  The performances are tasteful and idiomatic, and far better than is typical in this repertoire.  The selection of songs includes some well-known classics (“Barbara Ellen”, “Scarborough Faire”), but also a nice variety of less famous but nonetheless wonderful folk songs (“The Lover’s Tasks”, “Fortune, my foe”), and even a humorous bawdy song (“Watkin’s Ale”).  I don’t know how many times I have played this record during the past three years, but I have probably listened to it more than any other.  It is excellent. (Read more.)

Songs: “Farewell, Lovely Nancy” (listen); “Watkin’s Ale” (listen); “Scarborough Faire” (listen)

Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight [2008]: This was an indie album that became a surprise hit (a critical hit, anyway) for Frightened Rabbit, who hail from Glasgow.  It is an extraordinary record on a few counts.  First is the spontaneity and immediacy of the music making.  These guys had no idea they were making a record that would be heard by a large audience, and they probably didn’t have much money to put into it, but they had some songs and they needed to play them with all their hearts.  They did themselves proud.  They are brash, earnest, and vulnerable, with singer Scott Hutchison’s voice sometimes breaking under the strain, but the result has a rough beauty.  The song lyrics, mostly on (post-)romantic themes, are occasionally flat-footed, and they are laced throughout with obscenities — Frightened Rabbit are Glaswegians, after all — but the songs are unfailingly tuneful and memorable.  On acquaintance, however, the greatest merit of the record becomes evident: it is a portrait of the spiritual desolation visited upon so many of my generation.   Musings about death and nothingness, sex and loneliness, meaninglessness and desperation appear again and again through these songs.  In this respect it resembles Counting Crows’ fine recent album Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, but whereas those songs were written to theme intentionally and artfully, here everything is unselfconscious, and all the better for it.  Listen, and enjoy, but not too much.

Songs: “The Modern Leper” (listen; obscenity warning); “My Backwards Walk” (listen; obscenity warning); “Poke” (listen; obscenity warning)

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes [2008]: Fleet Foxes is another young band to have a hit (a critical hit, anyway) in 2008 with their debut record.  In some respects they are the antidote to Frightened Rabbit.  Their music is simply gorgeous.  The arrangements are spare but not spartan, the songs are plaintive and cryptic, if perhaps a little too homogeneous, and the long and beautiful melodies are juiced up with ravishing vocal harmonies that dazzled me on my first listen, and kept dazzling me each time I returned to them.  Fleet Foxes’ musical touchstone is The Band, as near as I can tell, and their music has that mature, knowing assurance that normally comes only with long experience.  It astonishes me that they are all young men, just starting out.  Fleet Foxes is a great record, and a very promising beginning.

Songs: “He Doesn’t Know Why” (listen); “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” (listen); “Oliver James” (listen)

***

Runners-up:

Sam Phillips – Fan Dance [2001]: A smoky record of tightly written songs that suit Phillips’ dry voice and terse lyrics perfectly.  This is the best of the three very good records she made this decade.  Songs: “Five Colors” (listen); “Taking Pictures” (listen)  [This song includes a wonderful line that always makes me smile: "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be".]

Radiohead - Hail to the Thief [2003]: I am well aware that Radiohead is one of the “important” bands of the decade.  The trouble is that I don’t actually enjoy listening to their music all that much.  I find that on Hail to the Thief their inhuman tendencies are least pronounced. Songs: “2+2=5″ (listen); “I Will” (listen)

The Innocence Mission – Befriended [2003]: This is as far from Radiohead as one can get.  Befriended sounds like it was made in a living room, and the songs are lovely and delicate.  Karen Peris is a distinctive songwriter, and her light-as-a-feather voice is well-suited to this collection of quiet, reflective songs.  Songs: “I Never Knew You From the Sun” (listen); “Tomorrow on the Runway” (listen)

Buddy Miller – Universal United House of Prayer [2004]: A very strong record that mixes country, blues, and gospel.  It includes two of the best cover songs that I heard this decade: Mark Heard’s “Worry Too Much” and Bob Dylan’s “With God on our Side”.   Buddy Miller’s voice is a chief attraction, and his gutsy guitar playing is another.  This might be his best record overall.  Songs: “Shelter Me” (listen); “With God on our Side” (listen)

***

That’s the way “the noughties” sounded to me.  If you have a record that you think deserves to be included among the “Best of the Decade”, I’m all ears.

***

UPDATE:

• Rolling Stone has published their Top 100 Albums of the decade.  If I counted correctly, 5 of my Top 10 were included on their list.  They didn’t do too badly.

God’s Philosophers

James Hannam’s recent book God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science has been on my reading list since it was published.  I haven’t yet had time to get to it, so I perked up when I saw that a long and detailed review had been posted at Armarium Magnum.

Hannam’s book is intended as a corrective to the common belief that medieval Europe was intellectually indigent, hostile to inquiry, and oppressive of proto-scientists.  It introduces us to the work of medieval natural philosophers like Nicholas Oresme, Jean Buridan, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and many others.  I remember being struck by the similarity between Nicholas Oresme’s work on kinematics, for instance, and arguments Galileo used two centuries later, and I naturally suspected that there was a connection.  The general question of the relationship between early modern and late medieval natural philosophy is extremely interesting, and a popular treatment along the lines of Hannam’s book is certainly welcome.

In the academic sphere at least the “Conflict Thesis” of a historical war between science and theology has been long since overturned. It is very odd that so many of my fellow atheists are clinging so desperately to a long-dead position that was only ever upheld by amateur Nineteenth Century polemicists and not the careful research of recent objective peer reviewed historians.

The review is very positive overall, and I now have another incentive to bump this book forward in my reading queue.  Read the whole thing.