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The Gadfly
02 The student newspaper of St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, Maryland 21401 sjca.gadfly@gmail.com www.issuu.com/sjcgadfly www.facebook.com/sjcagadfly Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus. Opinions expressed within are the sole responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought-provoking newsmagazine. The Gadfly meets under the BBC Whomping Willow on every blue moon. Articles should be submitted by Friday at 11:59 PM to sjca.gadfly@gmail.com. Staff Nathan Goldman • Editor-in-Chief Ian Tuttle • Editor-in-Chief Hayden Pendergrass • Layout Editor Sasha Welm • Cartoonist Andrew Kriehn • Staff Kevin Norris • Staff Charles Zug • Staff Contributors Sebastian Abella Will Brown Alvaro Duran Pamela Kraus
Daniel Kraft Henley Moore Erik G. Neave Grace Tyson
!"#$"%$& '($)*$&+$(,-& .)%&/011($&.*& 2$3%4&5)1$%& 26&7&!8)9: ! Chauncey Gardiner
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photo by Henley Moore
!"#$%%$&"%'"%($")*+%'&, O
n behalf of the senior class, we would like to express our frustration and disappointment with the size of our classes this year. Our time at St. John’s has shown us that, for discussion-based classes, a small number of students is crucial to fostering an engaging and respectful learning environment, one in which every student has the opportunity to be heard. We were told when applying to this school that tutorials would have between 12 and 15 students. The College website now says that tutorials and laboratories have 13 to 16 students, but even this does not reflect this year’s senior class sizes. Most senior tutorials and laboratories have 17 students; this is the size of a small seminar and is not conducive to the kind of rigorous, fruitful work that the Program is meant to foster. Such large classes are not what we were promised coming into St. John’s and are not conducive to the education we expected from our senior year. Sincerely, Daniel Kraft Grace Tyson
!"-$./0"1&'2"3$45"6&47, W e appreciate your notifying us on behalf of the seniors about the serious concerns regarding the size of senior tutorials and laboratories. As tutors, we share the very concerns you express. The increase in class size is not what we ever would have wanted and we tried hard to avoid it. Let me say briefly what occurred.
We settle the teaching slate usually just after spring break. This year we adjusted the slate several times after that date because of enrollment uncertainty and only finalized it in late April, when we thought we had a firm sense of how many sections of each class we would need. We learned in mid-summer, however, that there were more returning students than we expected, which shifted the numbers just enough to make both junior and senior classes larger than we know is best. The size of junior tutorials was to be most seriously affected. We immediately decided to try to add more sections for both juniors and seniors. In order to do this, of course, we must ask tutors on leave to teach. We were able to add another section to junior tutorials and laboratory, as well as another senior seminar, but we were not able to provide tutors for additional sections of senior tutorials. We hope that this outline provides a better sense of how it happens that class sizes are not always what we wish them to be. Yours truly, Pamela Kraus Dean
The Gadfly
03
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!"#$%&%#'#()* Mr. Carl Page
How did you come to be a tutor at St. John’s? By the time I finished my Ph.D., I had already heard much about St. John’s through David Lachterman (R.I.P.)—one of the two main advisors to my doctoral dissertation and an alumnus of the College. Some years later, I happened to find myself in need of a job and had just had the charming good fortune of meeting Eva Brann in person, who was dean at the time. She suggested I apply. What classes are you teaching this year? Freshman math, Sophomore Language, and Freshman Seminar. What was the biggest adventure you’ve ever had? You mean apart from my ongoing journey in this ever-astonishing, constantly intriguing, dappled realm of light and shadow? Memorable co-adventures seem to me many: camping out for the first time in my life, being eight years old and catching a three-foot eel, hiking up Mt. Ruapehu, tramping around Lake Waikaremoana, swimming under the Waitakere falls, earning a living gill-netting on the the Hauraki Gulf, reducing all my belongings to a single suitcase and heading for the United States, hiking the Cascades, climbing Mt. St. Helens, canoeing on the Chattahoochee, running my first marathon, singing Palestrina’s Pope Marcellus Mass one voice to a part, looking out from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, sprinting the track