ASTROLOGY

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In 1811, Leo scientist Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856) formulated a previously unknown principle about the properties of molecules. Unfortunately, his revolutionary idea wasn’t acknowledged and implemented until 1911, 100 years later. Today his well-proven theory is called Avogadro’s law. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, Leo, you will experience your equivalent of his 1911 event in the coming months. You will receive your proper due. Your potential contributions will no longer be mere potential. Congratulations in advance!

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Israeli poet Yona Wallach mourned the fact that her soul felt far too big for her, as if she were always wearing the clothes of a giant on her small body. I suspect you may be experiencing a comparable feeling right now, Virgo. If so, what can you do about it? The solution is NOT to shrink your soul. Instead, I hope you will expand your sense of who you are so your soul fits better. How might you do that? Here’s a suggestion to get you started: Spend time summoning memories from throughout your past. Watch the story of your life unfurl like a movie.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Nineteenth-century Libran physician James Salisbury had strong ideas about the proper ingredients of a healthy diet. Vegetables were toxic, he believed. He created Salisbury steak, a dish made of ground beef and onions, and advised everyone to eat it three times a day. Best to wash it down with copious amounts of hot water and coffee, he said. I bring his kooky ideas to your attention in hopes of inspiring you to purge all bunkum and nonsense from your life—not just in relation to health issues, but everything. It’s a favorable time to find out what’s genuinely good and true for you. Do the necessary research and investigation.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “I’m amazed that anyone gets along!” marvels self-help author Sark. She says it’s astonishing that love ever works at all, given our “idiosyncrasies, unconscious projections, re-stimulations from the past, and the relationship history of our partners.” I share her wonderment. On the other hand, I am optimistic about your chances to cultivate interesting intimacy during the coming months. From an astrological perspective, you are primed to be extra wise and lucky about togetherness. If you send out a big welcome for the lessons of affection, collaboration, and synergy, those lessons will come in abundance.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Please don’t make any of the following statements in the next three weeks: 1. “I took a shower with my clothes on.” 2. “I prefer to work on solving a trivial little problem rather than an interesting dilemma that means a lot to me.” 3. “I regard melancholy as a noble emotion that inspires my best work.” On the other hand, Sagittarius, I invite you to make declarations like the following: 1. “I will not run away from the prospect of greater intimacy—even if it’s scary to get closer to a person I care for.” 2. “I will have fun exploring the possibilities of achieving more liberty and justice for myself.” 3. “I will seek to learn interesting new truths about life from people who are unlike me.”

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Champions of the capitalist faith celebrate the fact that we consumers have over 100,000 brand names we can purchase. They say it’s proof of our marvelous freedom of choice. Here’s how I respond to their cheerleading: Yeah, I guess we should be glad we have the privilege of deciding which of 50 kinds of shampoo is best for us. But I also want to suggest that the profusion of these relatively inconsequential options may distract us from the fact that certain of our other choices are more limited. In the coming weeks, Capricorn, I invite you to ruminate about how you can expand your array of more important choices.

By Rob Brezsny

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): My best friend in college was an Aquarius, as is my favorite cousin. Two ex-girlfriends are Aquarians, and so was my dad. The talented singer with whom I sang duets for years was an Aquarius. So I have intimate knowledge of the Aquarian nature. And in honor of your unbirthday— the time halfway between your last birthday and your next—I will tell you what I love most about you. No human is totally comfortable with change, but you are more so than others. To my delight, you are inclined to ignore the rule books and think differently. Is anyone better than you at coordinating your energies with a group’s? I don’t think so. And you’re eager to see the big picture, which means you’re less likely to get distracted by minor imperfections and transitory frustrations. Finally, you have a knack for seeing patterns that others find hard to discern. I adore you!

