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Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the stu-dent newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and sta( of the An-napolis campus.Opinions expressed within are the sole responsibility of the author(s). The Gad-fly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way neces-sary to publish a professional, informa-tive, and thought-provoking newsmaga-zine.The Gadfly meets under the BBC Whomping Willow on every blue moon. Articles should be submitted by Friday at 11:59 PM to sjca.gadfly@gmail.com.

Nathan Goldman • Editor-in-ChiefIan Tuttle • Editor-in-ChiefHayden Pendergrass • Layout EditorSasha Welm • CartoonistAndrew Kriehn • Sta(Kevin Norris • Sta(Charles Zug • Sta(

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Sebastian AbellaWill BrownAlvaro DuranPamela Kraus

Daniel KraftHenley MooreErik G. NeaveGrace Tyson

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On behalf of the senior class, we would like to express our frustration and dis-appointment with the size of our classes this year. Our time at St. John’s has

shown us that, for discussion-based classes, a small number of students is crucial to fostering an engaging and respectful learning environment, one in which every student has the opportunity to be heard.

We were told when applying to this school that tutorials would have between 12 and 15 students. The College website now says that tutorials and laboratories have 13 to 16 students, but even this does not reflect this year’s senior class sizes. Most senior tutorials and laboratories have 17 students; this is the size of a small seminar and is not conducive to the kind of rigorous, fruitful work that the Program is meant to foster. Such large classes are not what we were promised coming into St. John’s and are not conducive to the education we expected from our senior year.

Sincerely,

Daniel KraftGrace Tyson

We appreciate your notifying us on behalf of the seniors about the serious con-cerns regarding the size of senior tutorials and laboratories. As tutors, we

share the very concerns you express. The increase in class size is not what we ever would have wanted and we tried hard to avoid it. Let me say briefly what occurred.

We settle the teaching slate usually just after spring break. This year we adjusted the slate several times after that date because of enrollment uncertainty and only finalized it in late April, when we thought we had a firm sense of how many sections of each class we would need. We learned in mid-summer, however, that there were more returning students than we expected, which shifted the numbers just enough to make both junior and senior classes larger than we know is best. The size of junior tutorials was to be most seriously a(ected. We immediately decided to try to add more sections for both juniors and seniors. In order to do this, of course, we must ask tutors on leave to teach. We were able to add another section to junior tutorials and laboratory, as well as another senior seminar, but we were not able to provide tutors for additional sections of senior tutorials.

We hope that this outline provides a better sense of how it happens that class sizes are not always what we wish them to be.

Yours truly,

Pamela KrausDean

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! Chauncey Gardiner

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How did you come to be a tutor at St. John’s?By the time I finished my Ph.D., I had already heard much about St. John’s through David Lachterman (R.I.P.)—one of the two main advisors to my doctoral dissertation and an alumnus of the College. Some years later, I happened to find myself in need of a job and had just had the charming good fortune of meeting Eva Brann in person, who was dean at the time. She suggested I apply.

What classes are you teaching this year?Freshman math, Sophomore Language, and Freshman Semi-nar.

What was the biggest adventure you’ve ever had?You mean apart from my ongoing journey in this ever-aston-ishing, constantly intriguing, dappled realm of light and shad-ow? Memorable co-adventures seem to me many: camping out for the first time in my life, being eight years old and catching a three-foot eel, hiking up Mt. Ruapehu, tramping around Lake Waikaremoana, swimming under the Waitakere falls, earn-ing a living gill-netting on the the Hauraki Gulf, reducing all my belongings to a single suitcase and heading for the United States, hiking the Cascades, climbing Mt. St. Helens, canoe-ing on the Chattahoochee, running my first marathon, singing Palestrina’s Pope Marcellus Mass one voice to a part, looking out from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, sprinting the track at Olympia, paying my respects at Thermopylae, exploring the Whirinaki forest, picking wild blueberries and chanterelle mushrooms in the Dalarna woods of Sweden. I could go on, as you may already have begun to realize.

