Warped Coasters

Brian De Palma

2011-06-20T12:11:00.007-05:00

Dude makes two kinds of films: Quintessential De Palma films riff on and comment on filmmaking and filmmakers (usually Hitchcock), and mix high and low art with gleeful abandon. If a character is murdered as someone watches helplessly, you're watching one of those.

His first films rarely strayed from the thriller/horror genre, but you can still see his touch, and themes he would explore later — even in Sisters, a flawed but interesting low-budget early effort.

Of course, De Palma also turns out Hollywood films that don't have his thematic stamp of meta commentary and voyeurism or flashy style (split screens, other creative editing and showy camera work). Unfortunately this occasionally results in some hackwork: I really enjoyed Mission to Mars and Snake Eyes when I was 15, but I'm not sure if I would be so kind in 2011. But his craftsmanship has also produced some of the best blockbusters in recent history.

This AVClub's primer on De Palma (http://www.avclub.com/articles/brian-de-palma,52964/) put exactly what I liked about his work into words better than I can. My above comments are rooted there. He's easily the most unsung and often misunderstood filmmaker of his generation.

It seems a bit convoluted to include De Palma-De Palma films and De Palma-Hollywood films in the same list, but here we go. My ranking, with the category each falls into labeled as either D-D or D-H:

1.) Blow Out (D-D)
This finally came out on home video this month after being essentially unavailable in the US for years. Blow Out is the rare film that improves significantly on the one that inspired it —Antonioni 's wildly over-praised '60s breakthrough Blow Up — by adding layers of plot and suspense without losing substance.
2.) Scarface (D-H)
I don't care how many MTVcribs have this poster. I don't care how many wanna-be goons butcher Pacino's already butchered "Cuban" accent. Scarface is one of the most ridiculously entertaining movies of all time.
3.) The Untouchables (D-H)
You already know why this is good. But I can't stop talking. De Palma loves movies. He fucking loves movies. And nowhere is his enthusiasm for entertainment more apparent than here. Even when it's corny, it's endearing.
4.) Mission Impossible (D-H)
And here.
5.) Casualties Of War (D-D
This Vietnam war drama allows De Palma to mix his new-found Hollywood budget and casting options, with all of his pet themes.
6.) Carlito's Way (D-H)

7.) Body Double (D-D)
His most glorious pulp-trash, it's classed up a bit with Hitchcockian craftsmanship, and more than a few nods to Vertigo.
8.) Femme Fatale (D-D)
Critics loved it or hated (more of them hated it), but it's a rock-solid neo-noir that again has a go at Vertigo and Rear Window.
9.) Dressed to Kill (D-D)
This was his second film after Carrie, and you can see him push his voyeuristic tendencies with less restraint. Dressed To Kill uses Psycho as its jumping off point, but its adherence to thriller/horror tradition creates a a few by-the-numbers plot points and reveals that aren't that revealing. It's still heads and shoulders above nearly any other horror movie from the era, and legitimately gutsy in some of its sexual content.
Sisters (D-D)

Mission to Mars (D-H)

Snake Eyes (D-H)
The Black Dahlia (D-H)

Have not seen
Carrie (this is one of those huge, embarrassing cultural blind spots. Though at a certain point, if you haven't seen Carrie by the age of 25, it's nearly pointless to do so — it's been referenced and commented on so many times that I know all of the plot and shocks without seeing it. It's ruined for me.)
Obsession
Raising Cain
The Fury
Redacted
Hi Mom!
Phantom Of The Paradise
Bonfire of the Vanities

Best Films of 2010 (yeah yeah, deduct two letter grades for being a half-year late)

2011-06-02T13:11:00.010-05:00

I suppose this is more for my own OCD-like need to list everything than for anyone else's benefit, being that it's June already. I'm still behind on some of 2010's more lauded films, but here's my best of 2010 list ... belatedly, pointlessly.

BEST
1. The Social Network
I hate to admit it, but "the facebook movie" lived up to the hype, and then some. I'll follow director David Fincher anywhere ('cept Benjamin Button, it sucked). And Sorkin's talky script is sharp and doesn't insult its audience. Too bad Hollywood only makes a few films for adults every year ... look how good they can be. Jesse Eisenberg is terrific as the socially-inept and bitter Zuckerberg, building an empire out of spite.

2. Black Swan
3. Exit Through the Gift Shop
4. Toy Story 3
5. Blue Valentine
6. The Fighter
7. True Grit
8. Inception
9. Greenberg
10. The King's Speech (I'm not big on costume-drama Oscar bait, so I put this one off for a bit. For shame, for shame. This was pretty damn good, thanks to a witty script. I still have a hard time emphasizing with royalty. Seriously, they can all burn.)
11. Winter's Bone
12. Kick-Ass
13. The Town

GOOD

Shutter Island
The Killer Inside Me
Cyrus

JUST ABOVE AVERAGE
The Other Guys
Machete
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

MEH
Iron Man 2
Hot Tub Time Machine

STILL HAVEN'T SEEN
The Kids Are All Right (I'll probably never see this, don't care.)
Dogtooth
A Prophet
Carlos
Mother
Rabbit Hole
Inside Job
Antichrist

Best of the year, so far

2011-05-26T14:44:00.006-05:00

We're half way around the sun, again, folks. It's a distance that has an uncanny effect on music nerds: we feel cosmically possessed to chronicle which albums provided the best space-travel music. In order, are my favorite records of the year so far.

1. Tune-Yards "W h o k i l l"
Merrill Garbus takes a gimmick (sampling and looping her own voice) and built actual songs with killer horns, Afropop percussion, ukulele, bass and guitar to make the half-year's best and most original album.

2. Yuck "Yuck"
UK brats use equal parts Teenage Fanclub, Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. for their debut, throwing back to a decade we all wish it still was — the '90s.

3. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart "Belong"
Twee American boys and girls move from the '80s noise pop (The Jesus and Mary Chain, Black Tambourine) of their debut to make album more indebted to the Smashing Pumpkins, without losing their earnest vulnerability. Hey remember Silversun Pickups? This is better.

4. Fleet Foxes "Helplessness Blues"
Singer-songwriter Robin Pecknold averted a sophomore slump by ditching a whole batch of songs originally penned for this album. His band kept fans on ice with the three-year gap between records, but it was wort it — "Helplessness Blues" overflows with folk mysticism and powerful vocal harmonies.

5. Smith Westerns "Dye it Blond"
Mott the Hoople's poppy brand of glam-rock is the obvious reference point for these young Chicagoans' hazy second LP.

6. The Decemberists "King is Dead"
Portland's folk-rock institution ditches their temporary foray into concept albums and prog-rock to turn in their tightest set, finding inspiration in early R.E.M, Tom Petty and country.

7. The Antlers "Burst Apart"
Like "Hospice," the band's 2009 opus on loss and coping, "Burst Apart" is an atmospheric slow-burn built around swirling keyboards, subtle guitarwork and singer Peter Silberman's heartbreaking falsetto. It's best enjoyed with headphones.

8. Wye Oak "Civilian"

9. Toro Y Moi "Underneath the Pine"
Chazwick Bundick brings the disco-and-funk indebted dance jams via live instrumentation, largely leaving behind the synthesizers of his debut.

10. Kurt Vile "Smoke Ring For My Halo"
Scraggly singer-songwriter Kurt Vile has a knack for burrowing in over time, and is lucky to inherit the quiet sneer handed down by Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. This record's a grower, but you'll keep coming back once the melodies reveal themselves.

11. Fucked Up "David Comes To Life"
Pink Eyes and crew turn out another set of intelligent hardcore. The new record is a concept album. Like the best concept albums, the individual songs don't collapse under the weight of the central conceit.

The best of the rest
J. Mascis "Several Shades of Why"
Radiohead "The King of Limbs"
Panda Bear "Tomboy"

Need more time
Okkervil River "I Am Very Far"
Iron & Wine "Kiss Each Other Clean"

Out soon
Black Lips "Arabia Mountain"
Cults "Cults"
My Morning Jacket "Circuital"
Bon Iver "Bon Iver"

Haven't heard yet
R.E.M. "Collapse into Now"
Ponytail "Do Whatever You Want All The Time"
TV On The Radio "Nine Types of Light"

shiny plastic things

2011-05-13T14:44:00.004-05:00

Someone call the old news police: Jeff Koons makes me angry, and he's not doing himself any favors. Motherfucker tried to trademark the balloon dog. You can't take unArt, put quotations around it, call it Art and then claim you invented the unArt, too. I can't really think of anything more arrogant. That's like Danger Mouse suing Kanye for sampling the same song.

Koons' paintings and installations look like they were generated by the same team of manatees that splice together Family Guy's random, plot-less jokes.
Effectively commenting on, and skewering, kitsch and American culture through art relies on context. But his art relies on the insecurity of the viewer to force meaning and context, when it isn't there, just to feel like they "get it."

Unless you wear stocking caps with Anime ears, this will make you angry.

Every few months I go online and make myself sit through a few sideshows of his work, to see if my perceptions have changed. It only gets worse. Koons is the original Thierry Guetta, paying a small army of artisans to create his next empty abomination of juxtopostion.

He is as offensively shallow and uninteresting as Lady Gaga, and as cynical and commercially viable.

Who do you think is the worst "post-modern" cash whore?

2011-01-05T12:03:00.001-06:00

http://www.pekintimes.com/entertainment/x1651500158/Music-Best-albums-of-2010

Weekends "Totem"

2010-12-20T17:20:00.001-06:00

I don't know if this song has anything to do with Inception's use of the word "totem" or not, because I don't know what the fuck this song is about. That doesn't stop it from being kind of perfect. And the video. Video is good.

Weekends "Totem" from Friends Records on Vimeo.

Music: Best songs of 2010 downloadable playlist

2010-12-14T14:11:00.014-06:00

(right click any track to download, left click any song to stream entire playlist)
1. Deerhunter "Helicopter"
2. Kanye West "Power"
3. Titus Andronicus "A More Perfect Union"
4. Surfer Blood "Floating Vibes"
5. Pomegranates "Skull Cakin'"
6. Cults "Go Outside"
7. Arcade Fire "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)"
8. Black Keys "Everlasting Light"
9. Beach House "Silver Soul"
10. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti "Round and Round"
11. Sleigh Bells "Rill Rill"
12. Spoon "Written in Reverse"
13. Broken Social Scene "Water in Hell"
14. Jenny & Johnny "Scissor Runner"
15. The Morning Benders "Excuses"
16. LCD Soundsystem "Dance Yrself Clean"
17. The National "Bloodbuzz Ohio"
18. Yeasayer "Ambling Alp"
19. Girls "Carolina"
20. Avi Buffalo "Remember Last Time"
21. Teenage Fanclub "Baby Lee"
22. The Hold Steady "The Weekenders"
23. Harlem "Tila and I"
24. Dr. Dog "Jackie Wants a Black Eye"
25. Deerhunter "Coronado"

Music: Best of 2010

2010-12-08T13:21:00.012-06:00

Best Albums
(included streams/downloads aren't necessarily my favorite tracks from the records, just the ones I could find hosted online)

1. Titus Andronicus "The Monitor" A
Titus Andronicus "Four Score and Seven (Part 2)"
2. Deerhunter "Halcyon Digest" A-

Deerhunter "Revival"

3. Surfer Blood "Astro Coast" A-

Surfer Blood "Swim (To Reach the End)"

4. Beach House "Teen Dream" A-

Beach House "Norway"

5. Kanye West "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" A-

6. Black Keys "Brothers" B+
7. The Walkmen "Lisbon" B+

8. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti "Before Today" B+

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti "Round and Round"

9. Sleigh Bells "Treats" B+

Sleigh Bells "Crown on the Ground"

10. Tame Impala "Innerspeaker" B

11. Avi Buffalo "Avi Buffalo" B
Avi Buffalo "What's in it for?"
12. LCD Soundsystem "This is Happening" B

13. Spoon "Transference" B

14. Arcade Fire "The Suburbs" B
Win is still riding on the coattails of "Funeral." Honestly, if this was anyone else do you think this record would make the top of any best-of lists?15. Teenage Fanclub "Shadows" B

Good
Warpaint "The Fool" B

Male Bonding "Nothing Hurts" B
Male Bonding "Year's Not Long"
Jaill "That's How We Burn" B
Jaill "Everyone's Hip"
The Hold Steady "Heaven is Whenever" B
The National "High Violet" B
The National "Bloodbuzz Ohio"
Dr. Dog "Shame Shame" B-

Yeasayer "Odd Blood" (the first half, at least) B-

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings "I Learned the Hard Way" B-

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings "I Learned the Hard Way"
Harlem "Hippies" B-

Wavves "King of the Beach" B-
No Age "Everything in Between" B-

No Age "Fever Dreaming"
The Vaselines "Sex with an X" B-
The Vaselines "Sex with an X"

Meh

The Morning Benders "Big Echo" B-
The Brooklyn via San Fran group led off its second album with perhaps the song of the year, "Excuses," a glorious amalgamation of glee-club harmonies, bluesy strings and soaring melodies, but then let Chris Taylor's (Grizzly Bear) production drag the following nine tracks through the tasteful, reverbed sludge that makes Taylor's outfit so damn boring. Only the occasionally fuzzed-out guitar struts through the languid, hung-over drapery, heard on the second track on the top-loaded record.
Listen (at least to "Excuses,") here:
http://www.themorningbenders.com/

She & Him "Vol. 2" C-
Everything M. Ward does deserves a listen. At a certain point, though, even if I recognize something as quality work (mostly the production and instrumentation) doesn't mean I have to like it, or force myself to listen to it on the reg. I just don't see the point of She & Him. Zooey doesn't write quite good enough songs, they are pleasant enough, but I'd rather just go dig up some old records.

Foals - Total Life Forever C

Overrated

Robyn "Body Talk Pt. 1"

Robyn is terrible and I'm tired of all these hipsters saying otherwise.
AV Club and Pitchfork readers who like Robyn, for the most part, talk shit about American pop music, meaning either A.) they would also like American pop music if it wasn't popular, or B.) force themselves to like Robyn instead because she is not a house hold name here (and therefor "cool"), and that's pathetic.
For those who like Robyn and also like American pop music, that's fine, you're honest with your tastes and I don't dislike you, I just dislike your music.

Janelle Monae "The ArchAndroid"
I don't like modern RnB, even modern RnB with touchstones in classic soul, and thematic inspiration in Fritz Lang's dystopian masterpiece Metropolis. Janelle's got style, enthusiasm and a fantastic stage presence, but I find her voice thin, her melodies less-than-memorable and the production sterile. I'll pass. Give me Sharon Jones any day.