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Is the first sip always the best? Do you inevitably draw the most vivid enjoyment from the initial swig of coffee or beer? Similarly, are the first few bites of food the most delectable, and after that your taste buds get diminishing returns? Maybe these descriptions are often accurate, but I believe they will be less so for you in the coming weeks. There’s a good chance that flavors will be best later in the drink or the meal. And that is a good metaphor for other activities, as well. The further you go into every experience, the greater the pleasure and satisfaction will be—and the more interesting the learning.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Emotions are not inconvenient distractions from reason and logic. They are key to the rigorous functioning of our rational minds. Neurologist Antonio Damasio proved this conclusively in his book *Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain*. The French philosopher’s famous formula—“I think, therefore I am”—offers an inadequate suggestion about how our intelligence works best. This is always true, but it will be especially crucial for you to keep in mind during the coming weeks. Here’s your mantra, courtesy of another French philosopher, Blaise Pascal: “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The famous Taurus TV star Jay Leno once did a good deed for me. I was driving my Honda Accord on a freeway in Los Angeles when he drove up beside me in his classic Lamborghini. Using hand signals, he conveyed to me the fact that my trunk was open, and stuff was flying out. I waved in a gesture of thanks and pulled over onto the shoulder. I found that two books and a sweater were missing, but my laptop and briefcase remained. Hooray for Jay! In that spirit, Taurus, and in accordance with current astrological omens, I invite you to go out of your way to help and support strangers and friends alike. I believe it will lead to unexpected benefits.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “Did you learn how to think or how to believe?” When my friend Amelie was nine years old, her father teased her with this query upon her return home from a day at school. It was a pivotal moment in her life. She began to develop an eagerness to question all she was told and taught. She cultivated a rebellious curiosity that kept her in a chronic state of delighted fascination. Being bored became virtually impossible. The whole world was her classroom. Can you guess her sign? Gemini! I invite you to make her your role model in the coming weeks.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In the coming weeks, I advise you not to wear garments like a transparent Gianfranco Ferre black mesh shirt with a faux-tiger fur vest and a coral-snake jacket that shimmers with bright harlequin hues. Why? Because you will have most success by being down-to-earth, straightforward, and in service to the fundamentals. I’m not implying you should be demure and reserved, however. On the contrary: I hope you will be bold and vivid as you present yourself with simple grace and lucid authenticity.

Say It Again

Quad Cities band Subatlantic’s new album Say It Again opens with a sparsely-arranged synth/ guitar/vocal thematic overture titled “Fate” asking, “What would you say if we tried today? / What would you say if we died today?” Every word counts, and we’re measured by how we use them.

“Fate” acts as the opener to “Critic,” a diatribe against someone who threw a figurative critical apple at the narrator (who is also compared to a furnace, burning the guitars, keys and vocals adorn. Yet there can be space between the parts; Rice’s vocals often pause between refrains ,letting the rest of the music bloom.

On the album’s fifth track, “New Forms,” Rice’s soaring voice rides dynamically over marching drums and bass. The forest imagery in the lyrics—trees, leaves, mud, paint a picture of stumbling through the dense foliage of a relationship. The scrubbing guitar harmonics serve the clarion call building to the crowd chorus, “All my best of / Intentions / Never could I / Hold on to you.”

The album wraps up with a high energy track titled “Veronica Speedwell” but to me the track before it, “Storm”—with its dreamy atmospheric vibe and its cleansing message of “Let’s get back to where we both grew up”—feels like the emotional finale of the album.

Still, with “Veronica Speedwell,” we get one more encore. One with a crashing, loose and frenetic vibe not found elsewhere on the album. The song’s narrator is calling someone out on their bullshit, reveling in personal drama. “You’d rather fall apart rather than keep it together.” Yet the narrator still is hoping for some redemption. “But, how long should I wait to leave you to your fate?”

EARLY gIRL

Lovers

Out to Pasture

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On their Bandcamp page, Iowa City trio Early Girl proudly proclaim to be “bringing queer aesthetics back to pop rock.” The gritty opening riff of “Green Eyes” telegraphs this plainly, immediately invoking the shimmy bop of the B-52’s iconic “Private Idaho.”

But Early Girl builds on the influence of their predecessors by weaving a sly aggression into the groove. “Green eyes / Blonde hair / I’m here to make you stare.” solidified. The band is more than happy to bring you along for the ride, but they don’t need you to have a good time. everything down) and who gets dressed down by acerbic lyrics: “Just stay in your closet/make the world better.”

Early Girl knows who they are. They want you to know, too.

On the track “Ice,” the self-proclaimed power pop trio charges headlong into classic punk rock. The salty sneer of the lyrics carry all the hallmarks of the genre. Pummeling, lo-fi aggression plunges the listener into the middle of a raw, interpersonal conflict. Just as soon as the spleen had been vented, the subject of the verbal onslaught is dismissed just as flippantly. It’s cathartic and a lot of fun.

