Cold-blooded women make me sneeze

For lack of better categorization, this blog will go under the heading of...stuff I've been into lately. Reading and music-wise apparently. I would have included movies I've watched recently, but these bullet points are turning into full-blown essays and I need to stop.

• Reading Stephen Greenblatt's first book, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (circa 1980).
  
  About the nature of identity in the Renaissance, connected to performance. Very interesting so far. In other news, Sir Thomas More is way more unpredictable and unclassifiable than anyone would have thought.
  
  (By the way, my novel has something to do with the topic of performance and identity, albeit in a much different way. As it is, I can't get my characters to stop over-philosophizing. They might as well get on a soapbox and say, "Here is what my author is currently thinking about the nature of identity." Reading Stephen Greenblatt does not help this problem any. I realized this today.)
  
  
• Re-reading Richard II for the Shakespeare class I'm teaching. I really love this play, but I have a feeling it's going to be a tough one to get my students excited about; at least, I seem to remember having this problem last time I taught this class. I'm predicting that their version will read something like: "Some random English king (one of the ones no one's ever heard of) is DEPOSED by this traitor Bolingbroke and a lot of courtiers make SPEECHES with frequent overuse of RHYMING COUPLETS. Pointless METAPHORS abound."
  
  
• Listening to:
• Fleet Foxes - self-titled album
  
  
  Mini-review: They are genius. And quite difficult to describe adequately. Which usually indicates genius (Taken to writing fragment sentences for the sake of emphasis? Guilty as charged). Anyway, they are quickly earning their place beside those Very Few bands I like who can in any respect be classified as anything close to "Country," along with Neko Case and...hm. Nope, sorry; all I can think of is Neko Case (I guess Alison Krauss is ok, too, but I don't really listen to her to be honest). But then, both Neko and Foxes are better qualified as "Indie-" or "Alternative-" Country. "Folk" is also acceptable as a non-loaded substitute for "Country." Or, you know, "Indie-folk" if you want to be picky. (This means, of course, that I need to write another blog about how all these terms are essentially meaningless, and taking such categories too seriously is probably a fundamentally poserish activity, even on the part of the innest in-crowd (for example, the editors of Paste)).
  
  Anyways.
  
  They have a certain backwoodsy charm with a gospel-ish feel to it (I'm making up words), though their lyrics have an evocative, obscurely poetic quality, which I love. They make frequent use of harmony; "White Winter Hymnal" starts out a capella with all the band members' voices gradually joining in. However, sometimes their music is just as reminiscent of some kind of Early Music monastic choir...
  
  See, I told you it was hard to describe. And it turns out this review was not-so-mini.
  
  Go here to download "White Winter Hymnal" for free (and legally...I think).
  
  Go here to have a listen to their other songs. I'd recommend "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song," "Meadowlark," and "Your Protector" for starters.
  
  
• The Fratellis - Here We Stand (their second album)
  If I were better at writing about this sort of thing, I would talk about riffs and other esoteric terminology I don't really understand. Otherwise, this is what I've otherwise lovingly termed "Brash Brit-rock" (whatever that means). Heavy on the electric guitar, but with a nice complement of acoustic and piano. A very 60's/Classic rock feel, all told. What they do couldn't really be described as original (think Frank Ferdinand and The Kaiser Chiefs), but what they do, they do really, really well. Probably one of the catchiest bands on the planet, not just in terms of their tunes (which are impossible to get out of your head) but also very creative lyrics.
  
  Ex:
  "Wont you please forgive me/ but you know cold-blooded women make me sneeze."
  (which is HILARIOUS)
  
  "You might be an embarrassment/ but I love the way your clothes are never in style."
  
  
  "Tell Desdemona that I'm ready to leave/ Well, she nothin' much to look at and she's hard to believe"
  (the girl he's singing about is named Desdemona. How great is that?)
  
  "She said, 'Don't you look ridiculous'/ He checked her out meticulously."
  (My friend Joanna is particularly impressed with this one for the rhyming of "ridiculous" and "meticulously")
  
  
  
  I'm too lazy to provide a link. Look them up on Lastfm if you're interested.