What is the single most important piece of advice you would like to give to freshmen (or upperclassmen)?It’s not really for me to say whether my own advice is impor-tant or not, but one thing I would o!er to freshmen: Waste no time getting as busy as you can making as many mistakes as you can in front of your peers and tutors; acknowledged error will drive your learning far, far better than anything else ever will; silent confusion, as you might already have started to sus-pect, gets you nowhere. As for upperclassmen, of course, you should carry on making as many mistakes as you can in front of your peers etc., etc.

What is your favorite seminar book and why?Many who know me would probably expect me to answer, the Republic. But Plato’s Republic is just too damned weird and forbidding and obscure to count as a favorite. My warmest responses are to: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, because I’ve watched it help more young souls than any other great book I know; Shakespeare’s Richard II, for its stunning blend of deep political wisdom and gorgeous poetry; and George Eliot’s Mid-dlemarch, not only for its also great art, but for its many gener-ous insights into the modern and, well, the middling.

What is your least favorite seminar book and why?That’s a toss-up between Calvin’s Institutes and the Enneads of Plotinus. Why? Because I loathe untestable theory-spin-ning, and untestable theory-spinning dressed up as spiritual profundity is even more loathsome. I do, on the other hand, have to acknowledge that the seminar on Plotinus usually goes

pretty well—providing, that is, you don’t stick too closely to the text.

What is your favorite non-Program book ?Adam’s Task by Vicki Hearne (R.I.P.). Who’d have thought a book ostensibly on animal training written by a poet could be so full of wisdom-love? It is, though—being, among other things, an indispensable thesaurus on the nature of thumos and its centrality in the soul, both animal and therefore also human. Vicki Hearne once gave a Friday Night Lecture at the College; I think it’s the only time we’ve ever had a Border Col-lie do retrieval and scent work on the FSK stage.

And yet for all my enthusiasm, some other, more primordial voice in me cries out to add that my most beloved non-Pro-gram book is Lord of the Rings. Perhaps I could on some other occasion spell out exactly why I love it so—notwithstanding all the other, apparently serious, weighty books so many of us can be so clever about—but I’m afraid the simple declaration will have to do for now.

What is your biggest pet peeve (that students do) in class?Saying, “I’m confused,” when what’s really meant is, “I dis-agree.”

Let me add, though, that peeves are by definition minor and ought to be concerned—as is the peeve just mentioned—with things that could easily be otherwise. There are plenty of other things students do that vex or dispirit me, but, because they’re mostly to be expected and all but unavoidable, I’m obliged to work on my own patience and fortitude rather than indulge my initial and perhaps only grumpy aversions.

What is your favorite St. John’s tradition and why?Oh, the Freshman Concert. I’m afraid we talk about “commu-nity” altogether too much—as if holding up a good and beau-tiful hope amounted forthwith to its actualization—but once a semester in the Great Hall, there’s the real thing: sparkling before our eyes, ringing in our ears, and reverberating through our very bones.

What is your favorite class to be a tutor for and why?Sophomore Language. Freshman jitters and pretensions are on average over with; cynicism, apathy, and disillusion haven’t yet, for the most part, taken hold. But more important, in sophomore language we’ve the chance to be at genuine in-tellectual leisure (scholê) in studying at least a couple of the truly great among the great books. We get to chew, mull, and wrestle, instead of just dally and be titillated. Furthermore, the otherwise varying claims of analysis, sensibility, and judgment are obliged to find their way together as bearing on a single, artful whole; there’s even a chance of getting to sense their subtle, ultimate symphony.

*Let me conclude with a thank-you to the Gadfly sta! for its invitation to play along in its recently established party-game. There’s something undoubtedly light-hearted about the ques-tions, but not I think light-minded. We rational animals de-light in learning—as though uncovering secrets—what serious others might honestly feel and believe. Occasions to well serve that natural, and in my view proper, curiosity come in a num-ber of viable guises. !

