I only became aware of Thomas Harding’s new book, Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz
The subtitle is a little misleading, as this book isn’t so much the story of a chase as it is a pair of contemporary portraits of two German men whose lives headed in opposite directions with the rise of the Third Reich, setting them on courses that end in one hunting down and capturing the other after the war’s conclusion. The chase itself isn’t long, so most of the book is spent getting us up to that point. Harding’s achievement here is making both biographies interesting enough that the reader is compelled to keep turning the pages – and in presenting Rudolf in a neutral fashion even though he’s one of the worst monsters in our species’ history.
That Rudolf is Rudolf Höss, the man who oversaw the construction of the concentration camp at Auschwitz and devised the scheme where the pesticide Zyklon-B was used to exterminate Jews and other prisoners in huge numbers, with well over a million killed at the camp. Höss’ eventual devolution into a calm, apathetic architect of history’s most efficient mass producer of death starts from early childhood – including a fanatical father who died young and a lack of any close ties to family members – but also reveals a tremendous amount about the “just following orders” mentality of so many members of the SS, the Nazi Party, and of the German population as a whole. While running Auschwitz, Höss would return home each night to his villa just beyond the camp’s walls, where he lived with his wife and five children in a luxurious house staffed with slaves drawn from the prison.
Hanns, the hero of the story and the author’s great-uncle, is Hanns Alexander, a German Jew born into fortunate circumstances that would largely disappear before he fled to the UK with his family in 1936. Left without a state after the Nazi regime revoked their citizenship, Hanns chose to join the British army, which set up a separate unit for refugees seeking to fight their former countries that allowed them to serve in non-combat roles (because, you know, can’t trust ’em). After the war ended, Hanns became a private hunter of war criminals in his spare time, eventually parlaying that into a formal role that led him to recapture the puppet ruler of Luxembourg, Gustav Simon, and to earn a command to track down Höss himself. Hanns’ own drive to fight against Germany – more than fighting for Britain or the allies – derived from the personal injustice that he underwent when he and his family had to flee from the Nazis, as well as the more general sense of outrage from the massive crimes the German state and its people had committed against the Jews and other so-called enemies of the state.
Höss’ testimony played a pivotal role in the Nuremberg trials because of his willingness to admit his own role in the Holocaust and in the chain of command that made the mass murders possible, which means Hanns himself contributed to the convictions and executions of many of the surviving leaders of the Third Reich. Höss comes across as a weirdly complex character, a loving father and family man who beat down his rare compunctions over gassing hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children because he refused to show weakness to his superiors or to those under his command. Did he do this for fear for his own safety in a regime where guards who showed mercy to prisoners would be beaten or killed? Or was he simply nursing his own desire for success and praise by trying to set an example of fanaticism that others would revere?
The conflict between Höss’ work and family selves, his apparent apathy toward his victims, and his unclear motivation for his actions at Auschwitz make him the far more compelling character than Alexander, whose life is much easier to understand. Hanns watched fellow Germans pull the rug out from under his comfortable life, and his personal fury combined with that from his moral compass to turn him into a rabid Nazi hunter, yet one who declined to discuss his role in capturing these criminals for most of the rest of his life. It’s a simple narrative for a man’s life, one that’s easy to fathom. Turning into a cockroach the way Höss did is a lot harder to understand, and it’s part of why I couldn’t avert my eyes from Hanns and Rudolf until he’d been hanged.
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I’ve been busy plowing through more titles from the Bloomsbury 100 as well, but nothing that merited a long post here. Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March, which draws parallels between the swift decline of a noble Austrian family and that of the Hapsburgs’ reign, heading into the disaster of World War I that led to the breakup of their sprawling, unwieldy empire. It dragged horribly, however, with Dickensian descriptions and an absurd amount of moralizing over peccadilloes that barely merit mention today.
