Category: Article

Alice Sebold’s first novel is the great Oprah’s Book Club selection that never was—an accessible, generous, finely observed essay on the question of what the dead want from the living. A 14-year-old girl, Susie Salmon, is raped and murdered at the outset; then commences many years of wandering, grieving, and yearning on both sides of the great divide. It was daring of Sebold to risk the potentially disastrous device of telling the story in the dead girl’s voice, from beyond, but it pays off. By dwelling ostensibly on the dead’s sense of responsibility toward the living, Sebold captures in moving fashion exactly what it is the living owe to the dead: to bear their grief—wait it out, really—and go on living while they can. The book was no doubt written before 9/11, but the vagaries of the publishing cycle have conspired to make it, for the moment anyway, the most potently evocative writing on the subject that we’ve seen.

If this isn’t enough rope for you, you need to seriously rethink what you’re planning to tie up. This 900-page expanded version of 1999’s Collected Mystery Stories gathers 83 short stories spanning the career of mystery master Block. He’s also a prolific novelist, but this tome is the best showcase for Block’s command of style; he does breezy romantic comedy, cold vindictiveness, Hitchcockian irony, and Chandleresque world-weariness and he does them all damn well. As a mystery author, Block gives the lion’s share of his work over to recurring series characters, all of whom make appearances here. Seeing them together shows what a motley crew he’s created. There’s Mephistophelian lawyer Martin Ehrengraf, who goes to any extreme necessary to prove a client’s innocence, especially if they’re guilty. And there’s the far breezier Bernie Rhodenbarr, dashing gentleman thief who steals cash and hearts with a Cary Grant smile. Block’s lasting legacy as a noir author will surely be his rich and melancholy books about alcoholic detective Matt Scudder. But his stories in Rope are inessential curiosities, like deleted scenes in a DVD. (Also see 1986’s When the Sacred Ginmill Closes , still Block’s best novel, or wait for Harrison Ford’s upcoming film of A Walk Among the Tombstones .)

Do you know there are prophets in your midst? Steve Tibbetts is one of the planet’s most inventive electric guitarists, drummers, and tape manipulators—has been for more than 20 years and he makes his home right here in the Twin Cities. We’ve been fans in the wilderness ever since hearing a snippet of Exploded View on Radio K back in the day (1994). That was a stunning collection of overdriven electric guitars woven tightly into a tapestry of traditional tabla and congo drumming. If Hendrix hung out with TVBC, and they did Earl Grey and Ginkgo Biloba all day instead of… well, other drugs that come to mind, this is what might go in your earholes. As the story goes, Tibbetts had a brush with mortality a few years ago when he fell off a ladder and had to have one of his hands rebuilt. Pre-op, he took the opportunity to lay down this new record, full of urgency, big beats, wailing guitars, but also moments of shining ambient serenity. Don’t expect lyrics or anything else remotely linear. These are sound paintings—but emphatically not experiments, which would imply there was something accidental or uncontrolled going on. Tempting to call it New Age Prog Rock—what with his long tenure on the arty German label ECM—but let’s lay off the cheap labels. Just turn off the lights and turn up that stereo you were bragging about 10 years ago. Don’t be afraid to fire up a stick of incense, no one is watching.

If you’re like us, you browse Amazon or Roadrunner, find great CDs to replace your classic vinyl, and suddenly get buyer’s remorse, right before the deed is done. But this is one of those collections that should break our longstanding habit of procrastination. It’s a piece of the secret history of rock ’n’ roll, the smoking gun that connects David Bowie with the Replacements, Led Zep with Spacehog. Forget “Bang A Gong,” that cheap Power Station cover from the mid-80s. This is creepy slick-rock, proto-punk from the humid threshold of the 70s. The fact of the matter is that you really only need Electric Warrior in your collection—the acknowledged T. Rex classic first released in 1971—but since you’ve already got that, and you feel the need to completely immerse yourself in the sick grandeur that is T. Rex, go ahead and tune in, log on, and drop dime.

This could be the most anticipated album of the year among Rakish readers. Let’s refresh our screens on Ms. Mann, shall we? When we last heard from her, she had conquered the world with her brilliant album Bachelor No. 2 — a wonderful, self-produced record that provided the inspiration for (and ultimately the soundtrack to) Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-nominated movie Magnolia . (One of those nominations was for the soundtrack—go, Aimee! Alas, she lost to that wuss Phil Collins, who wrote the soundtrack to Disney’s Tarzan.) This was almost literally a Cinderella story. Mann had, of course, made a name for herself as the rat-tailed singer of “Voices Carry,” in her New Wave band of the 80s, Til Tuesday. But as a solo artist through the 90s, she was poorly managed by a couple of ham-handed major labels, despite releasing two excellent albums. In 1998, she struck out on her own, recorded Bachelor No. 2, and took it directly to the people by selling it on the Web. It was the most success and critical acclaim she’d ever enjoyed, and she deserved it. Now Mann returns a hero, and we are happy to report that she is still in fine form, continuing to write what is universally identified as “sublime pop,” with smart lyrics, lush arrangements, soaring vocals, and all the rest.