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Nathan Goldman A’14

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!"#$%&'(#! Painter Bob

!)*+,'#+-#! Connor Callahan A’14True transience is not momentscrashing, falling over one anothercareening, slipping through all of ourfingers, running away, fleeting, flyinggrains of sand, crumbling brick, roughapproximations of infinitesimally smallnumbers, blood beating against thetemple walls.

Real transience is not the sunset over the baythe raindrop echoes o! the pond, the sweatyhot passion of an early autumn’s noon, thedeath-defying uniform acceleration of a bodyhurling itself into cold, black water as the starstrace out the Cartesian plot of my heart, the scentof incense as the earth lays dormant and dead,immune to my power, unfeeling towards mydigging, not caring that only months priorI cut out a chunk of its best sod in the indian summer—probably its heart. A giant gash of an xright over the waste pumped in.

Transience is not, nothing, but not, something, real.For what does not endure cannot last, and whatcannot stand the test of time is bound up in the past.Permanence is reserved for those who have no shotin purgatory. Damned to bliss and blessed with burns.

The spirit of deep inquiry that permeates this campus is among its finest qualities. We tend to be insatiably curious

and unimpressed by easy answers. We doubt and we wonder incessantly—about the works we read, the world we inhabit, our own thoughts and actions. But it is most di(cult to ques-tion in earnest those things dearest to us, and the College is something most of us hold dear. Especially given how the Col-lege has chosen to portray itself recently—as a last bastion of a bygone Golden Age-love of wisdom—it is not uncommon for students to feel this is “the only college for them.” What a rare and wonderful thing to find a cohort so invested in and excited about the project it has set for itself.

And yet. The problem: we might become so invested, so enamored, that it becomes di(cult to apply that same prized critical inquiry to the very institution that fosters it.

The aim of this irregular column is to examine St. John’s. I want to ask why we do some of the things we do, to investi-gate whether the reasoning is sound, and to propose ways in which we might better accomplish our purposes. What is this column not? It is not a venue for my own pet quibbles about minor points on the Program. (If you want to hear why I’d like to see the Calvin selections changed or why Ptolemy shouldn’t be split between freshman and sophomore math, find me on the Quad.) On the other end of the spectrum, it is not a ques-tioning of the Program’s fundamental principles: the value of reading original texts, discussion classes, or an all-required, multidisciplinary curriculum. Taking as granted the value of the Program as an idea—admittedly, one subject to wide-var-ied interpretation—I mean only to consider and question some of the ways we go about implementing it. I hope the result will be at least a better understanding of St. John’s’ virtues and flaws and why we do what we do. !

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T!" G#$%&' 05

Wrapping up a fairly lettered, if disappointing, speech at the Democratic National Convention, Obama jeered,

“If the critics are right that I’ve made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.” What nonsense, I thought. Is there any evidence that Obama and the Democratic Party haven’t unfurled their sails to the popular winds?

The president is happy to sit by and watch the annihila-tion of Syria by a sick dictator without o(ering anything more than a few scraps of support to the opposi-tion. There is certainly no need to embroil U.S. troops on the ground, but to watch the incessant bombardment of civilians play out without firing a single warning shot or dropping a single bomb marks America with the stain of impotence and indi(er-ence. It’s likely the president is reluctant to militarily engage in Syria due to the fractured state of the op-position and the multitude of jihadists within. But to ignore the problem is to ensure that when Assad falls, Syria will be open to any and all to fill its void—a country replete with sec-tarian suicide killings and midnight massacres. Once that hap-pens, we will have no choice but to involve ourselves. Bartle Bull of The Weekly Standard makes a compelling argument that al-Qaeda may not get the foothold it wants in the country, but our present course of inaction leaves the Syrian people to continue paying in blood for the Iranian- and Russian-backed Assad. This nightmare that Obama’s ineptitude is leading us to is a gruesome gamble of millions of lives.