at Olympia, paying my respects at Thermopylae, exploring the Whirinaki forest, picking wild blueberries and chanterelle mushrooms in the Dalarna woods of Sweden. I could go on, as you may already have begun to realize. What is the single most important piece of advice you would like to give to freshmen (or upperclassmen)? It’s not really for me to say whether my own advice is important or not, but one thing I would offer to freshmen: Waste no time getting as busy as you can making as many mistakes as you can in front of your peers and tutors; acknowledged error will drive your learning far, far better than anything else ever will; silent confusion, as you might already have started to suspect, gets you nowhere. As for upperclassmen, of course, you should carry on making as many mistakes as you can in front of your peers etc., etc. What is your favorite seminar book and why? Many who know me would probably expect me to answer, the Republic. But Plato’s Republic is just too damned weird and forbidding and obscure to count as a favorite. My warmest responses are to: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, because I’ve watched it help more young souls than any other great book I know; Shakespeare’s Richard II, for its stunning blend of deep political wisdom and gorgeous poetry; and George Eliot’s Middlemarch, not only for its also great art, but for its many generous insights into the modern and, well, the middling. What is your least favorite seminar book and why? That’s a toss-up between Calvin’s Institutes and the Enneads of Plotinus. Why? Because I loathe untestable theory-spinning, and untestable theory-spinning dressed up as spiritual profundity is even more loathsome. I do, on the other hand, have to acknowledge that the seminar on Plotinus usually goes
pretty well—providing, that is, you don’t stick too closely to the text. What is your favorite non-Program book ? Adam’s Task by Vicki Hearne (R.I.P.). Who’d have thought a book ostensibly on animal training written by a poet could be so full of wisdom-love? It is, though—being, among other things, an indispensable thesaurus on the nature of thumos and its centrality in the soul, both animal and therefore also human. Vicki Hearne once gave a Friday Night Lecture at the College; I think it’s the only time we’ve ever had a Border Collie do retrieval and scent work on the FSK stage. And yet for all my enthusiasm, some other, more primordial voice in me cries out to add that my most beloved non-Program book is Lord of the Rings. Perhaps I could on some other occasion spell out exactly why I love it so—notwithstanding all the other, apparently serious, weighty books so many of us can be so clever about—but I’m afraid the simple declaration will have to do for now. What is your biggest pet peeve (that students do) in class? Saying, “I’m confused,” when what’s really meant is, “I disagree.” Let me add, though, that peeves are by definition minor and ought to be concerned—as is the peeve just mentioned—with things that could easily be otherwise. There are plenty of other things students do that vex or dispirit me, but, because they’re mostly to be expected and all but unavoidable, I’m obliged to work on my own patience and fortitude rather than indulge my initial and perhaps only grumpy aversions. What is your favorite St. John’s tradition and why? Oh, the Freshman Concert. I’m afraid we talk about “community” altogether too much—as if holding up a good and beautiful hope amounted forthwith to its actualization—but once a semester in the Great Hall, there’s the real thing: sparkling before our eyes, ringing in our ears, and reverberating through our very bones. What is your favorite class to be a tutor for and why? Sophomore Language. Freshman jitters and pretensions are on average over with; cynicism, apathy, and disillusion haven’t yet, for the most part, taken hold. But more important, in sophomore language we’ve the chance to be at genuine intellectual leisure (scholê) in studying at least a couple of the truly great among the great books. We get to chew, mull, and wrestle, instead of just dally and be titillated. Furthermore, the otherwise varying claims of analysis, sensibility, and judgment are obliged to find their way together as bearing on a single, artful whole; there’s even a chance of getting to sense their subtle, ultimate symphony. *Let me conclude with a thank-you to the Gadfly staff for its invitation to play along in its recently established party-game. There’s something undoubtedly light-hearted about the questions, but not I think light-minded. We rational animals delight in learning—as though uncovering secrets—what serious others might honestly feel and believe. Occasions to well serve that natural, and in my view proper, curiosity come in a number of viable guises. !