Best Coast "Crazy for You"
At first I thought, 'maybe there is more to this if I keep listening.' After several spins, the melodies were finally in my head and I liked her voice, so I posted a stream of the album on this site, and kept listening, hoping I would form some sort of summer bond with the record. Shortly after that near honeymoon, it hit me that, nope, there is nothing more and my first instinct was absolutely correct. She sings about her cat, getting high, and boys. There's nothing here to warrant multiple listens, praise or scorn. It's jangly pop, and it's borrrrrrring as fuck.

Disappointments

Vampire Weekend "Contra" C
I think yr a contra. NO! yr a contra ... this album stinks.

Wolf Parade "Expo 86" C
Broken Bells "Broken Bells" C-
M.I.A. "Maya"
The Thermals "Personal Life" C-

Like, but haven't listened to enough of yet

Gorillaz "Plastic Beach"
Pomegrantes "One of Us"
Dum Dum Girls "I Will Be"
Broken Social Scene "Forgiveness Rock Record"
The Tallest Man on Earth "The Wild Hunt"

Did not hear

New Pornographers "Together"
Band of Horses "Infinite Arms"
MGMT "Congratulations"
Joanna Newsom "Have One on Me"
... and thousands more

Shitlist:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/music/ref=pd_ts_nav

New MS PAINT collage. I made this a couple weeks ago and forgot to post.

2010-11-27T18:13:00.001-06:00

Album review: Warpaint "The Fool"

2010-11-17T11:54:00.002-06:00

http://www.pekintimes.com/entertainment/x1615400356/Album-review-Warpaint-The-Fool

FREE MP3 Download: Tennis "Marathon"

2010-11-04T11:54:00.001-05:00

File under: Rich kids continue to make beautiful music on vintage equipment, expensive drugs.

Tennis' retro-minded debut on Fat Possum, "Cape Dory," is out Jan. 18.
Check out the ridiculous album art, left.

Via Gorillavsbear.net

Tennis "Marathon"

FREE MP3 Download: Girls "Heartbreaker"

2010-10-26T16:34:00.004-05:00

It was about this time last year when Girls delivered the full-length debut, "Album." It's Oct. 2010 already, and the duo have recorded some new songs for us, just in time for hoodies and and the other warm comforts of fall.

Girl's principle singer/songwriter Christopher Owens writes with an undisguised melancholy, buoyed by the florid jangle of a Rickenbacker.

His autumnal songs have the gift of taking seemingly blase statements and, thanks to his effortlessly affective singing voice, turns them into something deeply personal and resonant.

The new track is no different. The small details of everyday life, peppered throughout the verses add credence to Owens' recounting of a failed relationship. In the hands of anyone else, the chorus of "Heartbreaker" would sound downright maudlin or even adolescent — "When I said that I love you honey, I knew that you'd break my heart."

Even as the bass line strays dangerously close to that of their second breakout single, "Lust For Life," Owens can't help but be a singular, original talent. Thanks for another good October.

"Heartbreaker" appears on Girls new 6-song EP, "Broken Dreams Club," out on True Panther on Nov. 22.

Free stream: Warpaint "The Fool"

2010-10-19T16:03:00.001-05:00

Listen to the debut LP by the much-hyped Warpaint, a full week before it's released, here:

http://hypem.com/search/warpaint

Album Review: The Thermals "Personal Life"

2010-09-29T13:53:00.000-05:00

http://www.pekintimes.com/entertainment/x1547940672/Album-review-The-Thermals-Personal-Life

FREE MP3 download: Cymbals Eat Guitars

2010-09-29T13:19:00.001-05:00

Long Island upstarts Cymbals Eat Guitars are currently working on a new album. They played four songs from the upcoming record live in a BBC radio station, those recordings are available here for download (or to stream, left click):

Cymbals Eat Guitars "Wavelengths"

Cymbals Eat Guitars "Plain Clothes"

Cymbals Eat Guitars "Definite Darkness"

Cymbals Eat Guitars "Tunguska"

Free stream: Sufjan Stevens "The Age of Adz"

2010-09-27T15:08:00.000-05:00

Sufjan Steven's new full-lengh "The Age of Adz" is streaming in its entireity over at NPR:

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=130049247&m=130076387

"The Age of Adz" is out Oct. 12 on Asthmatic Kitty Records.

Book learnin'

2010-09-24T14:25:00.001-05:00

Education makes you miserable. And I'm not even talking about some fancy-pants Ivy League — just some horrendously discouraging public education and then a mid-tier Midwestern university will do the trick —or even a library card. I suppose that's better than being scared — scared of gays, immigrants, wardrobe malfunctions, and Kenyan-Socialist Nazi Islamists and child predators sneaking into playgrounds.

Instead, havin' been eja-cated and such, I can't turn on the TV without thinking about some theory of Neil Postman's. I can't watch even a seemingly innocuous television program without sensing an "assault" of implications and consumerist subversion that soon leads to rants and high blood pressure.

During my daily commute accross the Illinois River, I can't help but think of all the literal shit that flows directly into the water every time it storms. I can't help but think of the pending lawsuit against the power plant on the river that spews it's angel-of-death pattern over the city. And the fact that, as it shortens the locals' lifespans, the electricity is sent to homes in sanitized Chicagoland 'burbs. As I step out of my car and whiff what swirls and combines with the other industrial waste, it's hard to breath without smelling the ripe scent of particulate matter.
I just love the smell of sulfer in the morning.

Then lunch — even if the beef in my food is from the grocery store, I know it contains parts of several different unhealthy cows that were sustained with feed they should never have been eating. I know every part of my meal was likely flown or trucked to Illinois from far away and that I am just another wasteful piece of shit that ruined the planet for a taco. The more you know, the less you wish you did.

Fuck you, college; I'm no smarter or happier but I know how to use a semicolon.

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix Theater

2010-09-23T07:01:00.007-05:00

The Third Man (1949)

The Third Man seems to be regarded as film noir by default only, as if it's simply the most convenient way to discuss the film. Of course it's always been a loose genre descriptor, and The Third Man fulfills plenty of the requirements — murder, intrigue, a mysterious woman and sharp, if not particularly hard-boiled dialogue. But the famous score, performed on a zither, tends to work against the cynical nature of the film, lightening the dark corners and shadows particular to the genre, often lending a more lighthearted feel, full of smirk and humor. The darkest, and most interesting element is the setting. Pulp novelist Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotton) is drawn to post-war Vienna to meet a friend, Harry Lime, who promises work in the crumbled city. Vienna's bombed-out buildings are never too far off screen, lending an added weariness to the otherwise fast-paced mystery.

After the long flight in from the states, Holly arrives at Harry's apartment only to learn that his friend was struck and killed by a car the day before. The death was deemed an accident, but as soon as Holly starts asking questions, he learns of Harry's black-market entanglements and circle of bizarre friends who were present the day of the incident. Holly is now the main character in a suspense story seemingly ripped from one of his own adventure novels, and he intends to write the ending.

Allied-occupied Vienna is interesting for a reason beyond the bullet holes — it was divided into four regions following WW2 — United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom and France, with all four bureaucracies and police departments butting heads and created even more difficulties as Holly tries to protect Harry's former lover, and crack the case. Orson Welles doesn't appear until just passed the midway mark, and does so with a wink and smile. His charismatic supporting role carries the film past the somewhat predictable twist, through a beautifully-staged climax in a massive sewer system and towards the inevitable conclusion. British director Carol Reed employs lot of off-angle and skewered shots, and the film is often incorrectly and casually attributed to Orson Welles. It has been ranked as the best British film of the 20th century, and it won some Oscars and the Grand Prix at the Cannes in 1949. I liked it a bit less than the hype, but it's good none-the-less. A-

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix Theater

2010-09-23T07:00:00.001-05:00

Kick-Ass (2010)
I always wanted to see a dark, R-rated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — Leo actually uses his weapons to efficiently separate goons from their arms and legs, Donatello's bo breaks bones and Raph's sais are as sharp as his attitude. Like the comic books that inspired the source material, Kick-Ass indulges in the blood that a superhero would actually let — weapons don't always hit a magical "off switch" on the back of the bad guy's heads like in most comic book film adaptations — they do mortal damage. Simply put: this is a surprisingly violent fucking movie, and despite how real the blood and guts are, it's still pure fantasy. Sometimes that blood lust can be a little disconcerting when the bodily harm is inflicted by a martially trained 11-year-old girl, giddily using the identity "Hit Girl." Her father (Nic Cage in full-ham mode) is "Big Daddy," a batman-with-guns vigilante out to settle the score with NY's biggest crime boss, who's son (Christopher "McLovin" Mintz-Plasse) happens to be another budding superhero and unlikely heir apparent to the crime throne.

Meanwhile, high school comic nerd Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) buys a green wetsuit, yellow gloves and two batons to become "Kick-Ass," an untrained superhero wannabe with more "naivety and optimism" than strength or cunning. But, after one merciless beat-down, he becomes an internet sensation via a cellphone video of him defending a victim against three muggers. That notoriety makes him the prime target for said NY crime boss, who confuses Kick-Ass's burgeoning celebrity for the real Mongolians in his system — Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Lizewski's voice-over narration provides both snarky meta-commentary on the genre, and insight into the film's other major plot points in the high school sex-comedy realm. Eventually, all the major player's plot lines cross paths, with hyper-bloody showdowns resulting. The action scenes are exceptionally well choreographed, especially Big Daddy's magnificent warehouse slaughter-fest, mostly taken in one long and graceful shot. Even Kick-Ass's more ridiculous moments work, thanks to the self-aware and often satirical tone, that still reveal a love and reverence for comic book tropes and lore. I'm looking forward to the sequel. B+

Transformers: Rise of the Fallen (2009)
Growing up, did you ever go to a new friend's house, only to discover that the entire family talks to each other like a bunch of a retarded 10-year-olds? Every comment/question/statement shared between family members is stated in an argumentative near-shout, with inane responses and grating tone of voice the apparent norm, where just asking to pass the salt is shouted like a toddler in need of a nap? Watching "Transformers: Rise of the Fallen" places the viewer in the same uncomfortable territory. I was climbing a mountain of the worst in American culture — the most crass, consumerist, oblivious and unfunny people in the world, all trapped together for an excruciating two-plus hours.
My Everest-like climb to finish the latest Transformers film ended like every Sherpa-less traveler up the mountain — nauseous, weak and defeated. After three attempts over two days to make it through the film — the first aided by beer, the second with ibuprofen to fend off the on-setting headache, and the third by wine — I failed. The awful, ugly spectacle that is Transformers 2 literally frustrated me to to the point of feeling ill. The domestic-life scenes counting for comedy, the unwatchable, epileptically edited action scenes, minstrel-show robots .... I quit ... it's so fucking shitty I can't even form full sentences. This movie makes me hate everything. F

This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006)
This documentary explores the MPAA's irrational and puritanical ratings board. Filmmakers document the history of the board and then attempt to unmask its secret members whose identity is a tightly held secret. I'm not kidding, the faceless censors who arbitrarily tell filmmakers to cut what they feel is obscene from art hide behind a veil of anonymity so thick it's comical. The film drags at points when following the PIs hired for the task, but really excels when showing how the system is favored for Hollywood pictures, works against indies and is one of the more insidious censorship bodies in the country — from working for war propaganda — to how scared it is of homosexuality and other sexual equality issues. The most glaring is how terrified it is of women actually receiving pleasure in a sex scene (and not just the man) — one film was deemed obscene because, in a mostly clothed sex scene, the camera lingered on a woman's face too long as she reached climax. Also of note: the ratings board's Washington connections, founder and long-time president Jack Valenti was a political insider and consultant for years before heading to Hollywood to begin censoring. Every cinefile should watch this documentary. A-

Terminator Salvation (2009)
Terminator: Salvation has a giant budget and the corresponding preference for big business over genre thrills. The latest and worst Terminator film blandly scrubs away any of the horror grime of the first film, the suspense of the second and the nihilism of the third, and trudges through the motions as an overly predictable and generic sci-fi action snoozer. How do you fuck up a movie where humans battle robots? Hire McG and whittle it down to a PG-13 rating. I miss the fucking the '80s. C-

You lazy, cheap, good for nothin' trixters

2010-09-21T18:11:00.001-05:00

Hear the new Deerhunter in its entirety, streaming thanks to those do-gooders and passive whisperers at NPR:

Deerhunter "Halcyon Digest"
Out Sept. 28 on 4AD

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=129866612&m=129870848

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix Theater

2010-09-21T11:57:00.010-05:00

The Lady From Shanghai (1947)
The Lady From Shanghai's more inconsistent elements become more understandable once you know a bit of history behind the film. An early-ish film noir, it was one of Orson Welles' several troubled projects following Citizen Kane. And, despite his pedigree, the studio yanked control of his original, two-hour plus cut and hacked it down to just short of 90 minutes. Despite shuffling any coherence or pacing it might have had, what was impossible to destroy was the daring camera work — extreme close ups, unnerving dutch angles and his always masterful framing of contrast and shadow.

Welles also wrote the film, and starred as a tough Irish veteran from the Franco wars in Spain. After a chance meeting with Rita Hayworth (hot damn!) in a NY park, he's lured by the femme fatale against his better judgment to serve as a deck hand on her husband's yacht. As the boat sails through one exotic locale after another, stopping for island excursions and picnics, Welles is sucked into the miserable life occupied by Hayworth's wealthy, defense-attorney husband and his law partner, who find joy in nothing but sitting around drinking and shoveling insults and pithy sarcasm on each other. Naturally, Welles appears to be the ideal escape for Hayworth, and the two begin to plot a future together as the two lawyers plot something different entirely.

Upon docking the yacht in San Francisco, the film's second half begins as a cynical court-room satire and spins into a disorientating jaunt through several elaborate set pieces, the most famous being a deserted fun house and its oft-copied hall-of-mirrors climax. The finale is done so well — it refuses to feel tired despite 60 years of copy cats — that the entire film feels better by association and in hindsight. The acting is top-notch for the most part, save Welles questionable Irish brogue, and Hayworth is distractingly good-looking, of course. But the two best performances come from Everett Sloan's understated, devilish turn as the husband Arthur Banister, and Glenn Anders portrayal of his insane law-partner George Grisby. The two really give The Lady From Shanghai its joyous slime. B+

New to me - Knockin' off cultural blind spots

2010-09-17T06:14:00.010-05:00

Some old CDs that I heard for the first time this year (with videos/songs).

New Order "Power, Corruption & Lies" (1983)
Does it make me a bad critic to prefer New Order to Joy Division? I don't really know New Order well enough to make that claim of course, seeing as the only albums I've heard are "Brothers" and "Power, Corruption & Lies," and the only Joy Division I own is "Closer" (yes yes I don't own "Unknown Pleasures," though I've listened to most of it.