Even as Obama’s campaign turns to post-convention mode, the fighting in Aleppo is intensifying. How exactly, if Hillary Clinton has deemed the fall of Assad “inevitable,” are the rebel fighters sup-posed to defend themselves against gunships and warplanes with the pit-tance of support the U.S. has given them? Looking at a map of Syria, you’ll see that most of the population is dis-tributed in an arch from the western coast toward Aleppo and down into the Euphrates valley. The Aleppo Governorate, one of Syria’s 14 administrative divisions, is the keystone of this arch and home to more than 4 million people —a quarter of the country’s population. Whoever takes Aleppo splits the country in half. It is this battle, if no other, that Obama should be focused on winning. Turkey is pushing for a no-fly zone at the U.N. The president should enact that measure even over Russian and Chinese opposition.

But President Obama has always been frustratingly hesitant to do anything “unilaterally.” Thus we come back to the con-

cluding lie of his convention speech. Obama does nothing if he doesn’t have a coalition or public support behind him. He publicly announced the retreat of American forces from Af-ghanistan in 2014—e(ectively telling the population that had bet on the U.S. to win the conflict that they need to fend for themselves or accept the sinister tyranny of Hamid Karzai. In Libya, Obama let Qaddafi’s killing squads operate without re-proach until public outcry became too great and he was safely backed up by a U.N. resolution. In Iran, Obama barely made a

peep when the government attacked civil-ians protesting the stolen election of 2009. In Israel, Obama demanded a complete settlement freeze as a step on his “Road Map to Peace.” Israeli prime minister Ben-jamin Netanyahu instead provided a half-hearted, ten-month moratorium that did not include East Jerusalem, then humili-

ated the U.S. by announcing new settlement projects during a visit from Vice President Biden a few months later. Obama’s response? He backpedaled, ending the push for a halt to West Bank settlements, infuriating the Palestinian allies that had placed their trust in the U.S., and vetoing a U.N. resolution calling the settlements illegal. All this to placate the Republi-cans and secure the Jewish vote.

This isn’t anything new from the Democratic Party. I was recently looking over various politicians’ reactions to 9/11. Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York, for example, railed furiously at the time that “it’s not a question of finding a partic-ular person and putting him on trial. It’s a question of waging war against those who are waging war on us and making clear to countries that deal with them or harbor them that they are

not friends of the United States and will su(er the consequences.”

Eleven years later, his website asks, “Why should we continue pouring billions of dollars into an intractable mess when we should be devoting those funds to our own economy?”

Democrat Bob Graham said at the time that the US was “not going to find the kinds of spies we need in monasteries.” Fast forward to 2009: What was Mr. Graham doing? Swearing up and down that he had no knowl-edge of any waterboarding. Forget “stay the course”—Demo-crat politicians have proven again and again that they’ll prosti-tute themselves and forget whatever promises they once made in order to get your vote. There lie the past eleven years of doublespeak and opinion poll-adjusting from a rotten, vacu-ous party that will embrace anyone and anything—so long as the numbers are right. !

!"#$%&'$&()*+),-.&."&)/"00Alvaro Duran GI

“Democrat politicians have prov-en again and again that they’ll prostitute themselves and forget whatever promises they once made in order to get your vote.

“ Is there any evidence that Obama and the Democratic Party haven’t unfurled their sails to the popular winds?

There may be no real purpose in writ-ing another piece in disapproval

of college rankings and their inherent subjectivity. Malcolm Gladwell wrote one for The New Yorker criticizing the most popular college ranking guide, U.S. News, and their algorithm for determin-ing the order. You could likely find many other recent pieces in national publica-tions ri!ng on the subject. St. John’s’ own website features a brief letter to U.S. News that summarizes the major criticisms. And though I know as a good Johnnie I shouldn’t care, I can’t help but be curious about the rankings when they come out every year, particularly about how St. John’s fares in them.