The Gadfly
04
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! Connor Callahan A’14
True transience is not moments crashing, falling over one another careening, slipping through all of our fingers, running away, fleeting, flying grains of sand, crumbling brick, rough approximations of infinitesimally small numbers, blood beating against the temple walls.
!"#$%&'(")*#+,--).) Nathan Goldman
T
A’14
he spirit of deep inquiry that permeates this campus is among its finest qualities. We tend to be insatiably curious and unimpressed by easy answers. We doubt and we wonder incessantly—about the works we read, the world we inhabit, our own thoughts and actions. But it is most difficult to question in earnest those things dearest to us, and the College is something most of us hold dear. Especially given how the College has chosen to portray itself recently—as a last bastion of a bygone Golden Age-love of wisdom—it is not uncommon for students to feel this is “the only college for them.” What a rare and wonderful thing to find a cohort so invested in and excited about the project it has set for itself. And yet. The problem: we might become so invested, so enamored, that it becomes difficult to apply that same prized critical inquiry to the very institution that fosters it. The aim of this irregular column is to examine St. John’s. I want to ask why we do some of the things we do, to investigate whether the reasoning is sound, and to propose ways in which we might better accomplish our purposes. What is this column not? It is not a venue for my own pet quibbles about minor points on the Program. (If you want to hear why I’d like to see the Calvin selections changed or why Ptolemy shouldn’t be split between freshman and sophomore math, find me on the Quad.) On the other end of the spectrum, it is not a questioning of the Program’s fundamental principles: the value of reading original texts, discussion classes, or an all-required, multidisciplinary curriculum. Taking as granted the value of the Program as an idea—admittedly, one subject to wide-varied interpretation—I mean only to consider and question some of the ways we go about implementing it. I hope the result will be at least a better understanding of St. John’s’ virtues and flaws and why we do what we do. !
Real transience is not the sunset over the bay the raindrop echoes off the pond, the sweaty hot passion of an early autumn’s noon, the death-defying uniform acceleration of a body hurling itself into cold, black water as the stars trace out the Cartesian plot of my heart, the scent of incense as the earth lays dormant and dead, immune to my power, unfeeling towards my digging, not caring that only months prior I cut out a chunk of its best sod in the indian summer— probably its heart. A giant gash of an x right over the waste pumped in. Transience is not, nothing, but not, something, real. For what does not endure cannot last, and what cannot stand the test of time is bound up in the past. Permanence is reserved for those who have no shot in purgatory. Damned to bliss and blessed with burns.