The EP’s second track, “FourLeaf Clover” is almost sedate by comparison. The vibe is very pleasant and relaxed, but the song’s structure is rudimentary as it somewhat aimlessly drones along.

“Sink In” closes things out with a refinement of what fails to crystallize on “Four-Leaf Clover.” Sunny and optimistic, it leaves you wanting more.

Rebecca Rice, Adam Kaul, Sean Chapman and Phil Pracht gathered in a cabin on the Mississippi River for an intense few days in Illinois in January 2022 resulting in songs that would guide the next year and a half recording Say It Again with recording engineer Pat Stolley at the helm. The resulting album has a unified, cohesive feel.

Subatlantic’s signature anthemic post-punk sound is here in full force and at times recalls early Interpol. Drums and bass are on equal footing and provide the structure which

This brought me back to the start of the album. Tempting as it may be to think that all of the songs are the same narrator since they use Rice’s voice, I wondered—in this context—is the narrator to “Critic” actually “Veronica Speedwell?”

On Say It Again, Subatlantic crafts an album of songs with a messy, unifying thread that stitches human relationships with attendant fear and darkness. But the album illustrates the optimism, too. As Rice sings in “Diner,” “We realize without our phones … / That we are people, humans with hope.”

—Mike Roeder

There’s a pronounced confidence woven throughout Early Girl’s debut EP, Lovers Out to Pasture. Talera Jensen’s galloping bass line of the aptly named opening track “Sawhorse Sweetie” synced with the tight, propulsive drumming provided by their partner, August Jensen, lays a solid foundation for the brightly charged riffs that Aaron Longoria brings to the mix. The tune commands your attention, daring you not to bounce along with it.

The playful urgency of “Red Lips” chugs along with infectious, fuzzy chords. But as the song ends with the impassioned refrain of “YOU DON’T MEAN SHIT TO ME!” Early Girl’s gritty aplomb becomes not only evident but

There is an interesting dichotomy present in Lovers Out to Pasture. Tracks like “Green Eyes,” “Red Lips” and “Ice” have a strong chip on their shoulder. But there’s a breeziness to tracks like “Sawhorse Sweetie” and “Sink In” that balances everything out.

It’s a treat to encounter an EP as self-assured as Lovers Out to Pasture. Laser-focused, each song gets in and gets out in under three minutes. Early Girl knows how to make a lasting impression without superfluous showboating.

—Tom Brazelton

24tHANKYOU

Everything I Was, Burning Slow

24THANKYOU.BANDCAMP.COM

The bedrooms in old, rented houses from Fairchild to South Lucas are held together by paint— layers upon layers of beiges and grays that do the semester’s tenants the courtesy of covering up mold colonies and mysterious stains. If those bedroom walls could talk through those layers of paint, they’d probably tell a story like Everything I Was, Burning Slow, the debut album from Iowa City band 24thankyou.

The album’s opener and, meaningfully, its title track is an estab- features the clipped whir of the ticket machine outside the window; a song about issues with self-image, naturally, features the bustle of beautiful people in the Ped Mall.

Because the five members of 24thankyou—Emma Parker, Ethan Traugh, Michael Muhlena, Scott Griffin and Nick Wilkins—each do a bit everything on Everything I Was, Burning Slow, their songs sound like they’ve been done by a single set of hands. On “Interlude ii (Hooded),” a murky riff, an eerily reverbed vocal track, a sample of the artificial chicken separator in a friend’s TikTok feed and an ecosystem in somebody’s backyard complement one another to almost organic effect, like a 2 a.m. hang happened to have the soundtrack of an Apple Store.

These by-all-means compositions, scribbled with indie-adjacent elements, are along the lines of Alex G’s makeshift ditties (which can still only be streamed on Bandcamp). But more than anything, the contrast between the band’s voracious production sensibilities and introspective subject matter feels like a late

ELIZABEtH MOEN For Arthur

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Fall Welcome Concert, Friday, Aug. 25, 6 p.m., Free lishing shot of one such bedroom. At first, the song is lo-fi and familiar, with lyrics that relate to the sorry state of the splintering door frame. But the composition is eventually engulfed in something ecstatic as the words “Everything I was, burning slow” become “Everything I want, black snow / Ebbs around my heels, forward, slow.”

