Click to buy the best poetry set to music, ever.

After slogging though the saccharine of School of Seven Bells, it was intensely shocking to experience the sensual explosion of poetry in this first release by Seattle’s French Letters. Let us compare two sets of lyrics about relationships:

From “Love Play” by School of Seven Bells: You take my love and leave me empty, and all you feel (is a fist) of draining sand. This wasted heart you take for granted is tired out; (tell me) what did you expect? Why would you stay; to deceive me? We’re playing this game like this is love. The longer I stay, the more you need me. I’ve made the mistake to wish this love…

From “West Ashley Crosstown” by French Letters: Reduced to fluid-soaked voicemails on the pay phone by the bar./Drunk and on a dare I tell her I went surfing,/there were no waves to speak of and I was worried about the sharks/until someone finally told me I wasn’t in the ocean to begin with.

The first is teenage romantic drivel. The second is part of an attention-grabbing collection that is the best poetry I’ve read since the pre-spokesperson Adrienne Rich. You can see the dim and dirty bar, you can smell the sour booze, you ache with laughter and pain as you take in the emptiness of pleading into a machine.

In Tongues is an experience that doesn’t come along too often: an original approach to music and poetry in a single package. The band sounds like a combination of Chicago blues and smooth New Orleans drunk: the music is tight and it sways. The sound also serves as the perfect complement to Michael Crossley’s versatile drawl and sheer talent with word play.

The poetry in the collection often paints dark pictures (“I walk these streets a yellowed skeleton/all alone, so American”) but this is the darkness of reality, not self-indulgence. It can also be outrageously imaginative (“Fried Chicken”) and movingly mundane (“A beer, a shot,/the flight of a frantic housefly, the sound of human lives.”) The one feature that all the poems have is that they are all seriously compelling. This is not an album you switch on if you need background music: it is to be heard and experienced.

When you do, you’ll find that the lines, the phrasing and the riffs frequently stick in your head. Then you’ll say to yourself, “Hey, I don’t have to listen to the same old shit today. I can listen to some qual-i-ty!”

Website: http://frenchlettersmusic.com/

Cover for In Tongues. Click to purchase this exceptional recording.

I first saw French Letters playing on the bill with Sad Face in some West Seattle bar several months ago. I knew then I liked them but damned if I could explain why. This was in part because their music doesn’t fit in the modern classify-the-shit-out-of-everything mentality. I tried to describe them to others but fell short. Poetic Lounge Band? An odd combination of Chet Atkins, Wes Montgomery and Bob Crewe? The sound of a drunken, smoky bar filled with wanderers, misfits and the usual horny bastards?

I gave up and decided I just liked them because they made me feel good. I really wanted them to make a record so I could get more out of the words than the stray lines you can pick up in a bar where everyone’s angling for a pick up.

Voila, it’s here. In Tongues has hit the streets. I ordered the CD through Bandcamp (http://frenchletters.bandcamp.com/album/in-tongues) and received the limited edition chapbook, which is essential to appreciating the French Letters experience of poetry and music.

The short review is this: In Tongues is an exceptionally compelling record from beginning to end, one that would definitely make my Top 10 List for 2011 if I had one.

And damn, they still make me feel good.

First, the band and the music, because I can see that there may be a tendency to shove the band into the background, given the power of Michael Crossley’s poetry. Michael Puglisi, John E. Naffah, Courtney Steitz and Luke Steitz form an exceptional combo, understated and tight. Since in this case the music must support and enhance the poetry, it is essential that it not detract or interfere from the poetic cadence and meaning. This never happens on In Tongues: the music, which ranges from cheesy lounge to gorgeous acoustic to semi-punk riffs, gives life to the vivid imagery.

You see this from the get-go on “When It Mattered,” a poem that painfully and satirically describes the constant search of the artist for fame and fucking. The entire poem is backed up by a simple bass line, played perfectly by Courtney Steitz. It’s a disarming opener that draws you in, makes you laugh, makes you feel a little embarrassed by the truth and makes you want to hear more.