!"#$%&'(# ! Painter Bob
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
The Gadfly
W
05
!"#$%&'$&()*+) ,-.&."&)/"00 Alvaro Duran
GI
rapping up a fairly lettered, if disappointing, speech at cluding lie of his convention speech. Obama does nothing if the Democratic National Convention, Obama jeered, he doesn’t have a coalition or public support behind him. He “If the critics are right that I’ve made all my decisions based publicly announced the retreat of American forces from Afon polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.” What ghanistan in 2014—effectively telling the population that had nonsense, I thought. Is there any evidence that Obama and the bet on the U.S. to win the conflict that they need to fend for Democratic Party haven’t unfurled their sails to the popular themselves or accept the sinister tyranny of Hamid Karzai. In winds? Libya, Obama let Qaddafi’s killing squads operate without reThe president is happy to sit by and watch the annihila- proach until public outcry became too great and he was safely tion of Syria by a sick dictator without offering anything more backed up by a U.N. resolution. In Iran, Obama barely made a than a few scraps of support to the opposipeep when the government attacked civiltion. There is certainly no need to embroil ians protesting the stolen election of 2009. Is there any evidence U.S. troops on the ground, but to watch the In Israel, Obama demanded a complete that Obama and the incessant bombardment of civilians play settlement freeze as a step on his “Road Democratic Party haven’t Map to Peace.” Israeli prime minister Benout without firing a single warning shot unfurled their sails to the jamin Netanyahu instead provided a halfor dropping a single bomb marks America with the stain of impotence and indifferhearted, ten-month moratorium that did popular winds? ence. It’s likely the president is reluctant to not include East Jerusalem, then humilimilitarily engage in Syria due to the fractured state of the op- ated the U.S. by announcing new settlement projects during position and the multitude of jihadists within. But to ignore a visit from Vice President Biden a few months later. Obama’s the problem is to ensure that when Assad falls, Syria will be response? He backpedaled, ending the push for a halt to West open to any and all to fill its void—a country replete with sec- Bank settlements, infuriating the Palestinian allies that had tarian suicide killings and midnight massacres. Once that hap- placed their trust in the U.S., and vetoing a U.N. resolution pens, we will have no choice but to involve ourselves. Bartle calling the settlements illegal. All this to placate the RepubliBull of The Weekly Standard makes a compelling argument cans and secure the Jewish vote. that al-Qaeda may not get the foothold it wants in the country, This isn’t anything new from the Democratic Party. I was but our present course of inaction leaves the Syrian people to recently looking over various politicians’ reactions to 9/11. continue paying in blood for the Iranian- and Russian-backed Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York, for example, railed Assad. This nightmare that Obama’s ineptitude is leading us to furiously at the time that “it’s not a question of finding a particis a gruesome gamble of millions of lives. ular person and putting him on trial. It’s a question of waging Even as Obama’s campaign turns to post-convention mode, war against those who are waging war on us and making clear the fighting in Aleppo is intensifying. How exactly, if Hillary to countries that deal with them or harbor them that they are Clinton has deemed the fall of Assad not friends of the United States and “inevitable,” are the rebel fighters supDemocrat politicians have prov- will suffer the consequences.” posed to defend themselves against Eleven years later, his website asks, en again and again that they’ll gunships and warplanes with the pit“Why should we continue pouring prostitute themselves and forget billions of dollars into an intractable tance of support the U.S. has given whatever promises they once them? Looking at a map of Syria, you’ll mess when we should be devoting see that most of the population is disthose funds to our own economy?” made in order to get your vote. tributed in an arch from the western Democrat Bob Graham said at the coast toward Aleppo and down into the Euphrates valley. The time that the US was “not going to find the kinds of spies we Aleppo Governorate, one of Syria’s 14 administrative divisions, need in monasteries.” Fast forward to 2009: What was Mr. is the keystone of this arch and home to more than 4 million Graham doing? Swearing up and down that he had no knowlpeople—a quarter of the country’s population. Whoever takes edge of any waterboarding. Forget “stay the course”—DemoAleppo splits the country in half. It is this battle, if no other, crat politicians have proven again and again that they’ll prostithat Obama should be focused on winning. Turkey is pushing tute themselves and forget whatever promises they once made for a no-fly zone at the U.N. The president should enact that in order to get your vote. There lie the past eleven years of measure even over Russian and Chinese opposition. doublespeak and opinion poll-adjusting from a rotten, vacuBut President Obama has always been frustratingly hesitant ous party that will embrace anyone and anything—so long as to do anything “unilaterally.” Thus we come back to the con- the numbers are right. !
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The Gadfly
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!"#$%&'(% $#$)%*"+,$-% &'()%#'./$% '+%,0$%".)1% Got some great ideas you want the polity exposed to? Polity Radio is a DC-Chartered club that will release pre-recorded shows on a bimonthly basis. We are looking for regular contributors, as well as people interested in contributing one-time segments. All are welcome to participate. Oh, and one more thing: We have an interview with President Nelson! Want to ask him questions? Send us some at polityradio@gmail.com!