The teenaged Arthur Russell left Oskaloosa in 1968. He was a musical prodigy (cello and piano), a hippie vagabond and a spiritual seeker. He moved to a Buddhist commune in San Francisco, passed his high school equivalency, then became Allen Ginsberg’s accompanist and perhaps lover. Five years later, he hopped to New York City where he attracted notice in avant-garde circles, following a musical progression that transcended category and recording way more music than he ever finished or released. He died from AIDS complications in 1992, just short of his 41st birthday.

Her voice has more power than Russell’s, her range more expansive. She transforms the opening “Nobody Wants a Lonely Heart” into sultry soul balladry, with steel guitar providing the sonic signature. But much of the rest hews more closely to Russell’s originals, the singing almost subliminal, the arrangements bare-boned. Melodies this lilting and lyrics so straightforward don’t need much dressing up.

“I Never Get Lonely” and “Words of Love” have a strippeddown intimacy that makes both sound as personal to Moen as they were to Russell. Nothing in these suggests performance; listeners might feel like they are eavesdropping. Moen herself nearly disappears into Russell’s music. For someone known for such a big voice, the restraint underscores her vocal command.

The following songs are slathered with sounds sung, strummed, programmed, processed, captured, collaged. The DIY-style production, handled in-house by the band, globs on ambiance throughout the album, in part via room tone and environmental sound. A song written inside a parking ramp booth, naturally,

’90s/early ’00s release on Saddle Creek Records, when the Platonic ideal of indie (at least at the time) began to draw influence from The Faint, featuring little moments of “whoa” in songs by Bright Eyes, Azure Ray, etc.

Everything I Was, Burning Slow returns to the bedroom in that old, rented house for “I Washed It Out,” the album’s aptly titled cleanse of a closer. The track’s lived-in room tone has had its hums mic’d and amplified, and amplified some more, to the foreground of instruments and voices. And yeah, you can hear the beiges and grays and just how much took place in between.—Benjamin

Jeffery

The New York Times and the Village Voice noted his passing. The former described him as “a cellist, vocalist and composer who was known for his fusion of classical and popular music.” The latter said, “his songs were so personal, that it seems as though he simply vanished into his music.”

Vinton’s Elizabeth Moen didn’t know Russell’s music until she also left her native Iowa, moving to Chicago in the midst of Covid. Yet her 5-song For Arthur sounds uncanny in its interpretive artistry, with Moen channeling a kindred spirit in a way that transcends gender, generation and geography. The songs receive fresh life from a contemporary artist whose “don’t fence me in” attitude toward categorization she plainly shares.

She draws from Russell’s more accessible side, from what a sticker on 2019’s Iowa Dream compilation called “the sublime folk and pop side of Arthur Russell.” The flip side of such sublimity is very much in evidence on another Russell compilation, the recently released Picture of Bunny Rabbit. Here he pushes his cello toward abrasive extremes and buries his voice in the echoey murk, creating a darker strain of dub ambient sound.

There is little hint of the introspective troubadour on Picture of Bunny Rabbit, yet Russell’s music was plainly representative of his radical creativity and restless spirit, as if these weren’t separate musical pursuits but parts of the same continuum.

Moen’s EP may introduce some of Russell’s fans to her, and her fans to him. It has been launched with all proceeds benefiting One Iowa—a nonprofit that describes itself as “a catalyst for improving the lives of LGBTQ Iowans.”

In her dedication, Moen says the music is “for queer people in red states or small towns who don’t feel like they can be themselves. For anyone who feels lonely or heartbroken.” ––Don

McLeese

JASON BRADFORD Stellaphasia NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

Posthumously published from his MFA thesis, Jason Bradford’s Stellaphasia (North American Review, 2023) chronicles life inside a disabled body. It’s unfair to say that this collection is about being disabled or having a disability, though. This is a book of emotional observations, connection and communion. Bradford—a University of Northern Iowa alum—has lived as we all do, but he writes like a watcher.

The title of the collection is borrowed from the opening poem and combines Bradford’s difficulty with breathing and speaking (aphasia)—a side effect from his muscular dystrophy—with the stellar. As a collection, Bradford’s preoccupation with that which is elemental and ethereal, the title speaks to every single poem it presents.