The smoky-lounge-band persona makes its first appearance in the poem, “West Ashley Crosstown,” where the upbeat finger-snapping music contrasts beautifully with the story of relationship disconnection embedded in the Spanish moss of Charleston.

The band then takes on a sort of Dire Straits persona, where the theme of problematic relationships is extended in “The Less Girls You Know.” This one is full of “wish I’d written that” lines (but I could never duplicate Crossley’s superb delivery):

She craves the attention one would usually reserve for a good novel,

The problem is she reads more like a fortune cookie

Blake once said of Milton that “he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.” Well, Michael Crossley is a true poet of the Devil’s party and he damn well knows it. In addition to the humor and satire that punctuates the work, he is also a master at expressing the underlying truth of the many life situations characterized by  pathos. From the exceptional “Wallflower Among Women,” we hear this:

we don’t seem cool or mysterious

hitting on our waitresses

we just seem lonely and desperate

Crossley spends most of his poetic life in paradox, in contradiction, in irony, often in love or drunk or both. What I most love about his poetry is that he presents paradoxical situations full of exquisite tension without trying to come up with some bullshit resolution. He describes his approach best in the final lines of the dark dreamy mood of “Dead Letter Office”:

Sent words scrambling across the page

while my pen comes down like a bird of prey

While some pieces are stronger than others, there isn’t a single cut on the record that fails. Even the lighter “One for Buddy Holly” works in context because it’s followed by three very intense poetic experiences: “Wallflower Among Women,” “American Skeleton” and “Secret Meaning of a Girl.”

I notice that the Google description for French Letters is “Seattle’s Post Punk Poem Blues Band.” The website says, “French Letters are a unique band that combine the tributaries of spoken word poetry, jazz, rock, and the avant-garde into a single stream of musical consciousness.” Whatever. The primary message to take from this review is that In Tongues is a truly original and compelling work by one hell of a poet and one hell of a band, so get off your ass and go buy it right now.

“From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar,

When the dawn begins to crack.

It’s all part of my Autumn Almanac…”

Autumn has been knocking on the door for some weeks now. I’m not quite sure what happened to those crazy, hazy, lazy days of summer?   

School’s back in tomorrow so what better time to take a holiday – just because, after all these years, we can!    

Chris and I will be spending the next couple of weeks drinking the last of the summer wine, and hopefully catching the last of the summer rays, en France.

I was reminded today that I hadn’t posted since 18^th August. Well at least one follower has missed my journalistic endeavours!

The only excuse I can offer is that I have been absorbed by the Twitter-sphere. I decided to tentatively enter the world of tweeting about six weeks ago and within no time I was singing like a bird on a wire. In essence, the time I would normally have spent ‘blogging’ has been swallowed up, feeding my Twitter addiction.

Yes, I confess, I’ve become a slave to the quick fix world of micro blogging, in less than 140 characters. But while, at different turns, it has been interesting and informative, frenetic and funny, entertaining and exhilarating, in all honesty I’ve never found it quite as satisfying as posting Pipedreams from the Shire!

Following a session in rehab across la Manche, a period of self-imposed exile from online social networking, I intend to return to my old habit of publishing Pipedreams on a regular (at least weekly) basis – like it or not!    

Look out for ‘French letters’ (coming soon – to be posted wb 19th Sept) a somewhat tongue in cheek review (complete with Gallic shrugs) of our latest vacance en France. Bet you can’t wait – nor can I!                

By the way, having just checked out next week’s weather forecast for ‘the Shire’ it looks like France could be une bonne option.

À bientôt!

“Breeze blows leaves of a musty yellow colour,

So I sweep them in my sack.

It’s all part of my Autumn Almanac… 

Tea and toasted, buttered current buns

Can’t compensate for lack of sun

Because the summer’s all gone 

La-la-la-la…

Oh, my poor rheumatic back

Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac…”

(Raymond Douglas Davies – 1967)  

Nicky Wyvern, local racist politician has begun a candle-lit vigil outside Chicken Hut Primary. When asked what he was protesting about he simply said, ‘foreigns.’

