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Dan Carlson
Los Angeles, California

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," and "Look Who's Stalking," for starters), you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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« October 2007 |Main| Ain't No Party Like A Scranton Party, 'Cause A Scranton Party Gets Really Self-Aware A Few Years In »

October 30, 2007

Music Video Of The Week — 13

By Dan Carlson

It's always tough to find new artists, by which I mean new to me. Everyone has those artists whose back-catalogs they're slowly building — when I go to Amoeba, I swing through the Jayhawks and Johnny Cash (to name but two) sections out of long-standing habit — but it's often harder to come across someone new whose music really connects with you. I read Paste and No Depression and do my best to try and find good music, but one of the best ways to bring new music into your life is still to have a friend point you toward something. John, fellow blogger and Pajiba staffer, recently steered me in the direction of Christopher Denny, and I'm thankful he did.1 Denny's voice is tremulous and incredible, and his country-based roots-rock mixes singer-songwriter credibility with a sound that could have been B-sides from Gold. He's honest, and sad, and hopeful, and really just a great musician. His debut album, Age Old Hunger, features some stunning tracks — "The Stars Above and My Heart In Your Hands" and the instrumental "Going Home" come to mind — but this is one of the best. Enjoy:

"Westbound Train," by Christopher Denny




1. John, if you're reading this, feel free to recommend anything you want in the future.

Comments: 3

JMW

I am reading, and I'm glad you like him. I've been listening to him a lot lately. I assume you've heard of most of the things I like, but I'll certainly keep you posted -- Denny just popped up out of nowhere. Love it when that happens.

Oct 30, 2007 10:02 AM

Carrie

Wow, I love this. Thanks for the recommendation.

Nov 1, 2007 10:06 AM

Dan, try this http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne_WXP7lUWM

Nov 5, 2007 4:10 PM

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Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
— Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
— John Stuart Mill

We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
— G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.
— Me, Fall 2003

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.
— Stephen King

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— Ask the Dust, John Fante