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February 12, 2021
Robbie Arnott's Playlist for His Novel "The Rain Heron"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Robbie Arnott's The Rain Heron is a haunting and inventive post-dystopian novel.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
"Reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s visceral The Road, an air of savage solitude infuses Arnott’s lyrically atmospheric postapocalyptic novel, where trauma and resilience are connected to memory and the loss of both self and surroundings."
In his words, here is Robbie Arnott's Book Notes music playlist for his novel The Rain Heron:
I’ve recently written a novel about a mythical, form-shifting bird with the ability to change the weather. It’s a book steeped in the environment, filled not just with the Rain Heron of the title, but also other strange creatures, military coups, scarred wildernesses and intense relationships of a variety of kinds.
Most of the time when I’m writing, I listen to Bob Dylan on very low volume (or I put on asoftmurmur.com). But neither Dylan nor thunderstorms were enough to get me through the writing of this book—it turned out I needed a wider range of musical inspiration. I hope you like this playlist, and I hope it helps you imagine impossible things, whenever you’re scratching around for inspiration.
‘Future Starts Slow’ by The Kills
For a while, this song set the rhythm of my day. It’s catchy. It’s insistent. It thrums with obsession and persistence and madness. It’s a good entry point for blurring the line between myth and reality, which is what I was trying to do.
‘More News From Nowhere’ by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
It’s getting strange in here, it’s getting stranger every year. That’s not just the lyric that leads into this track’s titular hook—it’s how I felt while writing this book. And it’s how I still feel about the world, I suppose. It isn’t my favourite Cave (that would have to be ‘The Ship Song’), but it’s the right one for this book.
‘Shark Fin Blues’ by The Drones
After I heard this bluesy, tragic, mournful mariner’s anthem for the first time I replayed it again and again and again. It’s the perfect accompaniment to the coastal section of the book, particular the part that deals with fisher folk trading their blood with a rare species of squid for their otherworldly ink.
‘Maria También’ by Khruangbin
Sometimes you need something to keep you moving, to drive you along. That’s what this song does for me—it helps clear my mind, while also imbuing me with a sense of momentum. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the entrancing guitar, maybe it’s the ultra-tight drums, maybe it’s the whispered lyrics. But it kept me going, no matter how tangled or weird things got.
‘Heroin’ by The Velvet Underground
When I can’t write I often stand in the shower, listening to this song at full volume on my crappy laptop speakers. The simple progression of its chords. The way it creeps up on you. The yearning at its heart, the way it builds to a feeling of inevitability, the way it devolves into a jangled, jarring mess. I keep coming back to it, which is kind of ironic, I know, but still. I can’t get enough.
‘The Man Comes Around’ by Johnny Cash
Look, I’m not religious. But at times I wanted this book to be filled with an Old Testament sense of drama, of fate. I wanted to create a feeling of sweeping repercussions and unseen consequences. This song has that in spades.
‘Maps’ by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Sorrow can sound simple, but it usually isn’t. I love this song, and the plunging depth of loss that it carries. I needed that at times. Bittersweet love is still love, and hopeful sorrow is still heartbreaking.
‘Buckingham Green’ by Ween
Something great happens when homage—or even a piss-take—becomes wonderful in its own right. ‘Buckingham Green’ could’ve been a derivative, tongue-in-cheek take on overblown prog-rock, but it somehow transcends that form and turns into something gorgeous, terrifying, weird and epic. If the bird in my book feels like a song, I hope it feels like ‘Buckingham Green’.
‘One Crowded Hour’ by Augie March
On face value, the lyrics of this beautiful, swelling song make little to no sense. Yet the playful meanings laced through them keep bringing me back to the track, as much as the entrancing melody and Glenn Richards’ earnest vocals. I hope the book mirrors, even in the smallest way, the inventiveness of this song, and the love in its layers.
Robbie Arnott is the author of the novel Flames, which won the Margaret Scott Prize, was short-listed for the Victorian Premier's Literary Prize for Fiction, the Guardian Not the Booker Prize, and the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, and was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 2019, he was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist. He lives in Tasmania.
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