New Order was formed after the death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, the remaining members creating the more danceable and upbeat (upbeat meaning the group's growing love for synths and the non-baritone vocals Gary Schoenfeldt, who took over singing duties. But, barely under the surface it's really just as dark and brooding as anything Curtis-helmed). It's also more pop-oriented, with dance-floor staple "Blue Monday" still reigning as the top selling independent 12-inch single in UK history.
"Power Corruption and Lies" varies it's sound way beyond "Blue Monday," which is far from my favorite track on the album. That distinction belongs to "Age of Consent," which includes a repeating, Peter Buck-esque riff until a guitar more indebted to Sonic Youth than Brit-pop takes over with some cathartic strumming. This record owns. 'Nuff said. A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ahU-x-4Gxw

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah "Clap Your Hands Say Yeah" (2005)
Speaking of post-punk, CYHSY was one of the first bands to tumble through the spin-cycle of internet over-buzz in 2005, and was part of that wave of NYC post-punk revivalism. Despite all the ephemeral context, CYHSY's debut is solid. Really solid. Like a squalid, driving distortion of David Byrne's vocals, Alec Ounsworth's primal melodies are immediately accessible and catchy, even as he wails almost unintelligibly about the "skin of his yellow country teeth." A-

The Specials "The Specials" (1979)
The leaders of ska's second wave in late '70s UK (and owners of the record label 2 Tone that is now synonymous with the genre) The Special's debut consists largely of covers of Jamaca's ska originators from the previous decade. More than just band nerds finding a way to utilize their brass instruments, The Specials were down-right cool and fun, and had more in common with Mod culture and the burgeoning '77 punk scene than anything in ska's '90s US third wave. Oh, and it was produced by Elvis Costello, so you know it's good.
B+

The Buzzcocks - "Singles Going Stready" (1979)
I don't know The Buzzcocks as well as many of Punks' class of '77, but I know they are famous for having more melodic vocals than many of their peers.

"Singles Going Steady" is the only Buzzcocks record I own, and I've read it's all you really need unless you are a huge fan. They released a lot more singles and EPs than they did LPs, and it collects all the early singles and best songs. I haven't heard the other records. Listening to the Buzzcocks reminds how much of early Punk was indebted to garage rock and early rock 'n' roll. (Over-all B+, best songs A)

I hear the beach boys in this one, specifically:

GZA - Liquid Swords (1995)
All the adjectives usually used to describe RZA's production — murky, dark, violent, unforgiving, etc — apply here. This came out when the Wu was releasing solo efforts as easily as shit after coffee, and as with all Wu-Tang Clan projects, most of them make appearances. The whole thing is draped in Wu-mythology via old Kung-Fu samples. GZA always had the tightest, most straightforward flow of the crew, and occasionally the songs have a hard time distinguishing themselves from each other — but I suppose that's part of the appeal — this is a cohesive work, and a classic from Hip-hop's golden era. A

Free MP3 Download: Black Mountain "Hair Song"

2010-09-09T09:25:00.003-05:00

Black Crowes, meet Band of Horses, have children, name them "Wilderness Heart," the new record by Black Mountain.
I haven't heard all of "Wilderness Heart," but the group's last one sounded way more like Black Sabbath than the Black Crowes.

I dunno if the whole record strays in this direction, but either way, I dig it.

Black Mountain "Hair Song"

Free MP3 Download: Cults "Go Outside" and more

2010-09-08T15:12:00.004-05:00

Hey! Check out this band!
Thanks, sister.

Free downloads of three tracks from the nostalgic dream-pop duo, can be had here.

Fans of Panda Bear, Deerhunter/Atlas Sound and other bloggity blogy-blog rock need apply.

BOOKS

2010-09-08T10:36:00.007-05:00

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908)
By G.K. Chesterton

This is the kind of book that, when nearing its final chapters, optimism takes hold and against your better judgment you nearly expect the resolution to explain the meaning of life and wrap things up in a neatly bundled plot. Of course that's a foolish expectation, especially with a book as absurd and full of paradox as TMWWT. It centers on a Gabriel Syme, a Scotland Yard detective who, upon engaging in a philosophical debate with a poetical anarchist, is led at-first unknowingly to the dynamiter's secret council headquarters, where he must protect his true identity in the midst of violent plotting. Chesterton's prose is full of puns and humor — incredibly well-organized anarchists are a hoot — and clever twists of phrase that push us further down-the-rabbit hole. This is an entertaining farcical mystery on the surface, but his comments on moral relativism, alienation, skepticism, human nature and the way individual impressions shape the world are one-of-a-kind and worth reading. The ending, specifically, is heavy on Christian allegory, but being a Christian is not necessary to enjoying the book (allow me as an example). He may not explain the meaning of life. But, after finishing the novel, people shine in a new light and for a few brief minutes, TMWWT removed my cynicism. A

The Girl Who Played With Fire (2008)
By Stieg Larsson
This is the second novel in Stieg Larsson's "Girl" trilogy, and it's better than the first one. Not much to say: it's a quick reading mystery-thriller. Well written, plotted, paced and more character driven than your standard consumer fiction. Good stuff. I'm starting to understand why Lisbeth Slander is everyone's favorite new cyber-punk, as the events in this entry are a direct result of her troubled past. The best thing about the book as that it's not a sequel in characters only, i.e., it's not just Lisbeth and Mikael off on an unrelated adventure, but rather a series of consequences of actions taken in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. A-

Jam of the day

2010-09-01T10:25:00.002-05:00

NEW SUFJAN STEVENS ALBUM

2010-08-26T10:48:00.001-05:00

Last week dude released a 60-minute "EP," which you can stream below fo free, or buy for $5. Today Stevens announced the release date for his first proper full length since 2000s touchstone "Illinois."

"The Age of Adz," will be released by Asthmatic Kitty on October 12.
Preorder that shit here.

<a href="http://sufjanstevens.bandcamp.com/album/all-delighted-people-ep">All Delighted People (Original Version) by Sufjan Stevens</a>

Free MP3 download: Deer Tick "Piece By Piece, Frame By Frame"

2010-08-25T07:01:00.001-05:00

Stream or download this stripped-down track by the circle-saw voiced Deer Tick, from the new-ish record "The Black Dirt Sessions."

Deer Tick "Piece By Piece, Frame By Frame"

2009 — the year in film — belated edition.

2010-08-17T12:46:00.005-05:00

I've finally seen almost everything I wanted to from 2009, eight months after the fact. Some of these I saw more than a year ago, and some last week, so the frail memory is making this task difficult ... here is my much-belated, best-of 2009 movie list. Discuss.

Best
1. District 9
2. The Hurt Locker
3. The Informant
4. Inglorious Basterds
5. Moon
6. The White Ribbon
7. A Serious Man
8. Gomorrah
9. Big Fan
10. Up in the Air
11. The Hangover
12. An Education
13. Bad Lieutenant: Port Call of New Orleans

Good
14. Zombieland
15. In the Loop
16. Drag Me to Hell
17. Star Trek
18. Funny People
19. The Road
20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
21. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Meh :
Up
Bruno
Whatever Works
Observe and Report
The Strangers
Extract
Avatar
Where the Wild Things Are
The Men Who Stare at Goats

Shitlist:
Terminator Salvation
Transformers: Rise of the Fallen
Gamer
Crank 2
The Box
Year One
Invention of Lying
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
I Love You Man
Friday the 13th
Sherlock Holmes
Angels and Demons

Unseen
Public Enemies
Antichrist
35 Shots of Rum
Coraline
Duplicity
Precious

and hundreds more ...

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix Theater

2010-08-17T06:30:00.003-05:00

The White Ribbon (2009)
In the early 20th century, parents sometimes tied a white ribbon on a boy's arm or in a girl's hair, to remind of them of purity, innocence and most of all, obedience. It was one of the less oppressive physical acts of parenting imposed by the families eking out an existence in pre-WWI Germany's lingering feudal system. Michael Haneke's latest film explores the roots of extremism — how it festers in over-worked, envious and hungry communities that grasp at any straw within reach. The Germany, 1913 setting has obvious implications for the religiously and emotionally oppressed children in the film, who will reach adulthood by the time of Auschwitz. But the central story has been, and will be, repeated throughout cultures world wide, and currently presents itself in the Arab world, as Haneke has said in interviews. Still, the German setting adds more gravity to the events captured in stark black-and-white, as we begin to see the unintended consequences of the childrens' upbringing, and the parental denial.

The White Ribbon opens with a doctor returning home on his horse, only to be be thrown from his ride and nearly killed by a wire strung between two trees. The attempted murder is the first in several heinous and unsolved crimes, including the torture of the land baron's young son, that slowly undue the small farm town's sense of prosperity and unity. A meek yet competent school teacher is the first to sense and admit to the growing sense of horror and its true roots, but as with all unspoken truths, it's too much for the supposed leaders of the community to admit. B+

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
With a name as irreverent as Hot Tub Time Machine, you'd think the film makers would ditch more than just titular conventions. Instead, the 99 minutes following the title card are about as conventional as the '80s sex comedies and time travel flicks it occasionally tries to lampoon, but more often than not limply follows. You've got the ski-bum bully in the Zabka mold (just not quite as blond), and a plot that hinges on moments from the protagonists' past that set them into a lifelong pattern of loserdom, with time travel as an opportunity to change the course of their lives. And, of course, one nerdy character who insists in a responsibility to avoid the dreaded "butterfly effect." Rob Corddry is the most reliably funny as HTTM's Stifler, known here as "The Violator." Overall it's pretty funny — several '80s sight gags work as well as always, but the running jokes that get better with each reiteration are canceled out by an equal amount that don't, and the whole thing is hindered by regularly desperate grasps for hipness. B-

Free MP3 download: Cloud Nothings "Hey Cool Kid"

2010-08-12T11:29:00.002-05:00

This shows potential, but it's pretty rough right now.

Cloud Nothings is 18-year-old Cleveland resident Dylan Baldi. Since recording songs in his parents basement in 2009, he's released a bunch of shit-quality tapes and vinyl singles this year.

Cloud Nothings is gonna tour with Fucked Up for a few dates and then release a proper full-length this winter on Car Park.

http://www.carparkrecords.com/heycoolkid.mp3

Free MP3 Download: Colleen Green "Worship You"

2010-08-11T07:35:00.003-05:00

This song rules.

Lo-fi guitar gravel, by the shovel full.

Colleen Green "Worship You"

Via 20 Jazz Funk Greats

September: the best month in music since May

2010-08-11T06:51:00.004-05:00

I've yet to settle my party line on music 2010: is it a year of mediocre workmanlike releases by older, established indie acts? Is it the year when millennials (ugh) finally gave up on the future and turned towards a half-remembered past via navel-gazing, stomach-turning nostalgia, manifested as self-indulgent bedroom-brat pop? Whatever it is, it surely can't be summarized in either of those sentences, or anything else that reductive. Hopefully several upcoming releases help fill in my Swiss-cheese best of list for 2010.

The Walkmen "Lisbon"
Sept. 14 (Fat Possum)
The classiest gents in the early 2000s NY rock revival, The Walkmen were largely an afterthought to The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Strokes, but Hamilton Leithauser and crew steadily refined their waltzing post-punk-meets-Dylan sound until releasing career defining effort "You & Me" 2008.
"Lisbon," due Sept. 14, promises to continue that hot streak with more sad trombones, warbly organs, dusty heartbreak and reverb-drenched guitars. I got his pre-ordered a vinyl, I urge everyone else to do the same.

Hear "Stranded" here.

Deerhunter "Halcyon Digest"
Sept. 28 (4AD)
Bradford Cox' first band has a restless ambition. Each album digs into more accessible regions of the record crate than the last for inspiration, meaning that Deerhunter's noisy, dissonant shoe-gaze of yore is slowly sounding more like his solo project's (Atlas Sound) sampled psychedelia. If "Revival," the first single from "Halcyon Days," is any indication of the record as a whole, Deerhunter's gone into full-blown '60s pop mode (with some subversive fuzz under the surface, natch). If the rest is anywhere near as strong, it could be an album of the year contender.

Deerhunter "Revival"

The Thermals "Personal Life"
Sept. 7 (Kill Rock Stars)
They wont ever make another album as incendiary as 2006's punk masterpiece "The Body, the Blood, the Machine," but not many others will either. That record still kicks my ass. Hutch has said in interviews that Cathy wrote songs for this record, a first for the Thermals, so we'll see where that takes them.

The Thermals "I Don't Believe You"

Other notable September releases:
Sept. 7
The Clientele "Minotaur"
Interpol "Interpol"

Sept. 14
Superchunk "Majesty Shredding"
Black Mountain "Wilderness Heart"
The Black Angles "Phosphene Dream"
Bear in Heaven "Beast Rest Forth Mouth"
Fucked Up "Year of the Ox" (single)
The Vaselines "Sex With an X"
Justin Townes Earle "Harlem River Blues"

Sept. 28
No Age "Everything in Between"
http://soundcloud.com/subpop/no-age-glitter

Free MP3 Download: Ducktails "Hamilton Road"

2010-08-10T16:52:00.000-05:00

One-man bedroom pop/psychedelia project (because we don't already have enough of those) Ducktails is Matthew Mondanile. He's gonna drop his latest, "Ducktails III," this fall on Woodsist. Here's a free sample. It's actually got a melody, hooray! I dig the cheap crackle of the recording, which is lofi for sure but not to the point where his voice sounds like Times New Viking.

Ducktails "Hamilton Road"

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix Theater: books to film addition

2010-08-09T06:49:00.003-05:00

The Road (2009)
I still haven't finished Cormac McCarthy's source work for The Road, despite that it falls into one of my favorite genres — post-apocalyptic dystopian futures. But judging from the half I did read, John Hillcoat's film adaptation is about as faithful as they come. A nameless father and son wander a desolate landscape void of plant or animal life and dotted by dead treas. They push a shopping cart filled with their few remaining possessions — some crayons, paper, blankets, a few morsels of food, and a handgun with two bullets saved for the worst. They dodge cannibalistic drifters, stumble into a house of human livestock, and experience all other sorts of inhumane survival. It's nihilistic, grim stuff without an ounce of relief. Hillcoat was definitely the right man to bring McCarthy's hard-as-nails survival story to the big screen (everyone should check out Hillcoat's equally grim Australian western The Proposition). Despite reaching an unexpectedly emotional apex before concluding, when most of a film involves its main characters contemplating suicide, you're left wondering "What's the point?" B

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) This one also begs the question, what's the point? Not because it's a bad movie, it's actually pretty good, but because I already read the book. What's the point of watching a thriller/mystery when you already know where and when all the thrills end? It kind of kills the suspense. And as fun as it is seeing the pages realized on film, I kind of like my brain's version more. Of course, all of this can be said for any film adaptation. There's almost no way to judge it on its own merits, but I will try. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is perfectly cast, especially Lisbeth Salander, the emotionally disturbed hacker punk/private investigator who helps journalist Mikael Blomkvist look into corporate corruption, an ugly family secret and a series of brutal serial murders. I would even say that in its effort to translate the 600-page novel in to 2.5 hours of film, the required plot streamlining even improves upon some of the book. But again, knowing all the twists, red herrings and surprises ahead of time, I was bored at a few junctures. I'm guessing someone who doesn't know how it ends would like this quite a bit, so it's gonna get a B+. (An American remake staring Daniel Craig and a bunch of other people better looking than the Euro actors here is currently in pre-production, with David Fincher ("Se7en," "Zodiac") directing.)

