fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
Goddamn if this album isn't beautiful. From the moment it begins, with three twinkling strikes of a xylophone, Owel's dear me is a gorgeous, sweeping ode to the power of beauty in music. Each song across the album's 66-minute runtime brims with tenderness and passion; when, for instance, vocalist Jay Sakong sings the titular syllables of 'Pale Soft Light' during [...]
There's an old Jerry Seinfeld bit about the hazards of choosing a cold medicine. “This one's quick acting, but this one's long lasting,” he notes. “When do I need to feel good, now or later?” Weirdly, this is not so different from some of the listening choices that we make. Some albums use shortcuts to jump [...]
Two of my best friends are brothers; one is a comic artist and the other a musician. We used to play in a band together. Bands, actually. The most successful was probably our high school band, a pop-punk/screamo outfit that consistently covered both Finch's 'Letters to You' and the Limp Bizkit version of George Michael's [...]
For a few years I was lucky enough to work as a staff writer at Type In Stereo where I got to voice all my strange and needlessly in-depth opinions about music. It was a great time. So I'm happy to announce that some of my fellow writers from Type In Stereo are dusting off their [...]
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps, and builded parapets and trenches there, And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son. Wilfred Owen, 'The Parable of the Old Man and the Young' It Will Kill You Donalson sat in the deep mud, his legs pulled up to his chest, his hands wrapped [...]
Alliance Commander: "Seems odd you’d name your ship after a battle you were on the wrong side of." Malcolm Reynolds: "May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one." Firefly, ‘Bushwacked’ --- When we lost Gatsbys American Dream after their self-titled album in 2006, they were - in their own [...]
It all happened in a moment. I saw a man crouching on the highway, his back pressed against the half-wall of the median, his arms outstretched in front of him, palms outward in token of peace as the cars rushed by him in terrifying wave after terrifying wave. His face was rigid and still, his [...]
During the summer of 1999 I spent an inordinate amount of time inside, hiding from the heat by playing a computer game called Total Annihilation and listening to Silverchair's Neon Ballroom on repeat. I learned about Silverchair when I saw the video for 'Ana's Song (Open Fire)', a grinding confessional about singer Daniel Johns' battle with [...]
Let's just get this out in the open: Part of the reason that I write is that I want to live forever. I am not alone in that feeling. Surveying the members of any creative field will turn up an awful lot of similar sentiment. A brief (and highly unscientific) survey of some of the creative types [...]
In a critical scene of the film Memento, recall-challenged anti-hero Leonard Shelby laments the failings of memory. “Memory's unreliable,” he says. “Memory's not perfect, it's not even that good...[it] can change the shape of a room, it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not [...]
Songs & Stories 