!"#$%&#$'()*+,-$ ./#$0*1" ! Erik G. Neave, A’16
One eye towards the rain Limping home on cobbled stone Stacked and stretched out Like the pregnant drops of a cloud. So much has changed: The stones And the home And the creeping stillness of the rain. One eye towards the sun Spiderwebbing through the mist Frayed and dangling down Like an unmanned marionette. So much has changed: The mist And the webs And the splintered magnets of light. One eye towards myself Lengthening shadow unmade Broad bellied and mute. So much the same: The surface And the silence And the one eye set towards the rain.
St. John’s and the Rankings Sebastian Abella
T
A’15
here may be no real purpose in writing another piece in disapproval of college rankings and their inherent subjectivity. Malcolm Gladwell wrote one for The New Yorker criticizing the most popular college ranking guide, U.S. News, and their algorithm for determining the order. You could likely find many other recent pieces in national publications riffing on the subject. St. John’s’ own website features a brief letter to U.S. News that summarizes the major criticisms. And though I know as a good Johnnie I shouldn’t care, I can’t help but be curious about the rankings when they come out every year, particularly about how St. John’s fares in them. U.S. News is a bit unfair to St. John’s; it ranks the College at #139 among Liberal Arts Colleges, despite the minor detail that the school does not participate in the surveys. How can you be ranked if you don’t play the game? The Washington Monthly, on the other hand, ranks St. John’s at a respectable nineteenth place this year. Saying “Top 20 in the Country” sounds better to your friends, though. Still, the most entertaining rankings are those from the Princeton Review, which does not boast of any quantifiable data, but rather embraces the subjectivity of student surveys. St. John’s places in a number of categories, including “Classroom Discussions Encouraged,” “Professor’s Get High Marks,” and “There’s a Game?” Can we learn anything from these rankings? Discrepancies between the two campuses suggest that the rankings are determined arbitrarily. In the Princeton Review rankings, Santa Fe nudges one spot ahead of Annapolis in “Classroom Discussions Encouraged,” yet makes no appearance in “Best Classroom Experience,” where Annapolis is spotted at eighth. The incongruity between the campuses is notably apparent in Newsweek’s list of “Most Rigorous Colleges” from 2011, where Santa Fe is in first place, and Annapolis
is seven spots behind, despite the campus’s nearly identical curriculums. The 2012 edition of the publication fails to rank either campus in the top 25—possibly due to the fact that the College dropped any books deemed “too rigorous” for the upcoming year. Though heavily criticized, college rankings will not disappear anytime soon. U.S. News, among many other publications, does better with its “College Rankings” issue than issues containing real news. What remains to be asked is: why the popularity to begin with? Maybe because rankings offer a simple answer to a complex question. Surely Johnnies can relate to this when friends and family engage them in small talk about school. Questions of majors and sports are more challenging to answer from a St. John’s student’s perspective; the same goes regarding the question of the College’s perceived quality compared to other schools. The appeal of rankings is that they allow one to casually cite a number, either to boast or defend one’s decision to attend that school, both to the inquirer and to oneself. Like most Johnnies, I’d prefer to think that my choice to attend St. John’s was based on the school itself, and not on outside pseudo-objective ratings. Yet, I can’t deny that having the “Most Rigorous School in 2011” card up my sleeve for the next non-Johnnie party I go to is reassuring. Even if it is on the wrong campus. !
