Matthue's David's Music Poll

David Levithan is my occasional editor and sometimes back-and-forth fan (I love his stuff, he says he loves mine, which I'm pretty okay with trusting him on). He co-wrote Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which you've probably seen, too. Also -- much less well-known than his film work -- he runs this funny yearly blog in which he asks people to list their favorite albums of the year. Here's what I came up with.

(You know how the music that you're listening to influences what you're writing? I'm pretty sure it works the other way, too. Ordinarily I'd choose something happy and poppy, like Mista Cookie Jar, but I'm working on this story that's dark and moody and angsty. And so:

Most essential album
Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
I'm not even from the suburbs. I've never lived there and have no way, save a few memories of reading The Outsiders, to verify whether it really is this bleak and beautiful. But this album is.

Other essential albums
Nikki Minaj, Barbie World (or any other non-Pink Friday mixtape)
The Roots, How I Got Over
Regina Spektor, Live in London
Kim Boekbinder, Impossible Girl
Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
They Might Be Giants, Here Comes Science

Best moment of music:
Nicki Minaj switches between four different personas and about seven completely different vocal styles in under a minute during her guest appearance on Kanye's "Twisted Dark Fantasy." There are so many distinctive styles of genius in that moment, I can't even begin to fathom it. I think it's influenced my whole best-of list.

Best album of 2010 that wasn't actually in 2010: The Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack. Overflow from last year. Only realized it was awesome this year.

Best new album of 2010, according to my 3-year-old: The B-52's, Cosmic Thing. It's a new discovery if you were negative 20 years old when it came out.

Zealots and Bullies

So right now I'm on vacation in Chicago. Weird to do a trip where we're just visiting people and not Having Meetings or Running To Do Insanely Complicated Things In An Unreasonably Short Amount of Time or something of that sort. But before I turn my computer off and vacate, I just needed to share these two little parting gifts:

The Jewish Press, which is the biggest Orthodox paper in New York and which all my Hasidic Cousins actually read, wrote an article about art in the Orthodox world. More specifically:

A nascent community of religious artists - including the Orthodox African-American hip-hop musician Y-Love, poet Matthue Roth, novelist Tova Mirvis, and the novelist and playwright Naomi Ragen - are all working to create a more art-friendly and embracing religious model.

It is so, so unimaginably cool to be cited as an example of how people can be Orthodox and artists and how it doesn't have to be some big religious crisis. This is my favorite part of the article, though -- apparently, before Yeshiva University introduced its business school, everyone thought it was a crazy idea:

In 1977, a fake ad in Yeshiva University's yearbook made fun of the idea of a business school at the university. The mock ad promised that a school of business "will be opening its doors to all students who cannot cope with liberal arts."

The rest is at the link.


And the Scholastic blog came out with a post about bullying, and how to deal with bullying, and what to do about it. And that, no surprise, one of the best ways to cope and not just be damaged by it is to read about it. They suggest a bunch of resources, and one of the recommended titles is 

Losers by Matthue Roth: This off-the-wall novel introduces readers to Jupiter—a Russian immigrant learning to deal with high-school life in America. With dead-on deadpan humor, Matthue Roth makes everything illuminated about American teen life—like Borat as directed by John Hughes.

Okay. Now I've got some Sears Tower to climb. Shabbos and out.

Na Nach Nachman Punks

I kind of love this video, but I'm not sure how I feel about it morally. It's the Moshiach Oi! guys (your favorite Hasidic punk-rock band and mine) rocking out and sticking Na Nach stickers to public buildings, signs, and a car.



On one hand, the song is great -- if you like loud, raucous, energetic punk music, that is. And it's all structured around the mantra Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me'Uman, which, according to Breslov Hasidic folklore, will make depression fade away. On the other, it is, uh, vandalizing public and private property. I'm not necessarily opposed to it on a personal level (I used to be a street stencil artist, which we called "doing graffiti," and I've busked in public places more times than I can count), but is it a bit of a chilul Hashem, a public embarrassment, to go stickering while looking like religious Jews? (There's also some graffiti tagging, though I'm assuming that was on the house of a consenting party.)

