so i'm preparing some stuff for an interview with this guy from Noo Yoik (i think?) called Barr; scribbling half-finished syllables whilst listening to his garble-garble over tinny drum pitters and trying to keep up with how quickly his weary, cracked and cracked-up voice moves across the seconds, flickering around on the internet to read snips of past press - or at least i would be, were the internet actually available and not intent on steadily consecrating all current evidence that wireless is, actually, mankind's most pathetic invention to date and reckons that just because we don't want cables we also don't want, y'know, THE INTERNET EITHER - and all that stuff and man, his words are tough. shrugs and nonchalance and pathos and being fed up and breaking out of relationships and vomiting and all sorts of that everyday stuff we seem to be doing with alarming frequency are the subjects for this weedy, nasal, weaselly voice that's like a hunched pair of shoulders in a creased and still slightly damp shirt that you find at the bottom of the washing basket 'cause there's nothing else left but you can't be bothered to load the machine with powder and fluid and blah blah blah.

you'd want to give him a hug but he'll probably be all tense beneath his wilting collar and unthreaded buttons. he's full of bitterness and sarcasm and observation of the surreal jigsaw patchwork of weird crap that happens daily but accepting, too, 'cause this is just the way life is, and your body is just a map for various routes of pain and happiness and hunger and thirst and satisfaction and quenching and back to the emptiness again, and you may as well write and talk about it on varying monotones above upright slightly untuned piano keys and splice autobiography with playing about with the truth and back to autobiography again, right? and you really may as well listen to someone do that, too, because every now and again he says something that strikes. right. through. to. the. bone.

take:

'my father had a beautiful wolf-dog named Kodiak; he gave him to the shelter because he couldn't care for him anymore, and i worried about Kodiak and was sad that maybe he'd be put down - and then my dad died.
your dad dies
and the earth dies a little every day -
cats die, snails die,
it doesn't mean that your dad didn't die:
he died
and he's dead
and what does that mean?'

on the stewing festering relationship where the relationship-ees grow gradually towards hatred for each other:

'we couldn't talk before but at least then i could try to read you
but now there's nothing; complete nothing except the rumours and hearsay and the
small kernels that can be gleaned from fucking whatever, and asking, and...*retches*
and that manifests itself into a nervous working present,
like,
"how about you get your own shelves for your own house and i'll get mine
and i won't come to your dinner party,
i'll buy my shelves DURING your dinner party down the street so i will know that
you won't be there buying shelves;
actually, i will try but they'll be closed."'

on watching (or not watching, which is usually worse) your loved one go out and get persistently, self-destructively, unassailably, wrecked:

'but i do get scared when you're three days in on a binge and i'm actually texting you back: "please don't die."'

then they probably say they promise they'll never do it again and they're going to try real damn hard to get a job and get some responsibility and stay in and watch a film with you and eat some good food and not look like they've been dragged through the apocalypse sideways - before going to an all-night crack party the next day or something.

yeah.

he's on Upset The Rhythm. they have a page for him here:
http://www.upsettherhythm.co.uk/barr.html

and this is him. looking quite small.



go forth and listen.