Sister Knuckles has been laying down the law at St Fanny’s. She has banned staff wine.

Pope Benedict says that although condoms are not ”a real and moral solution, in certain cases, where the intention is to reduce the risk of infection, it can nevertheless be a first step on the way to another, more humane sexuality”.

Although the book is not a formal Vatican document, it has credibility because excerpts were published at the weekend in the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

[...]

Jesuit moral theologian Jeff King said it was significant that the Pope had highlighted intention. ”You could apply the same thing to the married couple where the husband is HIV positive … the primary intention would be to preserve life.”

He said the Pope’s unofficial change of direction was the classic way church teaching changed. ”We say ‘no, no, no’ for a long time, ‘it’s impossible’, then a small exception is made, which keeps expanding.”

Catholic commentator Paul Collins said the Pope meant the principle of preventing infection not just for homosexual sex but heterosexual married sex.

”He’s using the law of two evils, which goes back beyond the Middle Ages. It assumes that using a condom to impede the transmission of life is one evil; the other is passing AIDS to a non-infected person. He’s admitting that using a condom is a lesser evil than giving someone AIDS,” Mr Collins said.

”What he’s trying to guard against is going too far, which would mean the collapse of the whole house of cards that constitutes Catholic moral teaching on sexuality.”

The Catholic church is rather like a very big oil tanker* that takes a long time to slow down stop or turn, especially when it has got a good run up at full speed on an issue  so it should be appreciated  that this change of direction is a big deal and we may have to wait for quite a while for the church to be having a more universal blessing of the franger . Maybe this change of heart opens the way for the church to make a quid or two. Imagine if you will a new brand of “French letters” that have been blessed by the church, maybe even blessed at Lourdes, then they could even be marketed under the brand of say “Holy F#%K”  or “Blessed relief “(wouldn’t that be a winner in the marketing sense   ) where the truly faithful could both enjoy their sin and invoke a miracle of healing at the same time.

It has to be a winner for a cash strapped** church.

Cheers Comrades

* and just as evil in the eyes of the latte sippers™

** you have to fund the endless litigation over claims of abuse some how and there could be nothing more apt than doing so this way

The French alphabet is like the English one (26 letters) :

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z

You probably know that in French, a group of letter can make a specific sound, that is why so many people find the French difficult. No worries! For your first steps with the French, this lesson is only about the sound of each letter on its own.

Click on the links below and then click on the sound to hear the word:

A : un as (ace) – Listen

B : un bateau (a boat) – Listen

C : une cerise (a cherry) – Listen

D : un domino (domino) – Listen

E : un éléphant (an elephant) – Listen

F : un fil (a thread) - Listen

G : une girafe (a giraffe) - Listen

H : une hache (an axe) – Listen

I : Italie (Italy) – Listen

J : des jumelles (binoculars) – Listen

K : un kangourou (kangaroo) – Listen

L : un livre (a book) – Listen

M : un micro (microphone) – Listen

N : un nid (nest) – Listen

O : un ordinateur (a computer) – Listen

P : un parapluie (an umbrella) – Listen

Q : quatre (four) – Listen

R : une robe (a dress) – Listen

S : une souris ( a mouse) – Listen

T : une tortue (a turtle) – Listen

U : une usine (a factory) – Listen

V : un verre (a glass) – Listen

W : un wagon (coach) – Listen

X : un xylophone (xylophone) – Listen

Y : le yoga (yoga) – Listen

Z : un zèbre (zebra) – Listen

The parade consisted of a beefy fireman who’d had a drink or two, dressed as a nurse driving a tractor pulling a trailer around the streets. In the trailer was something we in the UK would call a ‘guy’, a nine foot tall painted effigy of someone to be burned on a fire. This was a papiermache figure decorated by the the primary school kids who hung out of the trailer throwing confetti at anyone dumb enough to get too close. We were dumb enough to get too close.