U.S. News is a bit unfair to St. John’s; it ranks the College at #139 among Liberal Arts Colleges, despite the minor detail that the school does not participate in the surveys. How can you be ranked if you don’t play the game? The Washing-ton Monthly, on the other hand, ranks St. John’s at a respectable nineteenth place this year. Saying “Top 20 in the Country” sounds better to your friends, though.

Still, the most entertaining rankings are those from the Princeton Review, which does not boast of any quantifiable data, but rather embraces the subjectiv-ity of student surveys. St. John’s places in a number of categories, including “Classroom Discussions Encouraged,” “Professor’s Get High Marks,” and “There’s a Game?”

Can we learn anything from these rankings? Discrepancies between the two campuses suggest that the rank-ings are determined arbitrarily. In the Princeton Review rank-ings, Santa Fe nudges one spot ahead of Annapolis in “Classroom Discus-sions Encouraged,” yet makes no appearance in “Best Classroom Experience,” where Annapolis is spotted at eighth.

The incongruity between the campuses is notably ap-parent in Newsweek’s list of “Most Rigorous Colleges” from 2011, where Santa Fe is in first place, and Annapolis

is seven spots behind, despite the cam-pus’s nearly identical curriculums. The 2012 edition of the publication fails to rank either campus in the top 25—pos-sibly due to the fact that the College dropped any books deemed “too rigor-ous” for the upcoming year.

Though heavily criticized, college rankings will not disappear anytime soon. U.S. News, among many other pub-lications, does better with its “College Rankings” issue than issues containing real news. What remains to be asked is: why the popularity to begin with? Maybe because rankings o"er a simple answer to a complex question.

Surely Johnnies can relate to this when friends and family engage them in small talk about school. Questions of majors and sports are more challeng-ing to answer from a St. John’s student’s perspective; the same goes regarding the question of the College’s perceived quality compared to other schools. The appeal of rankings is that they allow one to casually cite a number, either to boast or defend one’s decision to attend that school, both to the inquirer and to one-self.

Like most Johnnies, I’d prefer to think that my choice to attend St. John’s was based on the school itself, and not on outside pseudo-objective ratings. Yet, I can’t deny that having the “Most Rigor-ous School in 2011” card up my sleeve for the next non-Johnnie party I go to is reassuring. Even if it is on the wrong campus. !

T#$ G%&'()06

St. John’s and the RankingsSebastian Abella A’15

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One eye towards the rainLimping home on cobbled stoneStacked and stretched outLike the pregnant drops of a cloud.So much has changed:The stonesAnd the homeAnd the creeping stillness of the rain.

One eye towards the sunSpiderwebbing through the mistFrayed and dangling downLike an unmanned marionette.So much has changed:The mistAnd the websAnd the splintered magnets of light.

One eye towards myselfLengthening shadow unmadeBroad bellied and mute.So much the same:The surfaceAnd the silenceAnd the one eye set towards the rain.

! Erik G. Neave, A’16

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Got some great ideas you want the polity exposed to?

Polity Radio is a DC-Chartered club that will release

pre-recorded shows on a bi-monthly basis. We are looking

for regular contributors, as well as people interested in

contributing one-time seg-ments. All are welcome to

participate. Oh, and one more thing: We have an interview

with President Nelson! Want to ask him questions?

Send us some at polityradio@gmail.com!

T!" G#$%&' 07

Ian Tuttle A’14

If you are ever passing through Oklahoma City and have a moment to pause at the Oklahoma City National Memorial,

do it. It is a powerful place.In 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb in a Ryder

truck parked in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal build-ing. The bomb killed 168 people, including 19 children in an on-site daycare center.

At the memorial, which opened five years later, a long, still reflecting pool sits between two massive Gates of Time. The East Gate reads “9:01,” the last moment of morning peace before the attack. The West Gate reads “9:03.” Stretched out beside the pool is the Field of Empty Chairs. 168 chairs repre-sent each person killed; on the bottom of each chair a name is inscribed. The chairs are arranged in nine rows to represent the building’s nine floors. There are nineteen smaller chairs for the children.