Or maybe I'm just getting old and, perish the thought, conservative. What do you folks think?

Jews Who Love Christmas

So, because it's late on the night before this is relevant...let me just put this out there to the universe and see what you think. My friend Josh Lamar and I did a song called "I Hate Xmas." It's about how I actually sort of like Christmas.



And if you look deep enough, you'll be able to see some strains of when I was in high school and joined this Christian fundamentalist Bible Club and got really into it...or maybe not? What do you think?

(You can also download an mp3 of my live show from a few years ago that features the poem, along with, uh, an 11-minute jam (I promise it doesn't suck) with some musical people about killing mice.)

Singing and Dying

We love Regina Spektor -- I think that's been safely established. She has this Russian lion-in-pajamas thing going on where she's singing playful little lyrics in a soft singsongy voice, and then the moment comes (and this moment, in all her songs, it happens) -- catching you by surprise, with your pants down, just when you thought it was safe to curl up next to her -- and suddenly the song is all teeth and fangs, roaring down your door, throwing a wicked metaphor or a twisted simile, rocking and thrashing violently, the way only a piano player can.

It always happens, in every song. Sometimes it's a sudden switch of language, to French and Russian in "Apres Moi," or the drop of a delicate Jewish metaphor that you know she wrote thinking she'd be the only one to get it, but we're here, Regina, and we're listening, and we get it, too. And sometimes it's just the way she leaps into the microphone, ready to eat it, and gives the song a whole new energy.

This is Regina Spektor. Her new live CD+DVD, Live in London, was just released. It has 20 tracks, including a Guns 'n Roses cover (!) played with her string orchestra (!!). And each of those 20 songs are loaded with that moment, the moment of the bite.



I will admit to skepticism. I'm not one to fork over needed cash for an album full of songs I already have. But, along with the new material (including the song "The Call," a beautiful track which Spektor recorded for The Chronicles of Narnia--which made me do a doubletake; a Russian Jewish indie-rock hero recording a song for a Christian-fundamentalist fairytale adaptation made by Disney, the most massive corporation there is?--but she sells out in the most graceful and cool and still-righteous way there is, and it's a great song, and anyway, you can buy this recording and not have to give Disney any money) and the redone classics ("Eet," above, is electric, and "Dance Anthem of the 1980s" is awe-inspiring, especially Spektor's beatbox) all make it worth your while.

Okay. Deep breath.

But that singular spark of Spektor's -- the bite that I was talking about before -- it marks this disc especially. A few weeks after this recording, Daniel Cho, Spektor's cellist and musical director, drowned and died. And that eerie precedence fills every moment of this concert with a loaded, creepy, and beautiful foreboding. When you're playing a song with just a piano and some strings, there's a delicateness to the music, a sense that, if anyone were to stop playing, the song would fall apart. Maybe I'm just reading too much into this recording and this night, but I've been in bands before, and I know how much you're leaning on each other at every moment. And it feels like -- this night, or this moment, or something -- everyone's ready for something to break...and everyone is ready to catch each other when it does.

Losers. Goldbergs. Sale!

Last week! Next week, we're so back to normal...

Let's say you're looking for the perfect gift for the two coolest, nicest, and most interesting people in the world. And let's say you are a bit of a cheapskate -- but, for the sake of argument, let's say you don't want people to KNOW you're a cheapskate. What's a practical, easy, and brilliant way of getting two awesome presents for basically no money at all (or, alternatively, buying someone a gift and keeping one for yourself)?

Right now, buy my first book and my newest book, Losers and Never Mind the Goldbergs, for $12 combined. That's less than most single books cost -- unless you're living in Eastern Central Europe or something. Or the only book you read is the free newspaper they give out on the train.

Buy them now!

To find out more about the books, go here for Losers or for Goldbergs. Or just ask me in the comments. All books come autographed (unless you specify otherwise), and all books come with free goodies, CDs or stickers or whatever I've got lying around. This deal will probably last a couple of weeks, but you probably shouldn't hesitate, because you will forget about it.