Chicago vs. Seattle

It’s the inevitable side effect of moving cross-country: I can’t help spending at least half my mental energy (and probably more) making little comparisons between Chicago and Seattle. Most of these are tiny observational things, while at times I also try to grasp at some sort of more totalizing conclusion. In self-analytical mode for a moment, I suppose a lot of this has to do with struggling to explain the move to myself. You see, by about any objective or rational standard I can think of, Seattle is just intrinsically nicer and more livable, and yet I’m just so much more flat-out in love with the Great City of Chicago, with all its grids and flatness and wild weather. Sure, the missus and I still have more friends and family back here in Chicago, but honestly I’m far too introverted for that to be much of a deciding factor. I’m just digging on walking around and taking trains (trains!) and looking at all the bricks and windows, mostly.

One of the slightly larger conclusion-ish things I’ve come up with, is that by being set in such a flat landscape, and then so gridded and populated, Chicago is always presenting a different subset of details, and that’s what you have to, like, get into if you’re trying to have an aesthetic experience of the surroundings (something I’m usually trying to do, by nature and habit). Whereas Seattle, being rippled with several large hills, divided by a couple of bodies of water and sort of hunkered down between two mountain ranges, is from almost any vantage offering much more of a panoramic scene. It’s this which usually captures the attention, and makes the little scribbly details of urbanity that much less noticeable. (There also seems to me to be a relative shortage of real urbanity in Seattle in general, but that’s a story for another day.)

The other weird comparison thing I wanted to mention just now, is that despite being rather obviously smack in the North American Middle West, in a certain way Chicago feels more coastal than Seattle. It should be obvious why: Chicago has beaches! To be fair, Seattle has a couple, but they were always sort of out of the way to me, and Oak Street Beach is like bigger than, well, both of them together. Chicago is just beachy all over. This morning while walking the dog, I noticed that there is really quite a bit of sand in the alley behind our building. And this roughly 1.75 miles from the lake. Although I was supposedly living on the West Coast for the last three years, the only times I ever saw sand on the ground I had to drive almost half an hour to get there.

Outstanding Effort

Give this kid an A+.

sleepy

OK, so I slept all day yesterday, and I’m still so very very sleepy today. In the words of the Eggs song, “Why am I so tired all the time?”

Sigur Rós

Sigur Rós! Sigur Rós! Sigur Rós! Sigur Rós!

Oooh ooh oohh I like this. This being the basically untitled “( )” album from 2002.

Also reccommending Naomi, Múm, and Four Tet. I’m just all about the ethereal post-rock/pop/techno crossover lately. More words to come about Naomi I think soon. I’ve been thinking a lot about them. They’re pretty interesting, in the way they’re sort of retro yet utterly contemporary all at once. But it’s just too much more for me to try to explain right now.

Beth Orton Still Rules

Yeah, OK–;long time no update, I know. It seems the more I try to tell myself I must post something soon, the less I ever post. Actually, I’m about halfway through trying to narrate the long drive from Seattle to Chicago in detail, but at this late date I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth even trying to follow on that.

So and but anyway, I just wanted to say I recently got my hands on The Other Side of Daybreak, last year’s remix and outtake collection from Beth Orton, and it’s lovely. Her voice is as beautiful as ever, and although some of the remix work is a bit lackluster, the lengthy workout that Four Tet gives to “Carmella” is amazing. I always found the song’s melody a bit too sing-songy in its original folky arrangement, but Kieran Hebden is no stranger to simple melody, and sets it in just the right mix of tasty beats and toy-sounding atmospheric instrumentation to keep it stimulating and uplifting for more than eleven minutes. A small masterpiece, and the best thing about this collection. I saw somewhere that Mr. Hebden is slated to produce Ms. Orton’s next album, and after this (and the Hebden-produced “Beautiful World”, another standout from OSD) I must say I’m looking forward to it.