It is an a(ecting place. It’s the chairs. You remember the chairs.

I had the opportunity to visit the recently opened Septem-ber 11 memorial while I was living in New York City this sum-mer. Two massive square waterfalls mark the footprints of the original Twin Towers. On bronze parapets surrounding the waterfalls are etched the names of the victims of the 2001 attacks—including those in Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania—and those of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

It is a strangely una(ecting place. There is the initial awe of standing in that space so fa-miliar from television footage, and there is the starkness of its cleanliness and order when, in our memory, it is linked to images of chaos and rubble. But after staring into the pools, and after reading the names arranged at their edg-es, what is most obvious is not what is there, but what is not.

Nothing is there. Emptiness. On September 11, 2001, terror-ists struck two holes into Lower Manhattan. Ten years later, the holes remain, only this time with the imprimatur of the September 11 Memorial Jury and the ornamentation of archi-tects Michael Arad and Peter Walker.

Arad and Walker’s design, “Reflecting Absence,” was se-lected from 5,201 proposals from 63 countries submitted to a 2003 competition for memorial proposals. From the Jury’s statement on the winning design:

In its powerful, yet simple articulation of the footprints of the Twin Towers, “Reflecting Absence” has made the voids left by the destruction the primary symbols of our loss. By allowing absence to speak for itself, the designers have made the power of these empty footprints the memorial. At its core, this memorial is anchored deeply in the actual events it commemorates—connecting us to the towers’ de-struction, and more important, to all the lives lost on that day.

Certainly emptiness is fitting: Those who lost loved ones on September 11 and in the days that followed can never fill

those spaces. But for the national memorial of the attack to emphasize above all that emptiness seems some sort of con-fession—that what we remember most about that day is the void that opened up, and more than ten years later, we believe that is how we should remember that day.

With its selection, the Memorial Jury chose a design that did not commemorate the lives of the victims, the work of the Center or its thousands of employees, the countless sacrifices, or the heroes. It commemorated the holes in the ground. It memorialized the emptiness.

In the past, we have defied the emptiness by building. We construct monuments and shrines. We make statues. We erect gravestones. When others have torn down, we have built up.

The most powerful images from the Murrah Building me-morial in Oklahoma City are of survivors hugging the chairs of loved ones. Each chair is a small token of remembrance built up out of the ruins.

Not in New York. There is nothing to hold onto. There is only the emptiness and that same feeling of being swallowed up that started eleven years ago.

Some building has begun again. The spire of the new One World Trade Center will soar to 1,776 feet when it is complete, surpass-ing the height of the previous World Trade Center complex. But eight years on, the new tower is still in construction, and while it is expected to open next year, it is not expected to be fully occupied until 2019. The last build-ing in the World Trade Center complex is not expected to be filled until 2037. Compare that

to the Empire State Building, which was finished in just 16 months during the Great Depression.

Churchill famously said, “We shape our buildings; thereaf-ter they shape us.” But what ought we to think when we have lost the will to build almost entirely?

Yet our rebuilding has not only been slow—it has been cow-ardly. The 1,776-foot tower set to open next year was original-ly called the “Freedom Tower.” In 2006 the New York/New Jersey Port Authority renamed it, privately citing security concerns.

Perhaps we should have chosen the proposed memorial that circulated by email in the months following September 11: a giant middle finger dominating the New York City sky-line. Tactful? Maybe not. But it at least captured the right sen-timent: bold, united, defiant.

And that is the sentiment worth consecrating. September 11, 2001, and the following weeks revealed the strength of a nation, demonstrated in acts of compassion, courage, and selflessness, from first responders who dashed into the flames to communities near and far who sent aid, and gathered in solidarity and prayer.