Theodor Fontaine’s Effi Briest, named by Thomas Mann as one of the six most essential novels ever written, was a stronger read, even though the morality play also fails to resonate today. Based on a true story from the late 1800s, Effi Briest tells the title character’s tragic history from her arranged marriage to a man much her senior through her extramarital affair with the lothario Crampas to her divorce and fall from grace. It’s far more believable than the similar Madame Bovary and less prolix than Anna Karenina, two similarly-themed novels, working more along the lines of The Awakening, another novel of adultery where the plight of the woman in a male-dominated, moralistic society takes center stage.
Eugenie Grandet is the second Balzac novel I’ve read, along with Old Goriot, both part of his Human Comedy novel sequence. It’s another tragedy, this one the story of Eugenie’s miserly father and how his parsimony destroys his wife, himself, and, even after his death, his daughter, when even a small count of generosity would have saved them all. I’ve found Balzac’s prose to be his great strength – I enjoy his phrasing and descriptions yet never find them slow or monotonous – but the story in Eugenie Grandet had less of the dark comedy that made Old Goriot a better read.
Next up: Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native
, but have seen little breakthrough here in the U.S. other than having HGTV rip off their song “Fluorescent Adolescent” for the theme music to the show “Income Property.” Their first album was smart, often obnoxious, and punchy, a nod to old-fashioned rock-and-roll values but with more thoughtful and clever lyrics than their influences could ever deliver. Lead singer Alex Turner showed an innate sense for melody and drama, which he developed further over the Monkeys’ next three albums as well as with the baroque-pop side project The Last Shadow Puppets, but the band’s overall sound seemed directionless as they moved further from what made them instant stars in the first place.
, released earlier this week, represents the band’s first clear, deliberate step forward since their debut, an evolutionary shift that regains the immediacy of Whatever People Say I Am… while introducing heavier elements, larger influences from the soul and funk genres, and ever-sharper lyrics. It’s their best album yet and worthy of the Mercury Prize nomination it earned the day after its release.
, and Homme appears on two tracks here – is evident throughout the album, as the Monkeys have borrowed a bit of QotSA’s blend of melodic sludge rock on tracks like “Arabella,” “Do I Wanna Know?,” and “One for the Road,” with Homme singing background vocals on the last one of those. The key to QotSA’s popularity has always been that Homme has the heart of a pop songwriter, and has the ability to translate that sensibility into other genres, like the stoner metal of Kyuss or the bar-blues of Eagles of Death Metal. Turner showed he could branch out with The Last Shadow Puppets, whose underappreciated album was like a lost 12-inch from the age of mono, but now he’s bringing that broader songcraft back home with an album that is heavy and slow, sinuous, and eloquent. It’s his best work yet, more mature and confident without ever seeming cocky, functioning as a complete work as well as a collection of great singles. If America doesn’t catch on to the Arctic Monkeys now, they likely never will.
on the Bloomsbury 100. Another novel of deep social criticism, Kipps represents Wells’ attack on the gulf between haves and have-nots in late 19th century England while simultaneously rejecting socialism as a solution, wrapped in the envelope of a rags-to-riches-to-rags romance that works effectively on its own and as a delivery mechanism for Wells’ polemics.
, which appears on both the Bloomsbury and Guardian lists, although it took a solid week to get through the tedious prose and absurdly long letters between the main characters. Focusing on a romantic rivalry between the rake the Viscomte de Valmont and his quondam paramour the Marquise de Merteuil, both gleefully free of morals and engaged in multiple intrigues simultaneously. Their rivalry leads Valmont to “seduce” (rape, in modern terms) the 15-year-old ingenue Cécile de Volanges, which in turns sets their mutual downfall in motion.
, another selection from the Bloomsbury 100, and a novel that has appeared on at least two lists of the most important novels in the German canon.
a lot more than I actually did. I loved 
and at least enjoyed the prose of Notes from Underground, while several of you said you thought I’d like Karamazov given what other novels I’ve said I like. 
.” I mentioned this in a chat a month or so ago, but this might be the song of the year for me, mixing clever imagery, a tremendous hook, and enough musical twists to make it fit better on the alternative charts than on the pop charts, although a crossover feels inevitable. It’s just too catchy to remain on the fringes, and yet combines enough elements from different subgenres to feel fresh yet familiar at heart.