Bradford’s felicity is underscored by his use of visual poetry: he cuts words into halves and syllables, using enjambment as illustration. In a few poems I noticed mixed meanings part way through and went back, reread, built understanding upon a scaffolding. If his content weren’t humbling on its own, his deftness with language might be overpowering. As it is, the two complement each other and build depth in interaction.

The split words appear throughout the book, including in two titles: “Alter/native” and “dis●ease.”

In the poem “Confessions #4” many of the split words could be read as separate words and every instance requires a review. For example: “The ocean mass / ages my ear / drums / to sleep” and “A star / fish buries its / elf in my lower man / dible.”

There are several poems in response to visual art by other artists, in particular photos by Vivian Maier (there is a QR code in the notes at the end of the book, showing each photo with its associated poem) which seem to be explorations of empathy and mortality, as in the poem “After A Photo Of A Dead Horse By Vivian Maier”: “i’m not religious, but i understand religion / because i understand metaphor, or / i understand how / we use metaphor to say / what cannot be said. // how a dead horse is never / just a dead horse / is never just.”

Each poem, but the collection as a whole even moreso, is impactful perhaps because of how cavalier Bradford is in discussing his disability. He filters everything through his muscular dystrophy, “but to you / the disabled body comes off / like a sweet attempt / at sentiment / to wilt your heart.” he says in “The Disabled Body [2].”

CHLOE ANgYAL Pas de Don’t AMBERJACK PUBLISHING

Pas de Don’t is Chloe Angyal’s first novel, a story of romance informed by the author’s years spent reporting on gender and power in American ballet.

Angyal, an Australian-born writer now based out of Coralville, is the author of the 2021 nonfiction book Turning Pointe: How a New will hire her following the break with her ex-fiancé—to prove that she rose to the top on her own merits. There she meets Marcus, her reluctant tour guide recovering from a torn achilles tendon and mourning the death of his father, and finds herself at odds with company policies put in place by the ANB’s new artistic director.

ANgYAL DEFtLY BALANCES tHE FREQUENtLY LIgHtHEARtED, SWOON-WORtHY FORBIDDEN WORKPLACE ROMANCE WItH HEAVIER SUBJECtS, PULLINg INtO VIEW tHE BEHIND tHE SCENES POLItICS OF BALLEt COMPANIES IN

Angyal’s thorough knowledge of ballet is on show throughout the novel, but never makes the story feel weighed down by technical terms and trivia. She deftly balances the frequently lighthearted, swoon-worthy forbidden workplace romance with heavier subjects, pulling into view the behind the scenes politics of ballet companies in the #MeToo era. Pas de Don’t covers the power imbalances that can strip dancers of their ability to protect themselves and speak up, the policies that both protect and inhibit them, the physical toll that dance takes on their bodies, sexual harassment and grief.

The ti-

Every experience Bradford details or dreams of is potent because of its ability to be at once deeply symbolic and simple. This collection is some combination of domestic and surreal. This collection sticks to your bones and makes you dream. It hurts knowing his experience, knowing his death is coming. The first thing I did upon finishing Stellaphasia was write a response to Jason Bradford. I didn’t get up. I didn’t start this review. I replied to the book, to “A Matter of Stasis / Matter of Stasis”: “my friend was alive until i woke to a call ringing otherwise.”

—Sarah Elgatian

Generation of Dancers Is Saving

Ballet from Itself, examining how ballet as a form is grappling with gender, racial and class inequities in the modern day. Beyond that book, more of Angyal’s writing on ballet has appeared in Jezebel and the Washington Post, as well as being quoted in the New York Times

The story of Pas de Don’t follows Heather Hayes, a recently promoted principal dancer in the New York City Ballet’s company, who must suddenly navigate the fallout of an emotionally abusive relationship with one of the world’s most famous ballet dancers.

In the wake of this tumult, Heather accepts a guest position with the Australian National Ballet (ANB)—the only company that tle is a play on the phrase “pas de deux,” or a duet between two dancers, and makes reference to a policy within the ANB that strictly forbids relationships between dancers. This policy, of course, ends up playing a major role in Heather’s time at the company.

While Pas de Don’t probably only qualifies as a slow-burn for slow readers, it’s the momentum of Heather and Marcus’s relationship, as well as the high stakes of their decisions that make this novel impossible to put down.

Angyal has another romance book, Pointe of Pride, planned for release next year.

—Kelsey Conrad