Gillian Welch's 1996 debut, Revival, is one of the era's most influential albums, its retro stylings and bleak evocations of the dust bowl era marking the transition from alt-country to Americana.
Notwithstanding Quinn's bleak evocations of the past, the author exudes a certain optimism about the future of Los Angeles (a place he admittedly does not know) and other cities grappling with jarring demographic and economic displacements.
Recorded live, it has the sonic sophistication of a dusty church hall, yet its evocation of bleak seascapes and harsh lives is transportative.
They make a shrewdly balanced triptych: at its centre is the static evocation of Le Gibet, bleak and unforgiving; before it comes Ondine, the seductive, lethal water nymph, afterwards there is the nightmarish diablerie of Scarbo.
Although the central jazz theme was adapted by Christopher Palmer at the composer's request from an earlier Herrmann melody (Herrmann felt that his own skill in jazz writing was limited), the score became the perfect evocation of Scorsese's bleak portrait of isolation and festering despair.
Her quirkiness is perhaps too self-consciously achieved — we get a collection of whimsical recipes, including one for knitting baby socks — but the book is carried by the evocation of the country's bleak, moody beauty.
The literary project, on this evidence, is also in good shape, from an opening letter to Thoreau to the evocation of a more prosperous but biologically bleak future.
Mr. Guterson's poetic evocations of San Piedro, the fictional island of his story, and his descriptions of the bleak courtroom where Kabuo Miyamoto is on trial for the murder of his fellow fisherman Carl Heine, are recited by the actors verbatim, alongside the dialogue.
