2009 Pulitzer Prizes Awarded

“2009 Pulitzer Prizes for Letters, Drama and Music”

from The New York Times

Focus on your writing at the Attic Writers’ Workshop

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Give Me Five

Why Beethoven still matters.

Ted Libbey & Fred Child Recommend Beethoven’s 5th & 7th Symphonies

from NPR

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Neko Case Has a Point to Make

The kid from Tacoma.

“Wild Thing”

“The foundations of Case’s music are still — somewhere down there, almost subterranean — country and indie rock, but for some time now her melodies have been growing more complex, the instrumentations more varied and ambitious, the modulations more surprising, the lyrics more imagistic, to the point, sometimes, of surreal impenetrability:

Who led you to this hiding place?
Whose lightning threads spun silver tongues?
The red bells beckon you to ride, 
A handprint on the driver’s side.

Written by Daniel Menaker.

from The New York Times Magazine

DB notes:  Voice is steely as a bullet.

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Next on Take 2:  American conservatism may be dead or just sleeping. But it’s unified in the United States Congress.

What the Cat Drug In

Slowed down to a crawl.

“Cat Power: The ‘Dark End’ Of Depressive Soul”

“Over the course of the ’00s, Cat Power (a.k.a. singer Chan Marshall) has charted a course from depressive alt-folk singer-songwriter to depressive soul interpreter. It’s been a surprisingly easy fit: Marshall has issued several amazing covers discs, culminating in 2008’s odd, remarkable Jukebox.

“Dark End of the Street is an all-covers, vinyl- and digital-only EP composed of Jukebox leftovers. Its title track reworks the 1967 Muscle Shoals hit first made famous by Southern soul singer James Carr and ably re-interpreted by everyone from Linda Ronstadt to Afghan Whigs.

“A dark tale of cheating lovers that’s a chronicle of trouble foretold (“They’re gonna find us someday”), it’s a hard song to mess up. The best versions of this track have an air of enervated misery which Marshall, the human embodiment of enervated misery, nails completely. Slowed to a crawl, heavy on reverb and regret, her rendition is quavery and grim — a logier version than its creators must have intended, but somehow just right.” Written by Allison L. Stewart.

from National Public Radio

Listen: “Dark End of the Street” by Cat Power

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DB notes: She does a rocking sultry version of Bob Dylan’s “Stuck in Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,” too, on the soundtrack for Todd Haynes’ movie “I’m Not There.”

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