No Age album art revealed

2010-08-05T07:25:00.000-05:00

"Everything in Between" will be out Sept. 28 on Sub Pop.

Like "Nouns," the artwork is striking, and designed by Brian Roettinger.

I think I dig "Nouns" artwork a bit more, but this will do.

Free MP3 Download: The Vaselines "Sex with an X"

2010-08-05T07:14:00.000-05:00

The newly reformed seminal twee duo have returned, and here's a free download of their new song, "Sex with an X."

http://soundcloud.com/subpop/the-vaselines-sex-with-an-x

Best Coast - Crazy For You

2010-08-05T06:51:00.001-05:00

Best Coast's much buzzed debut has been out for a few weeks, my buddy over at Esoteria wrote a great review here praising Bethany Cosentino's teen-dream songwriting and general weed-gauze (I think "noise-pop" is the critically fashionable term, but it's really not that noisy) aesthetic. I still haven't decided if this is for me, but I can't stop giving it second chances, so maybe there is something here. For those in the same boat, below is a full stream of the record.

Ugh

2010-08-03T18:42:00.007-05:00

Actual supergroups suck anyways.

That's it. The word "supergroup" has got to go, forever.
Everyone in every band was in a band of some sort before their current band. Unless your bandmates' previous groups were Wham!, B2K and Jet, your band is not a supergroup (jokes!). This rant was inspired by Pandora.com's description of the Thermals:

"A Portland-based supergroup of sorts, the Thermals originally featured Kind of Like Spitting's Ben Barnett, the Operacycle's Jordan Hudson, and Hutch Harris and Kathy Foster of the twee/folk-pop duo Hutch and Kathy and the All Girl Summer Fun Band."

I'm sorry, but pulling members from those bands does not make you a supergroup, it makes you every other fucking band on the planet. This phenomenon of pretending we know about every obscure bedroom recording artist on the planet before they make it (relatively big) with a different but just slightly less obscure indie act has got to stop. Saying this, I love the Thermals. This is not aimed at them. Calling every band a supergroup because its members were in bands before is just a not-so-sly way for writers to sound more knowledgeable than they really are, while at the same time making readers feel ignorant: "Wow, I've never heard of BooBooKittyFuck, and now its former members are in a SUPERGROUP?!?!? Wow, I'm really out of it."

Free MP3 download: Woven Bones "I've Gotta Get"

2010-07-29T18:03:00.000-05:00

Hey! I like the Black Lips! Do you guys like the Black Lips?! If so, you'll like Woven Bones! enthusiasm! garage rock!
But in all seriousnous I do like this single, from their new 7-inch EP:

Woven Bones "I've Gotta Get"
(Right click to download, left click to stream)

Free MP3 downloads: Avi Buffalo "Remember Last Time" and "What's In It For?"

2010-07-27T18:03:00.003-05:00

I haven't heard the rest of this highly-buzzed self-titled debut, but I was instantly sold by the second-half guitar spaz-out that would have felt at home on Wilco's "A Ghost is Born." These kids are like 18. I lose.

Avi Buffalo "Remember Last Time"
(Right click to download, left click to stream)

Avi Buffalo "What's In It For?"
(Right click to download, left click to stream)

Last year is always better

2010-07-26T16:23:00.002-05:00

I've been going back to some of 2009's freshest music, and man, does last year make this year look weak as hell.

2010 = Weak (by their standards) followups by established acts (Spoon, the Hold Steady, Band of Horses), and very few complete, fully-realized debuts (the exception being Surfer Blood, and maybe Tame Impala), and some disappointing to mildly good sophomore efforts [Vampire Weekend, (second half of) Yeasayer's album], with the exception being Titus Andronicus's "The Monitor." Some good, but not career-highlight albums by LCD Soundsystem and Black Keys, fill out my best-of the year list only because of lack of competition.

Beach House's superb "Teen Dream" doesn't fit in any of these categories. It's still really good, though. And my initial distaste and resistance for Ariel Pink is wearing off.

2009 = Several breakout sophomore (or later) albums (St. Vincent, Phoenix, Animal Collective, YACHT, White Rabbits, etc), several incredible debuts by bands with terrible names (Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Girls, Japandroids, The XX, Neon Indian) and plenty of good workman-like records from M. Ward, Dinosaur Jr., Yo La Tengo, The Thermals, Black Lips, The Decemberists and The Flaming Lips, among others.
In retrospect, Wilco's self titled record still stands as a disappointment, outside of a few tracks.

2010 may yet be redeemed by Deerhunter. The first single and B-side from "Halcyon Digest," available in an older posting, point towards great things.

MP3 download: Male Bonding "Year's Not Long"

2010-07-26T14:04:00.003-05:00

"Nothing Hurts" was out several months ago, and if you haven't checked it out, it's worth it: Shoegaze-punk that powers through on 2-3 minute songs, with correspondingly fast rhythms and guitar.

Male Bonding "Year's Not Long"
(left click to stream, right click to save)

New Deerhunter song: Free Mp3 download

2010-07-23T09:27:00.003-05:00

Deerhunter created a game: if you go here http://halcyondigest.com/revival/ and enter a password, you get to download the new single "Revival" (and the B-side!) from their upcoming "Halcyon Digest." I did some googling and found the password, it's "tapereel." Enjoy. Once the page loads, click on the tape recorder.

"Revival" has a fairly clean (outside of the shoegaze-y vocals and a fuzz guitar lurking in the background) and poppy '60s vibe, not unlike Atlas Sound's standout 2009 track "Walkabout."

Summer reading (some beach books, some not)

2010-07-21T16:39:00.006-05:00

Philip K. Dick "A Scanner Darkly"
Everyone should read this book. Funny, scary, compassionate, depressing and mind-bending, it's easily the best depiction of users and their circuitous conversations, paranoia and earnest foolishness I've ever seen/read. Having been friends with some real-life versions of characters in this book, the shit hit close to home. And, the plot, my god, the plot: Bob Archer is a Substance D addict. Bob Archer is also Fred, a undercover narcotics officer. When Fred reports to his superiors, he wears a holographic suit that disguises his appearance. Fred is assigned to report on Bob Archer's "suspicious" activities. As Archer/Fred becomes more dependent on Substance D, a drug the splits the brain's left and right hemisphere, he begins to compartmentalize his two identities until they are separate people. Is Fred, Bob, or is Bob, Fred? — all kinds of themes of identity are at play here, and "A Scanner Darkly" is easily some of PKD's best work. [My favorite PKD book is likely "Ubik," but I would also highly recommend "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (the basis for "Blade Runner") as well as "The Man in the High Castle."] A

Stieg Larsson "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"
This one falls more into the beach reading category, despite the occasionally dense paragraph detailing some financial scandal. Apparently everyone in America is reading this Swede's book, so why should I be any different? I couldn't put it down, and it definitely had its hooks in me — and why wouldn't it, with a journo as the main character, an the other being a hacker-punk chick who rides a motorcycle? I loved it, despite some questionable journalistic ethics in the final 100 pages, and an uneven writing style that occasionally jeers into an editorial voice. But, the book weaves a tale of corporate corruption, journalism, a family murder plot and buried secrets into a thriller that, you know, thrills. (Larsson was a magazine editor who wrote three books in this series before dieing in 2004. I have not yet read the other two, but this one could have used a bit more editing, me thinks. They were posthumously published.) B+

Dave Eggers "What is the What"

"What is the What" is tagged as fiction only because it tells the odyssey of Valentino Achak Deng who fled genocide in Sudan in the '80s for the United States, and Eggers had to recreate dialogue and some details to fill in Deng's memory. The story at large is purely non-fiction. Eggers frames the story from the present, as Deng is taken hostage during a sloppy robbery in his Atlanta apartment, and tells his story of escape from Sudan in the first person to his new, American captors, oddly addressing them directly. I didn't finish this, because I was reading it on vacation and then lost momentum when I got home and had shit to do. But it was engrossing for several hundred pages before becoming a bit repetitive. Deng went through several levels of hell — machetes, machine guns, fire, starvation, dehydration, disease, lions and then American robbery. Former 7' 7" NBA center Manute Bol hailed from the same tribe as Deng and fled the same atrocities. The book added new meaning and gravity to the memory of Bol, for me, who is often regarded as not much more than a circus act. Bol gave away most his NBA millions to Sudan relief efforts and died this summer 47. B+

Pitchfork Music Festival 2010

2010-07-19T19:32:00.003-05:00

Seeing Titus Andronicus live on Saturday just cemented "The Monitor" as my album of the year thus far.

They win.

Oh and Pavement was good (sloppy), too.

MP3 Download: High Life "F Kenya Rip"

2010-07-15T12:45:00.002-05:00

A slice of Afro pop, from High Life's EP "best bless."

Left click to stream, right click to download, via Gorilla Vs Bear

High Life "F Kenya Rip"

MP3 Download: Sonny & the Sunsets

2010-07-14T07:05:00.006-05:00

Thanks to the blog Beach Tapes for introducing me to Sonny & the Sunsets, just in time too. Apparently they will be appearing at the Pitchfork Music Festival this weekend. I'll have to add them to my schedule. Their California Americana should be a nice change of pace from Neon Indian and the lot.

Right click to download, left click to stream:
Sonny & the Sunsets "Too Young to Burn"

Sonny & the Sunsets "Death Cream"

Sonny & the Sunsets "The Hypnotist"

MP3 Download: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti "Round and "Round"

2010-07-14T07:00:00.001-05:00

The rest of this album is highly over-rated. But this song, this song, is amazing. Like a combination of '70s pop, an early Michael Jackson bassline and a lost '80s British smash, the thing just floats. Great summer jam, with hooks to spare.

Right click here to download (or left click to stream)

MP3 Download: Perfume Genius "Mr. Peterson"

2010-07-13T15:51:00.006-05:00

Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius, has a haunted melancholy to his voice not unlike Sufjan Stevens. I haven't heard the rest of "Learning" yet to know if this is a one-off brilliant moment or a collection of great songs.

Right click to download Perfume Genius "Mr. Peterson."
(Or left click to listen to a stream.)

"Learning" is out now on Matador.

MP3 Download: Stornoway "Zorbing"

2010-07-13T15:30:00.002-05:00

Oxford, England's Stornoway will release their debut "Beachcomber's Windowsill" on 4AD on August 10.
It sounds like a Glee-club Fleet Foxes. Perhaps a little prim and proper for my tastes, but it's pretty for sure, and shows a little unexpected life with horns near the 2 minute mark.

Right click here to save "Zorbing."

MP3 download: Mystery Jets

2010-07-13T06:58:00.002-05:00

Thanks to http://amixedtape.tumblr.com/ for reminding me about Mystery Jets' new album "Serotonin".

I've heard a couple tracks and it's quite good. Right click to download an MP3 of "Flash a Hungry Smile":

http://www.beggarsgroupusa.com/mp3/MysteryJets_FlashAHungrySmile.mp3

"Serotonin" is out today on Rough Trade.

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix Theater

2010-07-12T19:59:00.008-05:00

Cache (2005)
Michael Haneke occasionally makes great films, despite himself — even with his occasional disdain for his audience (sometimes that's the entire point). But, if one of his films can stand on their own as a piece of entertainment, it's gotta be Cache.
Stripped of its social commentary of Hollywood's blood-thirsty schadenfreude, Haneke's best known film Funny Games still works as a horror film, albeit an unconventional one.
Stripped of its political commentary and meditations on guilt, Cache ("Hidden" in English) largely works as a suspense thriller. For the first two acts, Cache slowly unnerves its audience, as a middle-aged couple receives VHS tapes in the mail showing the outside of their home, occasionally accompanied by a childlike drawing. Theories about who might be sending the threatening postage tear at the fabric of their marriage, their relationship with their son, and eventually bring to light a secret from the husband's childhood. The secret functions as a metaphor for a 1970s massacre of Algerian civilians in Paris that has largely been swept under the rug in history books. Though by the final act, Haneke lets his thematic convictions take hold, and he disregards the conventional plot arc, leaving viewers waiting for an eventually unrealized conclusion. Because, as Haneke says in the DVD extras, the who-done-it plot, in the end, doesn't make a yarn of difference to the ultimate meaning of his film.

As a conversation starter and brain igniter, Haneke always wins. His ending is more than open-ended, it's not a predictably "unHollywood ending," where things happen just in the exact opposite way they would here. It's a purposeful statement about national and personal guilt, wrapped in a "suspense" package (though by American standards a very slow and deliberate one). But, the greatest role Haneke has yet to play is that of fully-formed story teller and point-maker at the same time. Note: The White Ribbon, Haneke's lastest, sits on my desk, and I'll be watching that soon, so we'll see if he's changed at all. A-

eXistenZ (1999)

I watched this after the Avclub.com's "Scenic Routes" feature focused on the film's "gristle gun" scene. Jude Law is a body guard assigned to escort virtual-reality-game designer Jennifer Jason Leigh into one of her own creations to track down a virus — planted by a rival corporation — designed to infecting and kill her invention from the inside. This is a David Cronenberg film, so the video game consoles are organic in nature, not plastic, are disgusting as hell and require a little body mutilation to communicate/integrate with, via an umbilical chord-like connection. In said Gristle-Gun scene, Law and Leigh are in an Asian restaurant (inside the game). Law orders the special, which is a plate of disgusting sea creatures unlike anything we'd ever eat. He begins methodically eating the mess, slowly discovering that the bones and gristle fits together into a gun that shoots teeth. It's an amazing scene. But like the rest of the film, it's only momentarily brilliant — one amazing idea tied to the next via laborious pseudo-techno jargon and stilted exposition. Philip K. Dick-worthy reality mind-fucks in the film's final act nearly redeem a ramshackle story. Oh yeah, throughout the film Cronenberg uses various characters as mouth pieces to espouse his various ham-fisted rants against video gaming and their reality-eschewing properties. No matter how prescient Cronenberg often is, it's almost always clunky here. C+

Shutter Island (2010)
Some of the most enjoyable entertainment occurs when a "serious" artist has some fun and jumps in the genre mud pits. Marten Scorcese does exactly that here with Shutter Island, taking his Oscar-worthy chops and creating a pitch-perfect thriller. Shutter Island is Marty's first foray into pulpy genre film-making since Cape Fear, and he knocks the fucker out of the park. In turns suspenseful, tragic, terrifying, but most of all entertaining, he even manages to maneuver the twist that you don't want to be the twist, and makes it work. In a lessor director's hands, this could have been a cliched mess. A

Crazy Heart (2009)
Like the The Wrestler in 2008, Crazy Heart jumps in at the rock-bottom moment most overwrought biopics crawl to at about the two-hour mark, this is the part shortly after Johnny Cash falls down on stage and everyone writes him off, or when Jake Lamotta is fat and telling bad one liners at dive bars. Jeff bridges brings us in at the vortex of the downward spiral, and accomplishes the essential trick: making us care about a heartless bastard and his hopeful redemption. Lots of good original music and performances, too. B+

On the stereo this week: Tame Impala "Inner Speaker"

2010-07-12T06:42:00.003-05:00

Innerspeaker is one of those records that quietly nags for you to return, it burrows in, re-arranges a few synapses, tells the right and left side of your brain to get along, and then waits for you to revisit. Tame Impala are a bunch of Australians who make far-out psychedelia, as much indebted to the Beatles and other late '60s guitar bands as they are shoegaze's swirling guitars. Here's hoping the album lives beyond the initial narco-blanket warmth and has some actual staying power.