Thanks in part to the industry-wide implosion of the alt-rock genre they rode in on, Soul Asylum’s days as platinum rock gods are almost certainly behind them. We get the impression they find this to be a relief: no more snarky stories about Dave Pirner’s hair or celeb girlfriends, no more carping about the lack of a solid-selling followup to “Runaway Train.” Now the lads can just rock out at their own pace. They’ve proven wrong all the doomsayers (us included) who predicted a breakup after their long slide from the limelight. Refusing to leave without a trace, they seem to have settled pretty comfortably into their post-Big Time phase, riding the dinosaur-act circuit of state fairs and chili cook-offs alongside much grayer bands like Journey and Bad Company. This one, fronting the Capital City Days fest in downtown St. Paul, is no exception; Cheap Trick headlines the following night. New songs have been popping up in their set lists, and word is that a follow-up to 1998’s Candy From a Stranger is planned for next year. Earlier this summer Pirner, who now lives in New Orleans, came out with his first solo album, Faces and Names. Featuring high-profile guests like Billy Preston and Chris Whitley, it’s a R&B-flavored break from his past—more soul and less asylum, reminiscent of Run Westy Run’s recent transformation into Iffy. www.capitalcitydays.com, www.soulasylum.com

Most of us around the office have now admitted that our first “Stadium Rock” concert experience took place at the State Fairgrounds. Not as cool as seeing Prince in the Main Room, or the Hüskers at Duffy’s to be sure. But hardly worth being embarrassed about anymore. In fact, the more we think about it the more we realize just how impressive the State Fair lineup is each year, perhaps more by accident than by design. Sure, there’s plenty of behind-the-music roadkill like REO Speedwagon (August 30) or Poison (August 31). But for every KQRS refugee, there’s an MTV superhipster like Alicia Keyes. (August 23. No kidding!) Others on the lineup for 2002 include Bonnie Raitt (August 27), Lyle Lovett (August 27), and Trisha Yearwood (August 24). There’s something reassuring about knowing that nobody is too cool for the State Fair. It’s the great equalizer, innit?

Okay, we’re playing a trick here. Guster actually plays warm-up to John Mayer, the singer/songwriter responsible for “No Such Thing”—an atrocious piece of bland, radio-friendly pablum you probably know as the “I-wanna run-through-the-halls-of-my-high school-and-scream-at-the-top-of-my-lungs” song. We can’t explain this ditty’s popularity, and we won’t hold it against the various local radio stations that insist on keeping it in constant rotation. But dig this: Guster is by far the better offering of this match-up. This acoustic trio from Boston is still touring on the strength of Lost and Gone Forever , a wonderful slice of unpretentious pop released back in 1999. And they’re still drawing comparisons to early R.E.M., though they’re less jangly and precious than their Georgian predecessors. This is a bill filled with nice, modest, all-American white boys playing acoustic guitars and congas, but if you want to hear the music that really matters, you have the luxury of leaving early for ice cream, and never having to find out precisely who is responsible for making John Mayer a rock star.

Sad, scruffy lions held at bay with whips, embarrassed elephants performing pratfalls for a peanut. Let’s face it, old-style circuses seem fairly tawdry these days. Not so with Cirque du Soleil, which breathes new life into the big top by focusing on its dazzling array of human stunt artists—aerial acrobatics and daring trapeze-work, leavened with a bit of mime and clownery, lush costuming and a soundtrack rich on New Age and world beats. This self-conscious reinvention of the circus (one of the troupe’s early shows, in fact, was called “We Reinvent the Circus”) brought the same frenetic energy to the medium that Hong Kong directors brought to the action film. It’s turned out to be potently popular, growing the Quebecois troupe into a world-spanning tumbler’s empire of more than 1,000 people, with seven touring shows running simultaneously. Oh, sure, the shows are not immune to that peculiar French tendency to interject some loopy philosophy into otherwise unpretentious entertainment. “Alegria,” the performance coming our way, has some kind of bizarre theme involving “ancient monarchies evolving into contemporary democracies.” How a stiltwalker will school us on political science isn’t entirely clear, but that won’t take away from the synchronized somersaults and high-speed choreography, which were breathtaking to behold when we caught Soleil’s “Dralion” a few years back. “Alegria” includes an athletic mix of Mongolian contortionists, a flaming-knife juggler, and vaulting trampolinists who combine the best of gymnastics and modern dance. Eat your heart out, P.T. Barnum. 2nd St. S. and 10th Ave. S., (800) 450-1480, $45-$65,

Victor Hugo’s sprawling, tragic novel was an instant sensation when it was first published in 1862, and its star has never really dimmed. It’s been put on film many times, as early as 1909. But its greatest popular success came in the 1980s, when Parisian songwriters Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg decided to break out of the pop-song ghetto and get into musical theater. Les Mis did that in a big way, its sweeping tale of poverty, injustice, and rebellion perfectly suited to grand reinvention on the stage. The story centers on Jean Valjean, sent to prison for stealing a loaf of bread, who escapes and stays on the lam for years, struggling to find peace and redemption. He’s hunted by implacable policeman Javert, who’s heard of forgiveness but thinks the whole concept is a mistake. Meanwhile, Paris’ coffeehouse radicals, street gangs, and desperate poor are getting restless, and the city is about to blow—the French love their revolutions. Critics have often sneered that this is all sentimental hogwash, but Broadway frequently works best when it’s over-the-top melodramatic. And with 40 million people having seen it already, it’s clear that Miserables loves company. Ordway Theater, (651) 224-4222