Mike Daily is a writer of disintegration. His first novel, 1998's
Valley, begins as a story of frustrated writers living outside of Los Angeles before it shifts stylistically into stage and screenplays, poetry, interviews and Xeroxed images. 2007's
ALARM applies that principle on a grander scale, following
Valley protagonist (and possible Daily surrogate) Mick O'Grady through a series of dead-end jobs. O'Grady's thoughts become fixated on a planned move to Oregon and his friendship with Future Tense Books publisher Kevin Sampsell, ultimately bringing the novel to a close amidst a deepening density of collages, forfeiting the task of resolving the plot to the book's alternate narrator.
ALARM comes packaged with a pair of CDs; Daily fronts an experimental outfit called O'GRADY, whose music ranges from free-jazz blasts to, briefly, up-tempo rock not far removed from the Hold Steady songbook (a glowing review from HS frontman Craig Finn graces
ALARM's back cover). O'GRADY is heard, both in studio and live incarnations, across both albums, along with percussion-dense Portland outfit Roads Less Traveled. You're left with the impression that his goal includes wedding his words to as many genres as possible. --
Tobias Carroll,
Paper Thin WallsALARM is a fantastically real account of life as we know it--and especially succeeds at uncovering the humor and magic of our most normal days working, loving, and living. --
Craig Finn, The Hold Steady
A happy aspect of all this is Daily's uncompromising originality. --
Ingvar Loco Nordin, Sweden --Press
This double CD and accompanying 212-page novel is a package, a gripping excursion of spoken word and experimental sounds that delves deeply into the broken mess of a society that is all-consuming but seems to need nothing. Told from two different but simultaneously engaged perspectives, this lyrically dense and aurally compelling collection of songs is a soundtrack abstract, a cohesive yet jagged splicing of stark voices, flits, buzzes, instruments and found sounds that evoke time and place, while instinctively reflecting the ever-changing perspective of the narrator(s). The first CD is studio recordings, offering a more controlled environment that allows the density of the words to run free on the palate, jutting in and out while matching inflection with the various percussive background elements. The second disc is a field recording, a live semi-improvised set that adds a raw element to the songs and provides ever ascending levels of grit and intensity. Filled with humor, wit, and a frightening comfort, this multifaceted collection is a spot-on dedication to modern life and its charmingly fastidious tendencies. --
Brad Bush --CDBaby.com
I just finished Mike Daily's novel
ALARM the other day. I was originally drawn to it at Bizarro Con, where Mike was also in attendance; I saw it came with two CDs and I really don't know many other people trying to work music and writing into a unified project. I was stoked with the result. The music itself is great the juxtaposition of Mike's reading over the textures of his band, O'GRADY, works to create a combined sense of revelation and derangement like the echoes inside the mind - and the novel creates a similar feeling, in a more silent, reflective way. It traces the thought patterns of a narrator becoming increasingly detached from the world, articulated by the kneejerk thoughts of the
alter-narrator, who pretty much hates the primary narrator and eventually engulfs the book. I love how much we get into the narrator's head with writing as simple as this:
The drugs don't work. The pubs don't work. The moonlight drives don't work. The books don't work. The movies don't work. The records that used to work don't work. --
Forrest Armstrong --Gasoline Monk
In Mike Daily's novels
Valley (1998) and
ALARM (2007), the Mick O'Grady character examined chapbooks, marginalia, chance meetings and shaky relationships to find their hidden meanings while liquidating his CD collections. Mike Daily edited and published
STOVEPiPER (1995), an anthology of poetry, art and fiction, which included new poems from Charles Bukowski and Steve Richmond. Daily's journalism, ranging in topics from freestyle BMX bike riding to interviews with Les Savy Fav, Lifter Puller and Blake Schwarzenbach, has appeared on newsstands from L.A. to Amsterdam.