Album Reviews: LCD Soundsystem, Black Keys, Wolf Parade, Jaill

2010-07-09T11:45:00.000-05:00

http://www.pekintimes.com/entertainment/x1849227362/Notable-album-releases-from-spring-early-summer

On the stereo today: Jaill "That's How We Burn" (UPDATE 7/9)

2010-07-09T11:27:00.000-05:00

Good ole' jangly and psychedelic garage rock:
Sub Pop debut out on July 27. The whole album is good. Here's a sample, right click to download:

http://downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Jaill%20-%20Everyone%27s%20Hip.mp3

You can listen to the full album stream here:

http://soundcloud.com/subpop/sets/jaill-thats-how-we-burn

Altered Zones

2010-07-07T13:37:00.006-05:00

http://alteredzones.com/
For anyone that thought Pitchfork wasn't adequately pretentious, everyone's favorite fickle review site has created Alteredzones.com, a blog collective aimed at readers who want to pretend they're the only people who have discovered blog bands. As with any other Pitchfork project, I'm guessing there will be lots of good music as long as you're patient enough to sort through navel-gazing posts and piles of over-hyped bedroom recording artists, which is the exact type of outsider musicians Pitchfork says it will cover at Altered States.

I will say that the site's design is very cool, utilizing images from the kind of retro-futurism seen on the covers of pulpy, mid-century sci-fi novels. Though the general aesthetic is very similar to GorillaVsBear.net's Polaroid kitsch (the GvB blog is one of the contributors to alteredzones, so I guess it's allowed some borrowing.)

The half-year in music (with videos!)

2010-07-07T06:38:00.002-05:00

(Ahem. As you can see there are few actual videos, it's mostly only youtube songs with static images)

Best Albums

Surfer Blood "Astro Coast" A-

Titus Andronicus "The Monitor" A-

Beach House "Teen Dream" A-

LCD Soundsystem "This is Happening" B

Black Keys "Brothers" B+

Spoon "Transference" B

Good
The Hold Steady "Heaven is Whenever" B-

Tame Impala "Innerspeaker" B+
Yeasayer "Ambling Alp" (the first half, at least) B-

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings "I Learned the Hard Way" B-
Sleigh Bells "Treats" B
Jaill -"This is How We Burn" B
Male Bonding "Nothing Hurts" B
Dr. Dog "Shame Shame" B-

Meh

She & Him "Vol. 2" C-
Everything M. Ward does deserves a listen. At a certain point, though, even if I recognize something as quality work (mostly the production and instrumentation) doesn't mean I have to like it, or force myself to listen to it on the reg. I just don't see the point of She & Him. Zooey doesn't write quite good enough songs, they are pleasant enough, but I'd rather just go dig up some old records.

The Morning Benders "Big Echo" B-

The Brooklyn via San Fran group led off its second album with perhaps the song of the year, "Excuses," a glorious amalgamation of glee-club harmonies, bluesy strings and soaring melodies, but then let Chris Taylor's (Grizzly Bear) production drag the following nine tracks through the tasteful, reverbed sludge that makes Taylor's outfit so damn boring. Only the occasionally fuzzed-out guitar struts through the languid, hung-over drapery, heard on the second track on the top-loaded record.

Foals - Total Life Forever C

Overrated

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti "Before Today"

Robyn "Body Talk Pt. 1"

Robyn is terrible and I'm tired of all these hipsters saying otherwise.

Janelle Monae "The ArchAndroid"

Disappointments

Vampire Weekend "Contra" C
I think yr a contra. NO! yr a contra ...

Wolf Parade "Expo 86" C
Broken Bells "Broken Bells" C-

Haven't had time for more than one listen

Gorillaz "Plastic Beach"
Dum Dum Girls "I Will Be"
Broken Social Scene "Forgiveness Rock Record"
Harlem "Hippies"
The National "High Violet"

Did not hear

New Pornographers "Together"
Band of Horses "Infinite Arms"
MGMT "Congratulations"
Joanna Newsom "Have One on Me"
... and thousands more

Shitlist:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/music/ref=pd_ts_nav

Good on paper (new edit/addition 7-02)

2010-07-01T06:44:00.007-05:00

There are those certain artists, who in album reviews, feature articles and interviews sound as if they could be your new favorite band. So with unbridled optimism and excitement, you spin the CD (also known as Compact Disk, an antiquated form of music storage that provided hi-fi audio quality when played with an optical drive) ... and ... plop. Nothing. For reasons abstract and absolute, it just doesn't do it for you. Tastes are tricky. Who are some of your "good on paper" acts? The most recent examples for me are as follows:

Janelle Monae
She is a talented performer, no doubt, just check out her fancy footwork at the recent BET awards. Not to mention anyone combining two of my favorite things — her new record is a quasi-concept album mashing Metropolis-era Fritz Lang with classic soul — should be my favorite new singer. It's garnering best of the year reviews from critics I respect. But then I hear the songs ... and ... nothing. I think it might be her voice, when she hits the high notes, something feels strained, thin, flat even. I don't feel like she can capture the saxophone-complex timbre of a real soul shouter, or that her songs really have that much soul in the first place. Perhaps it's the production, as metallic as the art-deco silver city in Metropolis. Speaking of science fiction, how can soul music be about the future? What about the here and now, what about her apartment, her boyfriend and her city?

Perhaps the real problem is the dissonance between the image and the sound — she wears a giant pompadour haircut, and retro threads, writers constantly refer to her in a throw-back fashion — but when it comes down to it, her sound is far more contemporary R 'n' B than classic, a sound that allows for a much smaller voice and colder production.

The Gaslight Anthem
To borrow Holden Caulfield's favorite word, they sound phony. Springsteen comparisons be damned, the guitars sound more like sanitized Warped Tour mallpunk, and the maudlin choruses are more suited to a Brian Adams hit than for anyone convincingly wearing a leather jacket.

The Gaslight Anthem suck in the same way as any band whose distortion isn't nearly as loud as their tattoos suck. Also, it's not 1959, you are not your grandpa and you did not live through the great depression. They suffer from the age old problem of not sounding nearly as hard, alternative or interesting as they look, a disease I would prescribe to just about everyone on the pop charts.

Wavves "King of the Beach" first listen: Nevermind the Backlash edition

2010-06-30T22:52:00.001-05:00

The new Wavves album is streaming early and ... I'm digging it, who cares of Nathan Williams is a bit of a twat.

The noise-as-purpose statement is largely gone, revealing even more of his his bratty pop sensibility. The album is still lo-fi, and crunchy, mind you, but his Jay Reatard-refuge rhythm section and time in an actual recording studio have paid off.

Dudes apparently been listening to Animal Collective quite a bit, too -- "Mickey Mouse" would fit in on "Merriweather Post Pavilion" nicely.

Go here to hear the damn thing:
http://www.fatpossum.com/promo_pages/wavves

The jam of the moment:

2010-06-28T16:26:00.000-05:00

Sonic Youth - Teenage Riot

UGH

2010-06-24T13:00:00.002-05:00

Fox News finds a way to make me angry every day.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/21/liberal-book-bias-summer-reading-national-association-scholars/

If "environmentalism, animal rights and food" are considered liberal causes, what would be the conservative alternatives? "Pollutionism, animal torture and fast-food"?

Only in America could conserving what we have not be considered "conservative," but rather referred to as "liberal" in a pejorative sense.

Of course, any sensible analysis of the report was buried at the bottom, well after the point when most readers have made up their mind, and clicked away in disgust over academia's "liberal bias" supposedly revealed.

"He also challenged the inclusion of "Persepolis," a graphic novel about the brutal dictatorship in Iran, as liberal, and the failure to list "Freakonomics," a libertarian book about economics, as conservative."

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix Theater

2010-06-21T11:34:00.004-05:00

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
There are few things more annoying than listening to an 8-year-old make things up as he goes along for 90 minutes. Also, I don't care about the relationship problems of imaginary beasts in an imaginary forest (whether they are metaphorical or not). At least it all looked really pretty. C-

Up in the Air (2009)
A movie of our nation's time and place, even if it's most obviously exactly that, Up in the Air is good. Honest with its characters, it doesn't gift them easy redemption or eureka revelations, instead allowing them nuanced changes and growth. About 2/3 of the way through, the viewer might begin smelling some whiffs of formulaic rom-com contrivances, but directer Jason Reitman corrects the course for the final act. A-

Sherlock Holmes (2009)
I watched this on an airplane, alright? Shit was rank. About what I expected, even with director Guy Ritchie's energy. Why does every CGI fest set in 19th century (I think) Europe have identical and desaturated backdrops? Everything looks like a League of Extraordinary Gentleman video game — the blacks aren't really black, the whites are gray and not a red or yellow hue is to be seen. D

Things I learned today

2010-05-28T12:41:00.001-05:00

1. After finally listening to Can's "Ege Bamyasi," the band is more accessible than I predicted, but I'm still not blown away.

2. The first leaked track from Kanye West's upcoming album (to be released some time near September, 2010) is pretty good: http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=80884

3. The Specials are really fun.

NEW ARCADE FIRE (UPDATE)

2010-05-26T16:19:00.003-05:00

Two tracks from the much-anticipated/hyped/salivated-for/dreamed-of/requested new record from the Arcade Fire are avilable for free download or listen, here:

http://onethirtybpm.com/2010/05/26/mp3-arcade-fire-the-suburbsmonth-of-may/

UPDATE: The full album will be out Aug. 3, cover art to the left. It can be pre-ordered here: http://arcadefire.com/

New Music Watch: Grinderman, Ratatat

2010-05-26T14:51:00.009-05:00

Electronic-dance duo Ratatat will return with a self-explanatory album named "LP4" on June 8. Hear a sample MP3, named "Party With Children," here:

Nick Lowe's grumpy-old-man outfit Grinderman also announced a new album, "Grinderman 2" via Anti- Records in the U.S. on September 14th.

Review: Sleigh Bells - Treats

2010-05-21T09:19:00.002-05:00

Feel free to comment (thoughtfully) here or at the newspaper website.

http://www.pekintimes.com/entertainment/x1560871752/Album-review-Sleigh-Bells-full-length-debut-Treats-demands-to-be-played-loudly

Wye Oak

2010-05-18T15:17:00.002-05:00

I completely missed this band last year even though (I now see) they made a lot of the www.AVClub.com writer's best-of lists. But I apparently over-looked them until they covered The Kink's "Strangers" today on the Web site's hit-or-miss "Undercover" series.

Check out Wye Oak do "Strangers":

Wye Oak covers The Kinks

Or some of their original indieAmericana here:

http://www.myspace.com/wyeoak

Review: The Hold Steady - Heaven is Whenever

2010-05-14T10:25:00.004-05:00

http://www.pekintimes.com/entertainment/x1560854670/REVIEW-The-Hold-Steady-Heaven-is-Whenever

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix Theater

2010-05-12T07:21:00.004-05:00

An Education (2009)

Breaking a movie's meaning down to a cliche can often be the best way to identify its theme, I learned durin' ma schoolin'. So here goes: "Struggle makes success sweeter," or "Success is a journey not a destination," (or whatever the correct version of one of those sentiments are). In An Education, Jenny [Carrie Mulligan, who deserves all the praise she received for her performance, and who may soon overtake Zooey Deschanel (aren't people tired of her yet?) as every music/art-inclined boy's fantasy] is a straight A-student in '60s London with dreams of Oxford. Her parents are square but loving, and they want the best for their little princess. All this changes when an older man, David (Peter Sarsgaard), strikes up a friendship with the sophisticated-beyond-her years, French-film and jazz loving teenager. Of course, his interest is less than platonic, as is hers. He woos her with trips to France, money and a lifestyle that would have taken her hard work and labor to achieve down the road. Of course she jumps at the chance to go to exciting upper-class restaurants and night spots, the race track and other place of wine, lobster and art. But, what about her own growth, and is all that really satisfying without the personal sense of accomplishment? The film's grace and elegance carries the more obvious plot points, at times (maybe this is just because it takes place in '60s Europe) reminding of French New Wave cinema's easy cool (without the creative editing). A final twist that still allows for a Hollywood ending may be too much for a film meant to educate its title character, but An Education still remains thoughtful. B+

Lists

2010-05-11T13:53:00.002-05:00

If I list Elvis Costello's first four records in order of preference, it would be the exact same as if I listed them chronologically. Not to say I dislike any of them, and I know the critically fashionable thing to do would be to name any of them except the debut as the best, but what can I say, I love the sound of an American backing band playing pub rock. I acquired all the records at the same time, and the first listen of all them was within the same week, so it's not that I heard the first record first ...

A quick brain storm reveals Weezer to be another one for me, though everything after "Pinkerton" has been shite (with the exception of a few tracks), and I'd like to stick with groups where all the albums on the list are solid.

Cake would be one, though my album preferences for the group have slowly changed over the years (the debut was the third record I heard by the band), and though I rarely listen to the band anymore even though I still like it, the preference/chronological list is now identical all the way through 2004's "Pressure Chief."

Can you think of any others where the preference/chronology pairing applies?

The tired listener

2010-05-11T12:34:00.003-05:00

I don't have the energy for "High Violet."

The National has never immediately grabbed me, they're subdued, low, dreary ... ruminating ... parts of "Alligator" and "Boxer" are tremendous, only parts, and after several listens of "High Violet" streaming over at NPR, I ask myself, "Why?"

Perhaps on the 20th listen it will finally, belatedly, painfully become my favorite record (and despite the defeatism of this post I'll probably give it at least that many more spins), and I suppose that's the answer to my question, but goddamn, I have too much to listen to, to many films to watch, too many books to read, and I'm feeling craggy and tired and lazy and ...