The Gadfly
Ian Tuttle
I
07
A’14
f you are ever passing through Oklahoma City and have a those spaces. But for the national memorial of the attack to moment to pause at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, emphasize above all that emptiness seems some sort of condo it. It is a powerful place. fession—that what we remember most about that day is the In 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb in a Ryder void that opened up, and more than ten years later, we believe truck parked in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal build- that is how we should remember that day. ing. The bomb killed 168 people, including 19 children in an With its selection, the Memorial Jury chose a design that on-site daycare center. did not commemorate the lives of the victims, the work of the At the memorial, which opened five years later, a long, still Center or its thousands of employees, the countless sacrifices, reflecting pool sits between two massive Gates of Time. The or the heroes. It commemorated the holes in the ground. It East Gate reads “9:01,” the last moment of morning peace memorialized the emptiness. before the attack. The West Gate reads “9:03.” Stretched out In the past, we have defied the emptiness by building. We beside the pool is the Field of Empty Chairs. 168 chairs repre- construct monuments and shrines. We make statues. We erect sent each person killed; on the bottom of each chair a name is gravestones. When others have torn down, we have built up. inscribed. The chairs are arranged in nine rows to represent The most powerful images from the Murrah Building methe building’s nine floors. There are nineteen smaller chairs morial in Oklahoma City are of survivors hugging the chairs for the children. of loved ones. Each chair is a small token of remembrance It is an affecting place. It’s the chairs. You remember the built up out of the ruins. chairs. Not in New York. There is nothing to hold onto. There is I had the opportunity to visit the recently opened Septem- only the emptiness and that same feeling of being swallowed ber 11 memorial while I was living in New York City this sum- up that started eleven years ago. mer. Two massive square waterfalls mark the Some building has begun again. The spire footprints of the original Twin Towers. On of the new One World Trade Center will soar With its selection, bronze parapets surrounding the waterfalls to 1,776 feet when it is complete, surpassthe Memorial Jury... ing the height of the previous World Trade are etched the names of the victims of the 2001 attacks—including those in Washington, commemorated the Center complex. But eight years on, the new D.C., and Pennsylvania—and those of the 1993 holes in the ground. tower is still in construction, and while it is World Trade Center bombing. expected to open next year, it is not expected It memorialized the to be fully occupied until 2019. The last buildIt is a strangely unaffecting place. There is emptiness. the initial awe of standing in that space so faing in the World Trade Center complex is not miliar from television footage, and there is the expected to be filled until 2037. Compare that starkness of its cleanliness and order when, in our memory, it to the Empire State Building, which was finished in just 16 is linked to images of chaos and rubble. But after staring into months during the Great Depression. the pools, and after reading the names arranged at their edgChurchill famously said, “We shape our buildings; thereafes, what is most obvious is not what is there, but what is not. ter they shape us.” But what ought we to think when we have Nothing is there. Emptiness. On September 11, 2001, terror- lost the will to build almost entirely? ists struck two holes into Lower Manhattan. Ten years later, Yet our rebuilding has not only been slow—it has been cowthe holes remain, only this time with the imprimatur of the ardly. The 1,776-foot tower set to open next year was originalSeptember 11 Memorial Jury and the ornamentation of archi- ly called the “Freedom Tower.” In 2006 the New York/New tects Michael Arad and Peter Walker. Jersey Port Authority renamed it, privately citing security Arad and Walker’s design, “Reflecting Absence,” was se- concerns. lected from 5,201 proposals from 63 countries submitted to Perhaps we should have chosen the proposed memorial a 2003 competition for memorial proposals. From the Jury’s that circulated by email in the months following September statement on the winning design: 11: a giant middle finger dominating the New York City skyline. Tactful? Maybe not. But it at least captured the right senIn its powerful, yet simple articulation of the footprints of timent: bold, united, defiant. the Twin Towers, “Reflecting Absence” has made the voids And that is the sentiment worth consecrating. September left by the destruction the primary symbols of our loss. By 11, 2001, and the following weeks revealed the strength of allowing absence to speak for itself, the designers have a nation, demonstrated in acts of compassion, courage, and made the power of these empty footprints the memorial. selflessness, from first responders who dashed into the flames At its core, this memorial is anchored deeply in the actual to communities near and far who sent aid, and gathered in events it commemorates—connecting us to the towers’ de- solidarity and prayer. struction, and more important, to all the lives lost on that We ought to have built a grand monument to that spirit. In day. Lower Manhattan a towering memorial ought to testify to the heights of which men are capable, even amid the greatest loss. Certainly emptiness is fitting: Those who lost loved ones The emptiness of September 11 was real. But it is time to reon September 11 and in the days that followed can never fill build. !