.” I can’t wait for this album to drop in September, especially with how promising this song is, as well as last year’s one-off single “R U Mine?” This one has to be the best slow-tempo songs the Monkeys have ever released, but without giving up Alex Turner’s trademark sneer or wordplay like “Been wondering if your heart’s still open/and if so I wanna know what time it shuts.”
.” I absolutely love this song, which reminds me of The National but with a vocalist who actually wants you to hear what he’s saying. The rest of the album doesn’t quite measure up, unfortunately, making for better background listening as atmospheric rock (not emo, but atmo?) that lacks the bright definition of “Diamonds.”
.” Final candidate for song of the year from this batch (on top of a few tracks from the April post). Is smart-pop a genre? If so – see what I did there? – this Aussie duo may define it.
.” I just want to mention that I think this is a gorgeous pop song, ruined by the fact that the lead singer mumbles his way through the vocals. Dude, if you can’t get up for this song, why the hell should I? It’s begging for a cover version with a singer who lets it out. (The track is available free through that link.)
. Album of the year so far. I 
(album). Overall, I was disappointing in Fitz’s sophomore effort. It’s not as punchy as their debut, and I don’t think it has the breakout potential of that disc’s lead single, “Moneygrabber,” and has one very radio-friendly song in “Out of My League” that’s a little too poppy for me. Their lyrical subject matter really needs to extend beyond thinly-told tales of romance and heartbreak. The sleeper track on the album is the more uptempo “Spark,” which is one of the few songs where co-singer Noelle Scaggs gets at least equal time with Fitz himself; I’d also check out “Break the Walls” and “MerryGoRound” if you liked their first disc and want something more along those lines.
.” (
.” Kind of an updated Erasure with vocals more along the lines of Violator-era Depeche Mode. The song has been all over Sirius XM’s Alt Nation, and has been a hit all over Europe and in Australia, making it seem inevitable it’ll cross over here at least to some extent. It’s just a very good electronic/pop song, with an effervescent synth backing behind rising and falling vocals that include the line you won’t get out of your head, “How am I gonna be an optimist about this?”
.” The PA folks at Petco played the first few bars of this track during the PG All-American Classic, which just about knocked me out of my seat given how under-the-radar and out-of-date this band’s blues-heavy hard-rock sound is. They’re edgier and rougher than their hair metal predecessors, but it wouldn’t be insane to call the song the result of a lab experiment to cross Whitesnake and the Black Crowes. Also, it rocks.
.” They just turn out 2-3 pop gems like this on every album, don’t they? The album comes out on the 27th of this month. I’d rate this track ahead of “No You Girls,” but behind “The Fallen,” “The Dark of the Matinee,” or “Ulysses.” It’s more of Franz Ferdinand’s version of a great highway driving song.
(album). First two tracks, “No Magnatone” (in 3/4 time, a Rogue Wave staple that once ended up with the Dancing With the Stars band massacring “Lake Michigan” during a waltz) and “College” are standouts. I could make a case for the closer, “Everyone Wants to Be You,” but it goes on far too long for me to stick with it till the end. Everything in between is filler, some bland, some outright soporific. The deluxe version, linked here, also has a half-hearted cover of one of my favorite tracks from the 1990s, Screaming Trees’ “Nearly Lost You.”
.” Death metal song of the year so far, although the upcoming Carcass release may change that. The screaming-and-growling thing feels very silly to me – you sound like Cookie Monster and are as threatening as Prairie Dawn – but the music underneath the vocals here is tight and intense, a rare bit of evolution in the post-thrash/grindcore environment.
.” More synth-pop, with a heavier feel than Bastille but just as strong of a hook and better overall energy. It’s amazing to me to hear so much of the synth-heavy sound of early ’80s New Wave come back around, but with tighter production and less obvious pop-radio pandering. I also like Smallpools’ use of a story, or at least the shell of a story, of being trapped somewhere and under attack, while refusing to surrender, to back up the energy of the guitar and keyboard lines.