... then there are the records that should really attack and grab a hold immediately — I'm speaking of the Dead Weather's "Sea of Cowards." After picking up Jack White's 3rd band's debut "Horehound" about six months ago, it lasted in my car for about six weeks, and then retreated to the pile in the back seat, and I have had no inclination to go back to it. After hearing the first single from "Sea of Cowards," I'm picking up the same vibe — arena-blooze with a lot of bombast but no purpose, repetitive melodies, and ... it's not really that much fun. Where the hell is a new White Stripes record?

Am I entering that age when all you want to do is listen to the same old bands and records you've heard a thousand times, and new music just isn't that exciting? The number of records I'm buying this year would suggest "no," but then again all I really want to do is throw on "Boys and Girls in America," or "Being There," or "My Aim is True" and shred the debit card.

Nice

2010-05-11T10:09:00.004-05:00

NPR has had a ridiculous number of highly-anticipated releases streaming for free, here's the latest (Sleigh Bells - "Treats"):

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126667481

Dammit

2010-05-03T09:05:00.004-05:00

Lala.com is shutting down.
The streaming music service was bought by Apple and is being discontinued. (If Apple is trying to be less loved and more tyrannical in its Web music machinations, job well done, uh, Jobs.)
Lala was great for several reasons: A) It let you listen to any song, album, etc once all the way though. No 30 second sample bullshit. B) You could pay just a few cents and be able to listen to that song(s) infinitely as a "Web song", or you could purchase the actual MP3. Also, you could tell Lala to scan yr hard drive and look for music files, which it would then let you listen to on its Web site, displayed in a similar fashion to itunes. In essence I had my entire itunes library any where I could log onto the internet.

Apple is giving itunes store credit for any "web songs" purchased. I had like 40 free Web song credits given to me by Lala for signing up that I didn't use and now can't be used. I was hoping I could cash them all in today and then receive them back in itunes store credits. I am now looking for more ways to abuse the system.

Bam!
Found it: Mp3s on Lala are only 89 cents. Anything bought on Lala will be converted to itunes on May 31 when the service is shut down. Most MP3s on itunes are 99 cents. So, if you want, go get 10 percent off.

Lala is not allowing new users, so if you didn't sign up before, too bad.

P.S. Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber (Page hits!)

Losing My Edge

2010-04-28T10:02:00.002-05:00

Losing My Edge - LCD Soundsyst...

I wish I was an extra in Slacker, that I was seeing the Replacements in '84 in Minneapolis and that it was 1905 in Peoria, that Wire was the biggest band from the '70s and Starship never existed. I wish Danger Mouse would stop trying to collaborate with all my favorite bands and that James Mercer would reform the Shins. I wish it was a Thursday night in 2004 and I was heading to Andiamos, that I was a freshman in college and that I was forming a post-pop electro/alt-dancewave punkcore proto-disco seminalchill band before sharing a cigarette with Jim Jarmusch at some crap diner in NY. I wish hip-hop maintained its DIY ethos and that Clear Channel was bought by an independently wealthy businessman and burned to the ground. I wish vintage analogue synthesizers weren't out of my price range and that I had the time and energy to read. I wish the Dormitory's jukebox was free and that "This is Happening" was out today and it didn't have "Drunk Girls" on it. I wish Yeasayer could write more than 5 good songs for an album, that nearly every good record this year wasn't completely front-loaded and that (often meaningless) NSFW music videos would stop getting such easy publicity for (what's now) standard-practice titties and gore [I'm looking you M.I.A., Flaming Lips, Yeasayer, Girls, Erykah Badu, No Age, Matt and Kim, Massive Attack, The Kills, etc (dammit they just won again)] I wish there was a performance venue in town to draw indie acts, that my hipster mailman would stop taking my issue of Paste every month that I then have to call for a replacement copy of (which has also disappeared once). I wish I was hearing Elvis Costello's "My Aim is True," Otis Redding's "Otis Blue," Tom Waits "Heart of Saturday Night," Pixies "Doolittle," Pavement's "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain," Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," and Beck's "Odelay" for the first time again. I wish I wasn't nostalgic.

SPRING MUSIC

2010-04-23T09:07:00.002-05:00

Several of the most anticipated May music releases are streaming for free in their entirety:

I'm not allowing myself to listen to th new Hold Steady or LCD Soundsystem until I have the physical copies in hand, but I probably will preview the other two. What do you guys think of the new albums?

The Hold Steady - Heaven is Whenever
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126023882

Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125236515

LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
http://www.lcdsoundsystem.com/thisishappening/

The National - High Violet
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/magazine/25national-t.html

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix theater

2010-04-20T07:01:00.001-05:00

The Informant! (2009) The Informant!, on the surface, feels like the kind of movie that should have been written/directed/produced by the Coen brothers — a hapless businessman way over his head, played by a paunchy, mustachioed Matt Damon (in the Coen universe it would have been William H. Macy), a '90s Midwest setting (Decatur and Springfield, Il) ripe for comedic picking. But while the Coens would have led down absurdest and surrealist paths of symbolism, director Steven Soderbergh lets the ridiculousness of it's real-life protagonist Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) do all the work. Whitacre was a VP of ADM, the corn processing giant, who worked undercover for two years with the FBI to expose price-fixing and other supposed scandals. He proves a hilariously bumbling yet, despite himself, competent spy, fluent in several languages but with way more book smarts than street. Like an absent-minded Patrick Bateman in the Midwest (without the serial killing) Whitacre's brain drifts hilariously aloof from one materialistic aside to another — thoughts of buying new ties to whether he likes the feeling of wool on skin and other meaningless absurdities. Example: "I've been to Tokyo. They sell little-girl underwear in the vending machines right on the main drag, the Ginza, or whatever. Guys in suits buying used girl panties. How is that okay? That's not okay."
Among the wandering thoughts, he's prone to delusions of grander and totally oblivious to the fact that he will probably not be awarded the CEOship for attempting to bring down ADM's top brass. With manic depression's highs and lows, Whitacre lets the excitement and greed get in the way of his "moral" crusade, but proves ultimately endearing for his childlike naivety and indefatigable spirit. Also, this film slyly says more about the American justice system — it's perverse bureaucracy and fucked priorities — than anything else this year. David Simon would be proud. A

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) Is Fantastic Mr. Fox the tweeist little twee-fest in the history of twee? Yes. But it's also as painfully detailed, sardonic, witty and dry as anything in director Wes Anderson's filmography (Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic, Rushmore, etc). But with all little things just right, the plotting provides the weak link. As Fox (George Clooney) and his band of ornery woodland creatures (Bill Murray, et al) do battle with mean ole Farmer Bean, the rules seem to constantly change (now Fox can dig is way out of any problem, now he can't, now he can again, etc). But, the familial themes familiar to any Anderson film provide the real backbone — jealousy, trust, betrayal and redemption. And, the animation looked stunning in Bluray, every little stop-motioned, hand-placed piece of fur or yarn is clearly defined and as painstakingly detailed as any live-motion set ever dreamed by the lanky auteur. B+

Angels and Demons (2009) Ugh, the papal mystery, European setting and pseudo history do provide an oddly intriguing premise, but Ron Howard is still a hack and Tom Hanks is still no Harrison Ford. At least the mullet is gone. A definite improvement on the god-awful Da Vinci Code ... but enough with the damn symbols. C-

Zombieland (2009) This movie rocked. No reason to say anything else, really. Fun time. A

The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009) — I really wanted to hate this. It's "wacky" New Ageism, boomer nostalgia, based-on-a-true-story excuse for existence. But what I found was a likable, light-hearted look at some of the more eccentric LSD casualties of the '60s. I'm tired and lazy and don't want to get into it, but just know that the movie is ridiculous and dumb but pretty funny and entertaining. B

ipad

2010-04-13T09:08:00.002-05:00

My new monthly entertainment column. I did not write the headline on it.

http://www.pekintimes.com/opinions/columnists/x1089265628/It-s-Apple-s-way-or-the-highway-when-it-comes-to-shiny-new-iGadgets

Lady Blah Blah

2010-04-07T15:13:00.001-05:00

I love a pointed burn as much as anyone else. MIA on Lady Gaga:

"People say we're similar, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same. None of her music's reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza disco, you know? She's not progressive, but she's a good mimic. She sounds more like me than I fucking do!"

Bam! Lady Gaga's music could be made by anyone. She's the worst. Discuss.

http://warpedcoasters.blogspot.com/2009/11/blah-blah-of-gaga.html

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix theater

2010-04-06T07:42:00.001-05:00

The Box (2009)
A film this reviled by audiences must be doing something right, right? Those were my first thoughts after seeing The Box's cinemascore rating (which compiles audience reaction as they exit a theater). I mean, a public so enamored with, well you know — the stuff they're enamored with — must universally hate this film because A.) it was likely unpredictable, B.) It was "boring," or perhaps C.) it made them uncomfortable. I arrogantly assumed it was the audience's insecurity, and not a lack of film craftsmanship that led to the low score. We're talking about a movie-going public that regularly makes the high-budget hackwork of Michael Bay the top grossing film of every summer. The day Transformers 2 came out, my Facebook newsfeed was overwhelmed with "OMG Transformers was awesomer" statuses.

The film's pedigree is intriguing at least: director Richard Kelly already has one cult classic under his belt, Donnie Darko, and one unwatchable, incoherent mess, Southland Tales. The Box was supposedly his attempt at Hollywood genre filmaking, the kind of picture adored by movie buffs for its adherence to genre thrills, and enjoyed by audiences for its straight-ahead suspense. It was even an adaptation of one of the Twilight Zone's most beloved writers, for Christ's sake.

As it turns out, I totally understand why audiences hated The Box. If Kelly set out to make a genre piece, he fails. The first half misfires on nearly all grounds: suspense, atmosphere, and most of all — pacing. The thing just lurches along. But then, right when you're ready to turn the fucker off, comes the philosophical/ethical premise: a middle class couple (Cameron Diaz and some dude) are presented a box with a red button. If they push the red button, they will immediately be given $1 million cash, but a person that they don't know will also be killed. After receiving the cash, the box will be delivered to another couple that they don't know, which implies exactly what you think it implies.

After they make their decision, weird stuff starts happening. Then even weirder stuff, and then Kelly loses his damn mind right when things actually start to get conspiratorial — the NSA, NASA, lightening, Mars launches, murder, cover ups, and then, wait for it, doors made out of water that transport people to different dimensions. Kelly couldn't even make a decent, tightly conceived thriller. The whole thing reeks of a nice short story that, once placed into the hands of a LSD burnout, turns into a 2,000 page manifesto about aliens, or something. D+

First single from new Hold Steady streaming:

2010-03-22T10:48:00.003-05:00

http://pitchfork.com/news/38234-premiere-hold-steady-hurricane-j/

What do you guys think of the new line up? Singer Craig Finn seams to be trying a new, slightly-altered singing delivery .. and I don't think I like it, but I've only listened to it on crappy Apple earbuds, so maybe that's not fair. It's almost like he's trying to actually, you know, sing. I want rapid-fire, dense lyrics covered in spit and sweat. Without Franz on the keys, this almost reminds me of Finn's pre-Hold Steady outfit Lifter Puller, which took a lightly more angular and sharp, punk-inspired route, except this has more of a pop sensibility.

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix Theater

2010-03-15T06:56:00.005-05:00

A Serious Man (2009)
In the trailer for the Coen brothers' latest, the sound of family man Larry Gopnik's head, thumped against a chalkboard, soundtracked two-minutes of impending domestic and professional disaster, eventually reaching a nearly unbearable tension relieved only by Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love." It was one of the most affective trailers I've ever seen, but stretch that feeling to 90+ minutes, and it feels more like the audience's head is the one being pummeled by the tragedy and travails of Gopnik's slowly disintegrating life. It's an effective pummeling, we watch as his family, career and Jewish religion methodically fall apart in 1960s small-town Iowa. We see one institution after another fail Larry, but after more than an hour of both subtle and not-so subtle misery, I ask, why in the world do I need to subject myself to picket-fence and chrome-fender hell? What am I learning here other than that some men are so ineffectual and nebbish that even when they're staring down the path of certain disaster they refuse to put a foot down? I suppose the very fact that the Coens pushed me to a point that required asking these questions of purpose and life and art means that the bastards, once again, did their fucking job, even if that means filming one of the most nihilistic endings I have ever seen (or was it?) B+

Crank 2: High Voltage (2009)
Co-directors Neveldine-Taylor's first Crank film was a gloriously over-the-top send-up (hopefully) of Mountain Dew-Xtreme-Doritos action movies. Crank 2 is more of the same, but the shtick has gone cold, and the depths they must plunge to continuously shock the audience often becomes just mean, ugly, increasingly bloody — and eventually just not fun anymore. C-

The Brothers Bloom (2008)
Director Rian Johnson doesn't completely fulfill the promise he showed with his endlessly inventive debut, the film-noir-via-modern-high school mashup Brick, but he shows increased range by replacing some of his edgier instincts with at-times nauseating whimsy and over-the-top production. As with Wes Anderson, Johnson constantly reminds his audience that this is a theater production, Ta-duh! His sets often look consciously like sets, the dialogue is, like in Brick, stylized and pointed, and the story is pure fantasy.

The Brothers Bloom follows two brothers who begin pulling cons before middle school. Older brother Stephen (Mark Ruffulo) writes the cons as elaborate stories where everyone gets what they want in the end, complete with the kind of symbolism found in "Russian novels," great betrayals, emotional climaxes and even a denouement. His brother, Bloom (Adrian Brody) is written into his cons as the charmer, the womanizer, the rogue. After decades playing games, Bloom is tired of living someone else's stories and vows, of course, to never pull another con again. Stephen drags Bloom back into the fold with one final con, the manipualtion of a beuatiful, rich shut-in (Rachel Weisz) who has never much left her parent's mansion, had any fun, nor shared her wealth with anyone else.

The Brothers Bloom mostly avoids the dreaded She's All That moment — when the con man tells the woman "at first it was a bet, but now I really love you" — by leading the audience down that obvious path before cutting through several twists and turns. The Brothers Bloom is a story about stories, dreams and living the life you want to live, though at points it would have been nice to get lost in a film that doesn't constantly remind its audience that a story arc is nothing more than a magnificent con of manipulated emotions. B

The Invention of Lying (2009)
The premise is the movie here, with plot often an afterthought and character development not an issue because everyone is basically the same — mean inner monologues become out-loud conversations, and every insecurity and judgmental thought is spoken. The Invention of Lying often confuses over-sharing with honesty. If you think someone is ugly, keeping it to yourself is not necessarily lying, it's simply not talking. Of course, the brutally "honest" conversations during a date between writer/director/star Ricky Gervais and Jennifer Garner — sample dialogue — "you are fat and have a snub nose, we will not be having sex tonight, and you probably won't get a kiss" provides a few laugh-out-loud lines but also a lot of cruelty. Often, the most enjoyable parts are the details. In a world without lies, advertising takes on a whole new strategy, movies are limited to narrators reading the most popular stories from the non-fiction canon, and there is no religion. But eventually even a premise-as-plot has to justify its run-time, and that's when the Invention of Lying strays into a half-assed, satirical parable of religion and it's function as the opiate of the masses. Gervias never makes a cogent argument for or against the ultimate lie of heaven and hell, instead landing occasionally clever jabs against the "man in the sky," and his followers. C+

The Great Album Coverocalypse of 2010 / Spring music preview

2010-03-05T07:56:00.008-06:00

April 13

This date shall for ever be known as The Great Album Coverocalypse of 2010, for it was the month of April when an aging Brit guitar hero and two snotty indie kids unleashed ocular atrocities of which the world had never seen. Behold: Jeff Beck's "Emotion and Commotion," and MGMT's "Congratulations." In school your children will read historical accounts of the artwork's creation. They will fear it, learn from it, have nightmares about it. They will, in fact, be changed by it. Simply viewing the acerbic covers will change your epigenetic "marks," mutilating the genetic traits you will pass onto your poor, poor children.

