Isolation: Day 157

I love EVERY song on Hangman's Noose, The Thirsty Crows' debut album on Batcave Records (order HERE). But after living with it almost two years now, I have to say, I think this is my favorite song on the album.

Although that may change again. The whole thing is just so damn great.

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I've been meaning to post this trailer for Netflix's upcoming The Devil All the Time. I never made it around to reading Donald Ray Pollock's 2011 novel of the same name, but it's been on my radar for a while (so I have no excuse other than the to-read list is large enough to put that island of plastic refuse in the Pacific look like it's no bigger than a bottle cap).

The movie adaptation, directed by Antonio Campos and starring, well, pretty much everybody, looks riveting and moody. The trailer oozes Southern Gothic suspense, and Robert Pattinson looks downright foreboding in his role as what appears to be a charlatan preacher. Mr. Pattinson really has turned out to be quite an actor.

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Playlist:

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose

Santogold - Eponymous

Portico - Living Fields

The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once

Atrium Carceri - Kapnobatai

Le Butcherettes - A Raw Youth

The Cramps - RockinnReelinInAucklandNewZealandXXX

The Cure - Pornography

Converge - The Dusk in Us

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - Ancestral Recall (pre-release single)

Thou - Summit

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Card:

to my original Thoth deck, where I find the Princess of Disks waiting for me. My day may be a dragging, uphill trek through mundane, everyday tasks.

One aspect of this card that always strikes me is the way the rock outcropping the Princess stands behind resembles both an altar - for tribute and focus - as well as a goat turning to look behind it. Also, the branches from the trees in the immediate background look not just they belong to the forest, but also to the the Princess and her altar-goat, too. This populates the card with nothing but Earth-bound textures, a key tip-off that this is one of the purest cards in the suite of Disks, from which not a lot of emotion, logic, or Will creeps through, suggesting labor. Which is exactly where I'm at in my process of re-entering the world of Kim and Jessie.

2019: May 6th The Thirsty Crows - Anchors Up

I have not talked enough about The Thirsty Crows new album in these pages. Hangman's Noose, available from Batcave Records, is easily going to slip into my top five albums of the year. Over the last week or so, it has become one of those records I put on and end up listening to three or four times in a row; at fourteen songs/thirty-nine minutes, it's a perfect amount and yet not quite enough, so that by the time I reach the cover of Dramarama's Anything, Anything that finishes out the album, I'm ready for another full go-through. There's something epic about the way these guys approach Rockabilly; there's some great moments where the band members' love of metal comes through, and it blends perfectly with the 'billy aesthetic, so we get something both classic and refreshing. The mark of a great record, to be sure.

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I recently interrupted my read of Alan Campbell's The Art of Hunting to act as an HWA colleague's first reader on his debut novel from Cemetery Dance. I'll post more about that once the release is officially announced, but in the meantime, since finishing that book, I jumped back into the second installment of Alan Campbell's Ghostdigger Chronicles, and just like that, I've fallen in head over heels again.

I can't recommend these books enough; people who know my tastes in fantasy fiction know I have little tolerance for 'High Fantasy.' But Campbell's Gravedigger books take one of the major tropes of High Fantasy, the inclusion of Dragons, and ports it into a truly fascinating world. A world where an ancient, almost extinct and now imprisoned race of cosmic sorcerers long ago tainted the Oceans with a baffling poisonous agent known only as Brine, making it toxic to most life. Humans who are exposed to Brine stiffen and crack like stone; full submersion - 'the drowned' - stay alive indefinitely, but change in strange and horrifying ways. And the sea life mutate horribly as well, only coming to the surface fleetingly, so that all the new forms are not necessarily known or understood, enormous boogey men of the depths. Oh, and the dragons, those are humans the Entropic Sorcerers long ago twisted into these massive new forms. And they're all insane, as you would be after going through such a thing.

I'm really not giving you much about the books, but it would be very hard for me to do these novels justice in only a few short words. All I can say is The Art of Hunting is turning out to be thrilling, and insanely more imaginative than the first volume, Sea of Ghosts. I know a lot of other folks out there that have similar tastes to my own - and those who do like High Fantasy - would probably all love these books.

There's an Amazon Link to buy these HERE. However, they're out of print and pretty expensive, so if you need an easier option, try HERE.

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Playlist from 5/05:

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose
White Zombie - Astro Creep 2000
James Brown - Black Cesar OST

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Card of the day:

Moving forward. Which I am, by leaving two stories somewhat hanging and going full hilt on Ciazarn. So that feels good, to get validation from the cards.

2019: January 6th

First available track from The Thirsty Crows' new album Hangman's Noose. My buddy Chris Saunders from The Horror Vision and Drinking with Comics is the Upright Bass player, and set me up with an advance copy of the album. It's fantastic. Read my review HERE on Joup, and pre-order what sounds to me like the first great album of 2019 from Batcave Records HERE.

Playlist from 1/05:

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
The Teardrop Explodes - Kilimanjaro
Tamaryn - The Waves
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes
Nick Lowe - Jesus of Cool
Henry Mancini - Charade OST
Steely Dan - Aja
Billy Joel - The Stranger
James Brown Presents - Funky People Part 2
Afghan Whigs - Gentlemen

Card of the day:

Honing emotion with earthly concerns. To me, the cards still seem to be talking about saving money. Of course, if you've been reading these pages long enough, you'll notice I use my interpretations to support whatever is the issue of the moment, i.e. the way every pull for most of last year pertained to finishing the book. The book's now almost done (will today be the day? There'll still be editing, but to type the words "The End"...), and money is on my mind now, because in order to actually save it I will have to be 'full hilt,' so to speak. Frivolous spending is an emotional thing for me; the things I buy are movies, comics, books, records. Not buying them is not easy, but I apply my Earthly ideals and remember that while short term spending feels great, long term will be a longer lasting kind of joy.