These are the best five things I ran into in the month of January. In no particular order
- Animal Collective – Tangerine Reef.
This album came out last year, and I listened to it a few, but this month I decided to listen to it every day. Written in collaboration with Coral Morphologic, Animal Collective and Coral Morphologic also produced a visual film that goes along with the entire album. This is the first album without Panda Bear, and it seems to be a little more mellow than many of the other Animal Collective albums. It still really fits into the discography. This film is nothing if not hypnotizing.
2. Ivan Vladislavic – Flashback Hotel
Preorder: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound
Comes out in April from Archipelago Books.
Vladislavic is a new author to me. I had never heard of him, and he was most definitely a surprise. This collection of short stories, a combination of two previously released collections, is incredible in scope and breadth. The stories range between sort of straight-forward psychological fiction, like “The Prime Minister is Dead”, “The Book Lover” and “The Firedogs” to the magical realism of stories like, “The Box,” where a man grabs the Prime Minister through his television and so now the PM is missing and he has a 6 inch tall version of him running around the house, and “When My Hands Burst Into Flames,” which is just how it sounds. There are some stories that I could not get into but there are more that just blew me away.
3. Lealani – Fantastic Planet (DomeofDoom)
I cannot get through this list without putting Lealani on here, an alien from Fantastic Planet, who has graced us with an interesting, odd album. I love it.
Here is what she says about it: “”As I’m currently 19, I’m still learning from the new experiences I encounter, but my experiences during Fantastic Planet are the roots of me finding out that I’m an “alien” from Fantastic Planet; or in other words, the beginning of me as an artist, a storyteller.” – Lealani
4. Lauren Acampora – The Paper Wasp
Preorder this now: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound
This comes out in June from Grove Atlantic. I know I’ve talked about this the last two posts, but this is really one of those books that needs to be talked about.
Instead of going through all of the details again, I’m going to cannibalize myself a little.
Here’s the review I posted: Review
Here’s a link to the post before this one in which I explain getting in trouble reading The Paper Wasp: Work Troubles
5. The Fyre Fest Documentaries.
Two documentaries came out about the Fyre Fest debacle this month, and both of them are worth watching. Fyre Fraud on Hulu and Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened on Netflix. I watched them back to back, and I think that the Hulu one is best to watch first because, like many others my age, I did not know much about Influencers and FOMO. The Hulu doc kind of walks the viewer through all of this a little better than the Netflix doc. However the Netflix doc seems to be a little more behind the scenes and more about the repercussions on the common workers. Either way the Fyre Fest is one interesting story. I watched the thing unfold on Twitter while it was happening, and I could not wait to watch these. Neither was disappointing.
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