If you gaze upon the "Emotion and Commotion" artwork for too long, your progeny will arrive from the womb predisposed to both British jazz-rock noodling and the airbrushed-artwork commonly found on aging conversion vans.

View MGMT's ironic Sonic-inspired cover and your children will never learn the ability to earnestly love anything, wallowing instead in the shallow undercurrent of ironic detachment. They will also feel the strange need to buy a Sega Genesis, curiously.

And, drum roll please ... the rest of your spring music preview:

March 9

Broken Bells [The Shins' James Mercer and Danger Mouse] - Broken Bells

The High Road (Album Version) ...

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks
http://stereogum.com/mp3/Ted%20Leo%20-%20Last%20Days%20%28Ruff%20Mix%29.mp3
Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks

March 16

Drive By Truckers - The Big To-Do

March 23
She & Him - Volume Two
http://stereogum.com/274692/she-him-thieves-stereogum-premiere/mp3s/

April 6

Dr. Dog - Shame, Shame
http://stereogum.com/113671/dr_dog_-_shadow_people_stereogum_premiere/mp3s/

May 4

New Pornographers - Together
Broken Social Scene - [Title TBA]
http://stereogum.com/115301/broken_social_scene_-_world_sick/mp3s/
The Hold Steady - Heaven is Whenever

May 11
The National - High Violet

May 18

The Black Keys - Brothers
LCD Soundsystem - [TBA]

LCD Soundsystem announce new record

2010-03-04T12:53:00.003-06:00

Looks like I'll be buying at least an album or two every week this May.

LCD Soundsystem finally revealed the street date of its still-untitled third full-length album. It will arrive May 18 in the states.

James Murphy has been more than cryptic during interviews and tweets (ugh) about what the record will sound like [you know, the kind of have-it-both-ways stuff intelligent rock stars love to regurgitate to irritate fans and confuse critics: "it sounds less like LCD Soundsystem that you'd expect, but more like an LCD Soundsystem record than you're expecting" (he didn't say that exactly)].

The nine-track album runs 65 minutes, according to an interview with band mastermind James Murphy that Pitchfork posted yesterday.

Track list:
Dance Yrself Clean
Drunk Girls
One Touch
All I Want
Change
Hit
Pow Pow
Somebody's Calling Me
What You Need

Black Keys announce new album.

2010-03-02T08:54:00.002-06:00

How many good songs does Dan Auerbach have in him? Hopefully at least 15 more. Dude released two albums in 2009 — the indie-rock-hip/hop-collective debut by Blakroc and his solo debut. Drummer Patrick Carney released the debut by his side project, Drummer, in '09 too, but the duo is back together and announced its next release, named "Brothers," out May 18. This was a surprise to me, and I'm guessing for everyone else who follows the band closely. Pitchfork is reporting that they are producing all but one track themselves, which will be produced by Danger Mouse. Danger Mouse produced the group's last outing, the considerably slicker "Attack and Release." Here's hoping this is a return to the rougher sounds of "Rubber Factory," "Thickfreakness," and "The Big Come Up."

Brothers:
01 Everlasting Light
02 Next Girl
03 Tighten Up
04 Howlin' for You
05 She's Long Gone
06 Black Mud
07 The Only One
08 Too Afraid to Love You
09 Ten Cent Pistol
10 Sinister Kid
11 The Go Getter
12 I'm Not the One
13 Unknown Brother
14 Never Gonna Give You Up
15 These Days

..... and an old clip to hold you over ...

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix theater

2010-03-01T07:14:00.023-06:00

Moon (2009)
Would you enjoy hanging out with yourself? I probably wouldn't. (I'm offering a spoiler alert here, though this review wont spoil the ending, or reveal anything not available in the trailer. But the film's twist about 25 minutes in is also its premise, and makes it nearly impossible to write about without being revealing. You're better off seeing Moon without seeing the trailer, or knowing too much about it. I'll the save you the trouble of reading an entire review here: it gets an A-. Go see it.)
Moon starts out with Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), eking out the final two weeks of a three-year contract alone on a corporate moon space station. So Sam is on the moon, all alone, starting to lose it a bit, his only companion a H.A.L.-like assistance robot named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Sam starts seeing things, burns his hand, gets clumsy, and after he awakes in the medical bay after crashing a harvester, Sam's corporate parents suddenly lock the doors. Sam doesn't remember the accident. So he tricks GERTY into letting him out of the base, where he finds his own body still sitting in the harvester. Turns out that one, or both, of the Sams is a clone ... or then again maybe Sam's totally lost it. The remaining hour finds the two fighting, eventually coming to terms with their predicament, and then trying to find a way to the truth of their origins and maybe away off the moon before the "rescue team" arrives. Moon is infinitely clever, and as with the best indies, a low budget forces film makers to cut fat and make a movie worth seeing. A-

The Hurt Locker (2009)
The Hurt Locker removes politics, and ... makes the first decent Iraq war film. But The Hurt Locker is more than decent, it is masterful suspense film making, rendering the soldiers as soldiers and not political mouthpieces. It makes the Iraq War into Everywar, with soldiers dedicated to their country, each other, but still honestly miserable — war is hell, whether its an urban environment or a beachhead. Not every soldier is miserable, though. Jeremy Renner plays SSG William James, an adrenaline-junkie bomb defuser who's dismantled hundred of IEDs without losing a finger. It's the one thing he loves, and when you see him in a supermarket between deployments, it's a terrifying out-of-place surreal moment akin to seeing Ray Liotta in Goodfellas picking up the newspaper in suburbia thanks to the witness protection program. A

Gamer (2009)
The Running Man-meets-Avatar premise held promise to provide the genre thrills every sci-fi nerd craves. Dystopian future? Check. Evil technology/Luddite pandering? Check. Inmates killing for redemption? Check. 'splosions? Check. Repugnant, insulting-on-several-levels, pilfering unoriginality, feeds-off-the-same-ills-it-criticizes mess? Check. Gamer is a repulsive film.

Gerard Butler stars in the Schwarzenegger role, a military man (presumably) falsely imprisoned for 1st degree murder. He must make it through 30 rounds of a real life first-person-shooter video game named "Slayer," where he is controlled by a gamer sitting at home. Through some pseudo-science jabber (always my favorite part), we are told how villain Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall from Dexter) created a kind of microbiological computer processor that's implanted into the inmates brain's cells, allowing players at home to control their every action in the "game." Inmates use real bullets. Heads explode, bodies are ripped apart. Through interviews and media clips, we learn how Castle became both famous and beloved and the richest man on the planet after he invented "Society," a Sims-like video game using the same technology as "Slayer," in which gamers at home inhabit the bodies of actors in various settings. "Society" allows its players (shown as morbidly obese sweat-sacks dipping finger-food in syrup) to act out their most heinous and carnal fantasies —blood, sex and ugly behavior being the main attraction. Gamer uses "Society" as its excuse to parade ugliness on the screen, criticizing our internet age with one side of it's mouth while titillating the audience with the other. These are the kind of titties you do not enjoy.

Back to the action, co-directors Neveldine and Taylor take the chopped-and-screwed approach to editing — fast-motion cuts to slow-mo — before the screen distorts and flashes static to remind audiences that it's watching a video game. The effect is epileptic at best. The shaky camera and bazillion cuts per second make it impossible to enjoy the giant action set pieces. Not that the action follows any sort of logic. JUST GIVE ME A GODDAMN ENJOYABLE POPCORN FLICK. Why is this so hard? Also, Ludacris plays the film's desperate attempt at a cyber-punk, leading the future's hacker elite resistance to Castle and his dehumanizing virtual-reality empire. And, of course, the evil secret from Castle's past that could end the whole nightmare resides in Butler's skull. Luda wants it, and his best hacker has dreadlocks, etc. F

NEW HOLD STEADY ALBUM THIS MAY (((UPDATED)))

2010-02-23T10:28:00.005-06:00

UPDATE: Here's the cover art:

The Unified Scene knew it was coming ... The Hold Steady were dropping some new songs on the last tour, and today announced the release date for "Heaven is Whenever," due May 4. This is the first album since the debut without former keyboardist Franz Nicolay.

His parts were apparently re-recorded with a new keyboardist, but according to Pitchfork this album will be more guitar-oriented than the last two releases.

http://pitchfork.com/news/37988-the-hold-steady-announce-new-album-iheaven-is-wheneveri/

Here's a short Hold Steady playlist, to warm little stomachs and wet giant appetites.

Hold Steady

Scavenging (UPDATED)

2010-02-11T07:58:00.006-06:00

Internet music finds of the day:

1. Japandroids are going release a series of 7-inch singles this year to tide over fans. Hear the first one, streaming here:
http://pitchfork.com/news/37860-japandroids-announce-singles-series/

2. Afro/UK bangers The Very Best are offering a remix of Yeasayer's standout single "Ambling Alp" here, with Esau Mwamwaya going "nuts over top":
http://www.thefader.com/2010/02/11/premiere-yeasayer-ambling-alp-the-very-best-mulomo-remix-mp3/

3. She and Him perform "Thieves," from their upcoming follow-up to Vol. 1, live on BBC radio.
http://stereogum.com/archives/she_him__thieves_live_on_bbc_113991.html

4. Online music 'zine Tiny Mix Tapes did the right thing and actually waited for 2009 to end before unveiling its best-of-the-decade list. It's releasing 20 entries of the list per day. Today they have finally gotten to 40 through 21. TMT typically veers more obscure than Pitchfork, which means as they get to the top of the list, I'm actually recognizing more and more of the albums. In at number 40 is the Avalanches "Since I Left You," one of my personal favorites (even though I didn't discover it until almost 10 years after it was released.)
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/favorite-100-albums-2000-2009-40-21

5. Bonnaroo announced it's lineup this week and will now officially be known as "Bro-nnaroo."
http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2010/02/09/bonnaroo-2010-lineup-rolls-out-weezer-jeff-beck-the-flaming-lips-and-more/

6. This video has been all over the interwebs today, and it's pretty great. Brooklyn by-way-of SF retro-pop outfit the Morning Benders got all their old Cali friends into the studio and recorded a Phill Spector Wall-of-sound version of their track "Excuses."
http://stereogum.com/archives/video/the_morning_benders_excuses_chris_from_girls_john_vanderslice_114041.html

This clip has also introduced me to the site http://yourstru.ly/

Record sales/ The Grammys

2010-02-02T09:50:00.006-06:00

Two of the top ten selling albums last week are on independent labels. I don't have any stats, but I would assume that is a pretty rare occurrence. Spoon's "Transference" debuted at No. 4 this week, and Vampire Weekend's "Contra" dropped a few spots from its No. 1 debut last week (only the 13th indie ever to go No. 1 since the advent of Soundscan) to No. 6.

Is this another sign of the "mainstreaming of indie," or more representative of how far major label record sales have fallen in the past decade, allowing the little guys to catch up? I'm leaning towards the latter — major label record sales can't hold a candle what they were just 10 years ago.

The top selling album of '09, Taylor Swift's “Fearless,” has sold 2.4 million copies, less than half of what a hit album sold in 2000. That reflects the larger trend in record sales, which have declined 45 percent since 2000, according to the NY Times.

But, music fans of the indie persuasion are still buying music, because, this is gonna sound arrogant, they appreciate and value the craftsmanship and artistry more than the mainstream zombies downloading the majority of their tunes, and buying the god-forsaken Susan Boyle album in droves.

As I'm writing this, E! is spraying inane chatter all over the red carpet pre-Grammy Awards. (What are the Grammys?)

Should an album-buying, music-obsessing record nerd like myself be the prime target of a music awards show (glorified recording-industry commercial, back-patting contest)? If the teens and mainstream listening public are buying enough fewer albums that indie labels are creeping into the top ten with rising frequency, why pander to the fading purchasing power of the pop demographic? The awards are, of course, not awarded for the quality of the actual music but for the size of the celebrity receiving each award (the abominable yet ubiquitous Black Eyed Peas received several nominations). Then again, fans of Spoon and the indie/alternative canon (supposedly) don't really care about gold-painted statues with a history void of any credibility, and the awards show would fade into even further obscurity if it deviates from its current path of comedic irrelevancy.

Basically, the Grammys are fucked. The music it trumpets no longer sells like it used to, and the underground music that has always had the most artistic integrity is slowly eating up more of the sales pie and would shun the awards if it halfheartedly and (now) belatedly tried to embrace it.

Note: The upcoming cover story for Paste Magazine is an essay entitled "Indie is Dead." I haven't read it yet, and don't know what the argument is going to be, but my interest is piqued.

HELP!

2010-02-02T09:49:00.000-06:00

My Netflix que has ballooned to over 468 titles over the past 2.5 years.

There are more than several embarrassing cultural blind-spots buried under piles of unessential picks and impulse clicks that need help rising to the top for immediate viewing.

I'm only copy/pasting the first 100, because when I tried to copy/paste the full que, Firefox froze under the weight of all the text formatting.

Tell me what movies need to go to the top immediately. This is a Def-con 4 situation.

