Music for Tourists/Rules of Attraction

Chris Garneau, a NYC native, straight outta Absolutely Kosher, hit one out of the park.'Music for Tourists' is such a delicate and mind numbing experience. The sense of the album traps your emotions in a dark mansion for an hour as rain dribbles down the outside of the mirroring windows, causing nothing but self-reflection.

The album begins very strong, with a wonderfully composed "Castle Time", first and foremost laying out a warning call for the impact that is to come, and it only gets better, from "Relief", to the "I wish I were smaller, a little creepy crawler," of "Black & Blue", to the "Black & Blues" of "Halloween", 'Tourists" continuously brings emotion through calm waves of pretty noises. Garneau captures the essence I believe he was chasing for perfectly through this album, and I very much enjoyed my many listens to it, and to tell the truth will enjoy many more listens. I wish I could mention every other track on the album because they are all completely worth it, but then I would just be babbling on and praising this piece of art over and over and over. So here are some of the tracks that I put on repeat many times, hope they will provoke you to purchase this album because Garneau definitley deserves it.

mp3: Black & Blue
mp3: Not Nice
mp3: Halloween
mp3: We Don't Try


p.s. This album has also reached a place closer to my heart, my top 5 album list of 2007 so far, this list will continue to change, and I will keep you posted with new additions or drops, and by the eve of big 08, I'll drop a top 50 or something killer like that. Word.

MY TOP 5 SO FAR (of 2007)
1. Arcade Fire- Neon Bible
2. Modest Mouse- We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
3. The Rakes- Ten New Messages
4. Chris Garneau- Music for Tourists
5. Loney, Dear- Loney Noir

Now, second on my agenda is something I've been meaning to talk about to people, for a LONG time. Please take my word on this, Bret Easton Ellis is a brilliant writer and you should read and read all of his work. I finally gathered up the nerve to embark on this quest after many signs. 1: I had always loved the movie American Psycho, always loved the writing to it, and had heard that it was adapted from some awesome modern novelist, but I never really paid attention to it that much. 2: I was applying to a certain College in where a certain author of American Psycho and another book-turned-movie I had heard about, Rules of Attraction had attended, and this certainly caught my attention. 3: I had become curious after hearing how this other book-turned-movie by this certain author was set in a certain fictional rendition of a certain College this certain author attended, and that I was very interested in, so I decided to rent the flick and see what it was like. 4: Enough with the f'ing certains, I watched the movie and loved it, it was the best film I had seen in a long time, very different, very creative, very smart, and most importantly, very fun to watch. So from that point on the signs formed into some sort of necessity, the necessity to read this man's work, simply because I felt an electric urge to. So anywayyyy I gave this little number called Amazon a much awaited visit and ordered myself the works, all of Ellis's work. I developed an order (Saving Psycho for last because I heard it was the best, although reading Glamorama now, it seems it can't be true.) for the books I would read, Rules of Attraction coming first, and being the first finished, trust me you'll be updated. So what you must understand is that now I am in a strictly Easton Ellis-only reading cycle, the only books I will talk about for the next few month will be Ellis, and Ellis only. Okay, getting that out of the way, here goes what I've been leading up to say.

Rules of Attraction is an astounding piece of literature. From end to end I read it intensely, and I finished it quite quickly, because it was quite short, but that actually wasn't a good thing at all, because upon finishing it I found myself missing the characters and the stories each would narrate as their days at Camden would flow (I would later discover of Ellis's trait of re-using characters, and yeah that was AWESOME news). The 3 main characters would be the bulk of the narration, which would be some way of organizing the novel into chapters or whatever. These characters were Sean Bateman, a rich drug-dealing pot-smoking emotional vampire who was simply just looking for something to hold onto, but realized he couldn't really hold onto anything in the end, or in that case, nobody could, Lauren Hynde, a beautiful student who seeks the right love as much as she seeks the right major, but the right love has already been determined, and already been diminished in her eyes, and Sean is quote-on-quote, in love with her, and Paul Denton, a homosexual smart-guy who thrives for any sign in his life to give him inspiration, or a miraculous relationship that will somewhat balance out his hollow emotions, but in the end he too realizes that the ending of love/the desire of love is inevitable. These characters' stories intertwine, and even guest narrations are given every once and a while, one by Sean Bateman's French roomate, ironically written all in...French, one by the big star of American Psycho and Sean's brother, Patrick Bateman, and one by the bigger star of Glamorama and Lauren's desired love, Victor Johnson (Ward). The novel progresses through different situations, and certain he-says she-says differences in two people's recollections of previous happenings, but in the end the same conclusion is reached by all 3 protagonists, romance is dead. As depressing as that sounds, the book is both comical and insightful, and is definitley a must-read in my book. But I'm rambling again, so I'll leave you with my favorite track from the movie's soundtrack, and my favorite song by any of the artists mentioned throughout the book. Always with love...BK

mp3: The Cure- Six Different Ways
mp3: My Bloody Valentine- Soon


For Bret Easton Ellis's official page, click here.