.” I want to call this jazz, but it’s more jazz in philosophy than in practice. There’s an experimental feel to this, with offbeat piano lines, aposiopetic stops, and internal references to earlier parts of the track. It’s way out there for me.
.” Three listens to their new album, …Like Clockwork, still didn’t sell me on it, but at least we have this lead track, a throwback to Kyussian slow-jam headbanger days, to keep QotSA alive in our hearts. Or something. I concede this album probably demands more time from me. The track is free through that amazon link.
.” Less lo-fi than early post-punk/new wave to my ears, a little disinterested vocally (not quite as much as The National), and not as exciting as DIIV, formed by former Beach Fossils member Zachary Cole Smith, just subtle and concise and pulsing with a sort of compulsive negative energy.
.” I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I thought Bankrupt! was a huge disappointment, barely building at all on their last disc, the Grammy-winning Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. “Entertainment,” the lead single, at least boosts the sound from their previous album with a stomping energy, like a song from the soundtrack to a Cirque du Soleil show.
.” The music frames a perfect pop song, undone by lyrics that turn the band into a bad blonde joke: “Waves/picking you up/pushing you down/they’re always around.” Like, deep, man.
.” Inevitable comps to the Go-Gos and the Runaways abound, although I think they’re probably going to end up staring up at the Savages more than anyone else. “Dead in Your Head” stays low in the zone, with a sludgy feeling and lethargic pace under a superficial story of the emotional costs of regret.
.” I get a little “Chelsea Dagger” out of this track, a sort of grimy yet lambent confection that clocks in at 3:13 and would feel too long at 3:30. Sometimes you can just hear a band gunning for more airplay within the confines of their existing sound; this song pretends to machismo, but when Mona drops the “hey hey hey-ey-ey-eh,” they’re quietly hoping you sing along.
.” I’ve been of the general opinion that the Brits do intelligent, accessible rock music better than we do for years, but Australia is starting to gain on us as well, with Jagwar Ma following the Cut Copy path. There’s a distinctive Aussie-rock sound here, with lo-fi production, stomping percussion, and choruses that feel like they’re holding something back to maintain the tension into the next verse. The track is currently free through that link.
.” We draw some funny lines around songs and artists, pigeonholing them into specific genres so we know what stations are and aren’t allowed to play them. “Time to Run” finds itself boxed in as alternative music, or folk-rock, when it’s more country than anything else – think David Gray doing country, without the whole my-tractor’s-sexy nonsense that has reduced contemporary country music to antiseptic idiocy.
.” Similar to Lord Huron with a country-folk-crossover vibe, less overtly country than “Time to Run,” a definite step up from H&H’s last album. Their new disc drops on October 15th.
.” A straight-up pop song that never crossed over from alternative radio. Solid, better than what you’ll hear on pop radio these days, but not as good as the other songs I cover here.
.” Worth a listen, mostly for the chorus, although the harmonies have been overproduced to the point that the individual voices are flattened beyond recognition, like someone in marketing figured they’d get more airplay on soft-rock stations that way. 
.” I loved their last album, 
, which I discovered thanks to recommendations from several of you. This song doesn’t quite hit the mark for me, mostly because of the walking keyboard line that turns a dreamy alternative track into a slightly twee space-pop song. If they just took that one part out, it would be tremendous.
.” Their best track since “Wolf Like Me” from their 2006 Return to Cookie Mountain album, “Mercy” is a fierce, fast-paced rocker with clever, alliterative lyrics. It seems to be a one-off single for now, with no announcement about a forthcoming album, unfortunately.
.” This one song is better than the entire Daft Punk album put together. Yeah, the repetitive vocal sample thing isn’t my thing – it’s been fifteen years or so since that appeared on mainstream tracks, so maybe we could try something new? – but that bass line is tremendous, and if you’re only going to have four lines of lyrics, these are good choices.