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The Gadfly
08
!"#$%&'() A Review of Dan Deacon’s America *+*',S Will Brown
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A’16
o Dan Deacon’s got a new album out, immediately presenting the listener and, like how I imagine most Dan with a sense of conflict and extreme Deacon fans reacted, I thought, “Oh, tension that remains prevalent until the nice! That’ll be fun.” Dan Deacon’s one end of “USA.” Meanwhile, several songs of the most innovative artists in con- eschew consistent beats entirely in fatemporary music, but he hardly inspires vor of a newfound focus on melody; the the kind of passionate debates and side- piano interlude in “Prettyboy” is one the drawing that other trend-setters like the most understated sections of music DeaDirty Projectors or Fleet Foxes might. con’s made yet, while “Rail” relies on the Nor has he ever shown himself to be quiet rhythm of plucked violin and cello very intellectually stimulating; he writes strings to make a gradual Kraftwerk-like high-energy dance music that sounds pulse, imitating the gentle lull of an inpractically designed for a cartoon or a terstate train ride. video game. In short, yours truly didn’t Above all, there is a predominant expect much on that front. sense of seriousness to this album that But then Mr. Deawas absent from con released Ameriprevious works. The While it’s easy to apca, a forty-three minsped-up cartoon proach [America] with a ute album designed voices may still be dismissive eye, [Dan Dea- here, but they’re to encompass the con] is more serious about inexplicably used political, geographiit than you might think... cal, and emotional to emotional effect; essence of the United Deacon’s lyrics, States. While it’s easy to approach this meanwhile, reflect upon a claustrophowith a dismissive eye, he’s more serious bic sense of shame and fear, which, he about it than you might think; the latter seems to argue, is inherent in modern half is a 21-minute suite entitled “USA,” American culture. This seriousness apsplit into four sections that feature a full plies to the production as well—gone are orchestra. But instead of merely relying the extreme disparities in volume that on the blunt sense of ambition here, Dea- Bromst’s cheap dynamics employ, while con truly shows his burgeoning maturity songs like “The Great American Desert” as a musical artist. On previous albums feature a near-shoegaze vocal delivery there was a prevalent sense of wasted that contributes more effectively to a time and lukewarm material unbefit- sense of atmosphere than any repetiting of a serious album. Spiderman of the tive keyboard line. Above all, America Rings had hastily constructed sketches suggests that Deacon has gradually inlike “Jimmy Roche” and “Trippy Green creased the quality and scope of his alSkull,” while Bromst bums since 2007, The sped-up cartoon (an album widely and this is the peak. called his most maBut can I really voices may still be here, ture, no less) had the call this a “peak” but they’re inexplicably bizarre a capella inwhen I’m merely used to emotional effect... terlude “Wet Wings.” comparing it to his Here, there is not a wasted second. past albums? Dan Deacon’s music has Dan Deacon had gained notoriety dur- reached a level that demands comparaing the Bromst recordings for his use of tive analysis with other musicians, not an electric piano, rewired to fit six times just himself. Furthermore, this album’s as many notes onto one recording; here, sense of magnitude suggests a kind of he uses more advanced polyrhythms creative output that is hard to consisthat are ultimately more streamlined tently reach. So, to be frank, I’m not enand efficient than any of the adrenaline- tirely sure where he can go from here. rush beats on previous albums. The But I can declare one statement wholeopening instrumental, “Guilford Avenue heartedly: America is one of the most Bridge,” uses a frantic cowbell beat to complex, engrossing, and altogether caemphasize its sense of nervous energy, thartic albums of the year thus far. !
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