The parade pulled up on some ground at the back of the church and the figure was placed on the ground. There were no barriers anywhere, you could get as close as you dared and lots of the smaller kids did. The ‘nurse’ fiddled around at the back for a few seconds and the thing burst into flame, starting at the bottom and working it’s way up. We realised that fireworks had been inserted into the arms and head only when some fingers blew off with a loud bang. Kids screamed, adults laughed and some of the smaller ones started throwing stones. At the back some high ground rose up to the church above us and other kids were perched right on the edge looking down. No panic, no-one shouted to them to come down this minute.

I just heard that someone in the UK has to pay damages to another parent because their child was injured in a Bouncy Castle hired for a birthday party. Not properly supervised apparently.

The old lady who lived opposite us, and who we saw sitting out on her step watching the world go by every single fine day ( and who could still touch her toes at ninety six) died last week and I went to the funeral. All these towns have their own cemetry so there’s no need to travel very far.Some of these cemetries have long run out of space so oblongs of new land have been joined on (round here they were usually once vineyards) but as the old lady was from a family that had been in the town for generations they had their own tomb in the old cemetry.

They do things quickly here, usually within three days of the death so on the third morning most of the town lined the street outside the house waiting for the funeral to start. For those three days anybody could visit and see the body, bit like an Irish wake I suppose. The hearse was an old 1960′s grey peugeot driven by the local pompiers (firemen) who also carried the coffin out of the house. We followed the slow moving car on foot, family first, for the 10 minutes it took to reach the cemetry. Inside there wasn’t really space for everyone in the narrow allys between the tombs so people got close as best they could by taking shortcuts and coming from another direction. I realised as most of the mourners were old they’d obviously done this many times before. The coffin had been placed on trestles by the opened tomb and a few family members said some words and…….. that was it! Afterwards everybody queued to offer their ‘desoles’ to the family in a small empty room just before the exit .

Now, what I wanted to point out was that though this was a small community in what was Catholic southern France not far from Catholic Northern Spain there was no sign of a priest anywhere. No single mention of God either or anything even vaguely religious. Nor any sign of an undertaker now that I think of it. Just the community and their own words about one of their own. It made sense to me but that’s a personal thing. I wonder what God fearing Americans would make of it? It also occurred to me lately that in my three years here I’d never once seen a priest or a nun. Sooner or later you’d see a few even in wicked old London – but here?

By the way the old lady always credited her longevity to never having eaten dairy products, something a doctor had warned her off years ago. “What, not even yoghurt”? we said once. “Yoghurt”? she replied. “That’s not dairy”…

Or maybe not? I was thinking this just before we slowed to edge round a car
stopped on the verge. The driver had his back to the traffic and was taking a leak.
You see this all the time, and no-body cares so maybe it’s only the tourists who
are embarrassed by using the condom machine or taking a not very private toilet
break?

It’s vendange (grape harvest) time and enormous machines are wheezing up and
down the little village streets where their vigneron owners store them all year
waiting for just this month. A weird business model that – if you think about it. I
mention this because my partner has seen fit to lumber us with a rescue dog
(wilfred!) who’s taken a liking to grapes and can’t believe that the things are
everywhere. As soon as he’s off the leash he’s away down the rows of vines and
picking his own at will. Lucky it’s not the hunting season – yet.

It’s still warm and sunny here and as an ex londoner I check the Uk news now and
then and output seems really surreal these days. A few weeks ago everybody was
drowning or being eaten by savage dogs or kicked to death by feral hoodies. It’s a
strange face that Britain presents to the world these days, or as Brian Sewell the
art critic said on radio, “it’s becoming a shit country run by shits”. I know that’s
not the whole truth, I spent most of my life there but it must be offputting to
prospective visitors don’t you think?

I think that was thunder outside. If it rains now it’ll be the first proper rain since
the spring and now I’m thinking of just growing cactus and a little olive tree as
they don’t need too much water. We’ve already got the tree. Each year it gives us
one jar of olives, and that’s a mad business model too if you think about it.
But they do taste good!