We ought to have built a grand monument to that spirit. In Lower Manhattan a towering memorial ought to testify to the heights of which men are capable, even amid the greatest loss. The emptiness of September 11 was real. But it is time to re-build. !

“With its selection, the Memorial Jury...commemorated the holes in the ground. It memorialized the emptiness.

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Will Brown A’16

So Dan Deacon’s got a new album out, and, like how I imagine most Dan

Deacon fans reacted, I thought, “Oh, nice! That’ll be fun.” Dan Deacon’s one of the most innovative artists in con-temporary music, but he hardly inspires the kind of passionate debates and side-drawing that other trend-setters like the Dirty Projectors or Fleet Foxes might. Nor has he ever shown himself to be very intellectually stimulating; he writes high-energy dance music that sounds practically designed for a cartoon or a video game. In short, yours truly didn’t expect much on that front.

But then Mr. Dea-con released Ameri-ca, a forty-three min-ute album designed to encompass the political, geographi-cal, and emotional essence of the United States. While it’s easy to approach this with a dismissive eye, he’s more serious about it than you might think; the latter half is a 21-minute suite entitled “USA,” split into four sections that feature a full orchestra. But instead of merely relying on the blunt sense of ambition here, Dea-con truly shows his burgeoning maturity as a musical artist. On previous albums there was a prevalent sense of wasted time and lukewarm material unbefit-ting of a serious album. Spiderman of the Rings had hastily constructed sketches like “Jimmy Roche” and “Trippy Green Skull,” while Bromst (an album widely called his most ma-ture, no less) had the bizarre a capella in-terlude “Wet Wings.”

Here, there is not a wasted second. Dan Deacon had gained notoriety dur-ing the Bromst recordings for his use of an electric piano, rewired to fit six times as many notes onto one recording; here, he uses more advanced polyrhythms that are ultimately more streamlined and e(cient than any of the adrenaline-rush beats on previous albums. The opening instrumental, “Guilford Avenue Bridge,” uses a frantic cowbell beat to emphasize its sense of nervous energy,

immediately presenting the listener with a sense of conflict and extreme tension that remains prevalent until the end of “USA.” Meanwhile, several songs eschew consistent beats entirely in fa-vor of a newfound focus on melody; the piano interlude in “Prettyboy” is one the most understated sections of music Dea-con’s made yet, while “Rail” relies on the quiet rhythm of plucked violin and cello strings to make a gradual Kraftwerk-like pulse, imitating the gentle lull of an in-terstate train ride.

Above all, there is a predominant sense of seriousness to this album that

was absent from previous works. The sped-up cartoon voices may still be here, but they’re inexplicably used to emotional e)ect; Deacon’s lyrics,

meanwhile, reflect upon a claustropho-bic sense of shame and fear, which, he seems to argue, is inherent in modern American culture. This seriousness ap-plies to the production as well—gone are the extreme disparities in volume that Bromst’s cheap dynamics employ, while songs like “The Great American Desert” feature a near-shoegaze vocal delivery that contributes more e)ectively to a sense of atmosphere than any repeti-tive keyboard line. Above all, America suggests that Deacon has gradually in-creased the quality and scope of his al-

bums since 2007, and this is the peak.

But can I really call this a “peak” when I’m merely comparing it to his

past albums? Dan Deacon’s music has reached a level that demands compara-tive analysis with other musicians, not just himself. Furthermore, this album’s sense of magnitude suggests a kind of creative output that is hard to consis-tently reach. So, to be frank, I’m not en-tirely sure where he can go from here. But I can declare one statement whole-heartedly: America is one of the most complex, engrossing, and altogether ca-thartic albums of the year thus far. !

A Review of Dan Deacon’s America

“While it’s easy to ap-proach [America] with a dismissive eye, [Dan Dea-con] is more serious about it than you might think...

“The sped-up cartoon voices may still be here, but they’re inexplicably used to emotional e!ect...