(Note: I fully understand that Transformers 2 and G.I.Joe are not exactly Truffaut, but I feel I'd be remiss not to keep up with what people are filling theaters to see)

The Hurt Locker
Moon
Crank 2: High Voltage
The Invention of Lying
Cache
Coraline
The Baader Meinhof Complex
Zombieland
A Serious Man
Existenz
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
The Limits of Control
Sunset Boulevard
The Last House on the Left (2009)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)
Next Day Air
Defiance
Death Race
Duplicity
State of Play
Sideways
(500) Days of Summer
The Brothers Grimm
The Onion Movie
Day for Night
Before Sunset
This Film Is Not Yet Rated
Match Point
Stranger than Fiction
Traitor
Man on Wire
Sunshine
Take the Money and Run
Band of Outsiders
Network
The Ice Storm
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Jesus Camp
Day of the Dead
Malcolm X
Closer
City of Men
Ray
Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs
Interiors
The Assassination of Jesse James
The Big Sleep
Control
24 Hour Party People
L'Avventura
The Passenger
The Dead Zone
Lolita
The New World
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Hotel Rwanda
Half Nelson
Shattered Glass
Hollywoodland
Rocky Balboa
Babel
Ocean's Thirteen
No End in Sight
Naked Lunch
Death of a President
The Third Man
Barry Lyndon
Through a Glass Darkly
Superfly
The Virgin Spring
Finding Neverland
Nosferatu
The Conversation
Rashomon
The Elephant Man
Le Samourai
Le Cercle Rouge
To Catch a Thief
Rififi
Sleeper
The King of Comedy
The Last Temptation of Christ
Alphaville
Inland Empire
Downfall
Shooter
Who Killed the Electric Car?
Unforgiven
Volver
Freaks & Geeks: Disc 1-6
Last Tango in Paris
The Amazing Screw-On Head

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix Theater

2010-01-29T07:00:00.004-06:00

Stranger than Paradise (1984)
Jim Jarmusch's breakout, second film is an exercise in constraint and black-and-white minimalism. The camera barely moves inside the spare and grimy New York City apartments of the films first act, the frozen Cleveland streets of the second, or the cheap Florida motel of the third. Sudden moments of poignancy are littered among the quite spots between conversations and circular chatting. Stranger than Paradise follows Willie, a 20-something Hungarian immigrant who does his best to be all-American — watching baseball, eating TV dinners, speaking without an accent — until his teenage cousin Eva comes to visit from the old world. Willie is not exactly the consummate host to his fish-out-of-water (Jarmusch's favorite archetype) cousin, but by the time he finally sees the fun in teaching her his interpretations of America, she's on a train to Cleveland.

A year later, Willie and his friend Eddie, bored with their recent race-track winnings, head to Cleveland to visit Eva, innocently believing it will be a beautiful city on a lake. What they find is snow-blanketed and rusty. "You know, it's funny... you come to someplace new, and everything looks just the same," Eddie remarks. Soon, Willie, Eddie and Eva ditch the cold for Florida, searching for a place to call paradise.
Jarmusch's camera has a way of finding the rough corners and shaggy dogs in each on-location set, and nearly any still from the film would make a fantastic album cover or framed print. Stripped of action, with little plotting and sparse dialogue, Stranger than Paradise boroughs in and stays. The moments that stick — the little things matter — leave a strange, unnerving resonance waiting to be revisited. A

Big Fan (2009)
Patton Oswalt turns in a memorable dramatic performance as a man self-detrimentally obsessed with professional football. Working a dead-end tollbooth job, Oswalt passes the hours listening to sports talk radio, jotting down notes for his best moment of every day: his turn to call in and talk smack against Philadelphia Phil.
But when a chance encounter with his favorite NY Giants player ends with Oswalt in the hospital with brain hemorrhaging and a black eye, he is faced with either pressing charges against the man who nearly ended his life, or allowing the best player on his favorite team back on the field.
Big Fan is the directorial debut by former Onion editor and writer of The Wrestler Robert Siegel. It's namely a drama, but the first half showcases the kind of "funny because it's so true, and so depressing" observations often seen in Onion briefs. The rising action may leave some feeling manipulated, but the climactic point is worth the hardship and excessively depressing moments. B+

Funny People (2009)
Funny People works because it lets Adam Sandler essentially play himself, if he were a morbidly-depressed, sad-sack horseshit excuse for a human being. The role allows him to make fun of the inherent silliness of his "shibby-be-do-wa" shtick, the excess of entertainment's top rungs, and the self-deprecation that forms the basis for some of the best stand-up comedy, while at the same time allowing our generation to feel empathy for a character we grew up with in Billy Madison, etc. Integrating actual archival footage and pictures of Sandler, we are introduced to him as George Simmons, the aforementioned comedy superstar, told by his doctors in the first scene that he is dying of leukemia. This diagnosis prompts Simmons/Sandler to reevaluate his priorities and, you know, "find whats truly important." Enter Seth Rogen, a struggling up-and-coming stand-up still stuck in the doldrums of open-mic night at a popular improv club. He lives with Jonah Hill, a slightly more advanced but still struggling comic, and a hilariously clueless and vain network TV star played by Jason Schwartzman. After a chance meeting with Sandler, Rogen is offered the chance to write jokes for the dying comedian and serve as his all-around assistant/bitch, before, uh, they actually become real friends and stuff.
The best aspect of Funny People, besides the barrage of one-liners, the artful mastery of the dick joke and perfect ensemble cast, is the nuanced way they treat Sandler's "I'm-a-piece-of-shit-with-no-friends" epiphany — he doesn't use his illness so much to become a better person, he uses it as a tool of manipulation in a desperate attempt to win the heart of "the one that got away" (Leslie Mann). It may all be a bit fatalistic, but years of habit and personality don't change over the course of 2.5 hours, they just budge a little bit.
Also, they got James Taylor to say "fuck Facebook." B+

NEW YEASAYER TRACK (Updated)

2010-01-27T07:38:00.004-06:00

Download a new track from Yeasayer's sure-to-be mind-blowing new album "Odd Blood," out Feb. on Secretly Canadian, here:

UPDATE: Upon further review, I don't like this track nearly as much as the first single released, "Ambling Alp," one of the best tracks of all of last year. Still pumped for the decidedly '80s leaning full-release next month.

I want you to be as quiet as an ant not even thinking about pissing on cotton

2010-01-26T08:27:00.003-06:00

Several months back, I wrote a small bit here expressing my dismay with the stupidity of our criminals. Can't we have a few burglars who, at least, wear gloves and a mask, or don't leave footprints in the snow leading directly to a not-so-secret hideout? Apparently someone was listening:

http://www.pjstar.com/featured/x190613973/Thousands-if-not-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-cigarettes-stolen-from-EP-warehouse

It's so refreshing to see people take pride in their work. This should give the fuzz more to do than speed traps and the war on seat belts/smoking in-doors/texting-and-driving/mattress-label removal.

Half-assed record review: Vampire Weekend - Contra

2010-01-19T19:14:00.003-06:00

I was going to say that without guitars, Vampire Weekend becomes too precious. Too cute, too island-y, too pop, too ..... something. But that's not true ... some of the best tracks on Contra lean almost completely to the electronic/laptop side of the equation.

Whatever it is, I don't like Contra nearly as much as the debut, and it's probably because singer Ezra Koenig doesn't have jack shit to say. His vacations were all sailboats and lobster and filet mignon, his education Ivy League, and his wealth (likely) trust-funded. And that lifestyle and the carefully chosen keywords peppered throughout the debut was the message itself: "I come from the East Coast and I am here to rock you like something quite less than a hurricane." But that's about the entire depth of Koenig's tale, and any attempt to branch out smells like fake crab meat. Nearly very lyric on Contra is all pretense and almost no meaning. What the fuck is "I think you're a Contra" supposed to mean? We are supposed to receive the sentiment as a mystery, words to be deconstructed, analyzed, eventually understood. I call bullshit. Ezra doesn't even know what the fuck it's supposed to mean. Of course it's soooo cool to be meaningless, but it distracts from an album chock-full of interesting percussion and keyboards (and too few guitars). But, of course, all this would be moot if Ezra dug up as many great melodies as were found on the debut. That's all we really want, if we're honest, and when they aren't there, we start looking at everything else in the room.
Contra is still playing in my car, but with every trip through the album, more and more tracks are being skipped immediately. Oh yeah, and sometimes it just sounds like ska, hahaha. C+/B-

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix theater

2010-01-19T17:01:00.008-06:00

Hey look! Three spineless movie reviews, they all got Bs!

Extract (2009)
When Office Space writer/directer Mike Judge announced his return to the workplace comedy with Extract, it was something akin to Michael Jordan's return to basketball for the Initech cult. Alas, Extract more resembles Jordan's return to the Wizards, not his return to the Bulls after baseball — the quick first step and fade-away jumper are mostly still there — but of course it just doesn't feel the same. No two movies are the same, and if that were possible, it would just be redundant. So, it was wise for Judge's workplace follow-up to take place in a totally different world than Office Space — Extract's nameless southwest setting has more in common with Judge's long-running cartoon King of the Hill than it does the white-collar hell of Bill Lumbergh-land.

Jason Bateman stars as the owner of a small factory producing flavor extracts for cooking. His days typically deal with settling disputes between the lunkhead line workers and trying to find a buyer for his company before coming home each day to a sexless marriage. Things take a turn for the strange when con-woman Mila Kunis reads about a former Extract employee who recently lost his balls in a workplace accident, and sets about convincing said employee to sue for all the money he can. Ben Affleck turns in one of several great supporting performance as Bateman's bartender friend/drug-pusher who further complicates things when he convinces Bateman to fix his marital woes in the least honest way possible. Extract is very funny, I found myself laughing throughout much of its lean 90 minutes, and Judge still knows exactly how annoying people can be, nailing the ticks and quirks than can make your neighbors and co-workers unbearable. Perhaps it was a bit unfair to expect one man to define hourly-wage malaise for a second decade in row. B

Up (2009)
Pixar has never made a terrible film, but not every feature from the CG animation powerhouse is going to be a classic, no matter how hard critics try to convince us. Like every good Pixar production, Up gifts the adults in the theater with serious themes and emotions (Up deals with grief, memory, loneliness, friendship, goals, etc, especially well in a masterful, extended vignette showing the old man growing up) without stripping the film of colorful characters, humor and plot. I don't know how to say this in any interesting way, but Up just got kind of boring, I found myself begging the characters to just get the damn thing over with. I toyed with the idea of writing a review that sarcastically complained about how unrealistic Up is ("Hey, balloons can't pull a house!"), but there is actually some validity to believability and consistency issues, i.e. all that can be asked of any film is that it follows its own rules, the rules of whatever universe is established for the story. In Up, one minute the old man is totally reliant on a walker, the next he's fighting the villain while stopping an entire house from floating away by holding onto a garden hose. I can only suspend my disbelief for so long, even in a cartoon with a floating house and talking dogs. I'm a god-damned adult, right? B

In the Loop (2009)
This profane British political satire involves US and UK bureaucrats, generals, politicians and their young aids telling each other to fuck off, eat shit and die for 106 minutes, which is fine, because apparently the British have found ways to curse I didn't even know existed. I mean, these motherfuckers really know how to fucking curse. They make Goodfellas look like a goddamn episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. As Americans, we should be ashamed. Filmed in the one-camera style of The Office, In the Loop often feels more like a long television episode than a feature film. At times, it brilliantly skewers the way war policy can often be a comedy of errors, incompetence and falsehoods. Other times it amounts to little more than hearing political rivals telling each other to fuck off, eat shit and die. B

Chillglo-fi-wavefart

2010-01-18T12:33:00.009-06:00

Much talk surrounding the unfortunately-coined and excessively-hyped "glo-fi" or "chillwave" genre has to do with memory -- its proponents say the music brings them back to childhood -- listening to music on tape, playing 8-bit video games, humid summers, all remembered through the memory-altering haze of late teens and early 20s drug experimentation.

Those proponents (Pitchfork, et al) and even the opponents (Cokemachineglow, etc) often agree on one thing: albums by scene-leaders Neon Indian, Washed Out, etc stir a nostalgia for the idea of those memories more than the real thing. And here is where my confusion starts: these albums don't even remotely bring me back to those halcyon days. Other than the occasional 8-bit reference to a Nintendo game sound settling into the mix of warped synth, crunchy guitars and ethereal vocals, this music doesn't connect with me on any nostalgic level, and I assume that I had a pretty standard childhood experience, with cultural touchstones shared with the other brats close to my age and those a few years older. Neon Indian doesn't sound like an old cassette found in the street any more than any other electronic music does. Heavily processed electronic sounds always sound like the future to me, even if they are referencing the technology of the past. Perhaps this is because I wasn't listening to lo-fi, tape-only record labels in the 1st grade, but I have a hard time believing the other gen-y bloggers and music writers born in the early to mid '80s were either.

Curiously, the conscientiously post-modern music that connects with me best on a hazy-nostalgia-emotional-memory level is music that samples '70s and '80s television, like The Go! Team's 2005 masterpiece "Thunder, Lightning, Strike." The album is full of horns and strings found in soundtracks and theme songs for shows like "CHiPS" and "Charlies Angles" that were hits well before my time, but played repeatedly on WGN during Saturday afternoons, once the cartoons were over. "Thunder, Lightening, Strike" immediately conjured feelings of bright primary colors, "Sesame Street," the school bus, art class, aforementioned Saturday afternoons, tree houses, everything good from 20 years ago. But, again the album is likely more about the idea of those memories than the events themselves.

Sidenote: I actually enjoy Neon Indian's debut, "Psychic Chasms," despite the efforts of the hype-machine to ruin it. I'm just lost as to why I seem to be reacting to it in a completely different way than every review I've read.

Is anyone else not having the reaction to the glo-fi genre that the online-music press is wetting them selves over? Thoughts? What new music puts you in a nostalgic mood?

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix theater

2010-01-08T07:30:00.000-06:00

Gomorrah (2009)
Gomorrah is so dense, it's details so esoteric, that some of its elements only reveal their relevancy during the epilogue. Waiting two hours and 15 minutes for an entire sub plot's potency to ferment is asking a lot of an audience, but it's worth it. Based on the gritty Roberto Saviano book, Gomorrah follows the violent path leveled by the Camorra gang in one of the most depressing concrete-and-steal housing projects I've ever seen. The terraced, immense structures look like stills from any number of post-apocalyptic films. It's hard to believe anything lives there, let alone festers and kills and eats and sleeps and fucks there. As Newsweek described the crime-infested projects in Naples, they "aren't as bad as (Gomorrah) makes them out to be. They're worse," or as the epilogue says, they're the "biggest open-air drug market in the world."

Like an Italian City of God, hand-held cameras and frenetic, unpredictable events give the film a documentary look and feel. Without City of God's more straight-forward narrative and plotting, Gomorrah instead focuses on several parallel characters dealing with an environment they can't control. Every fragments of the drug trade's devastating affect on Italy — everything from its hands in high fashion, to pollution, to street drug deals and of course, unrestrained killing — are shown with an unflinching eye. Gomorrah is a relentlessly bleak film without an ounce of sanitation, compromise or the kind of audience-pandering that has rendered Hollywood embarrassing. A-

Thirst (2009)
Thanks to Twilight, the Twi-hards, Twi-moms, Fangbangers, and all the rest, a working person can't even enjoy the simple pleasures of a vampire movie without immeasurable shame and hiding. You find yourself pleading with judgmental friends, "B-bu-but it's the new film by that Korean dude that directed 'Oldboy,' haven't you seen 'Oldboy'!?!" This was apparently not enticement enough, so there I was, watching a vampire flick by myself, curled on the recliner with a blanket like so many 16-year-olds. Oh, but of course Thirst is not really about vampires, you tell yourself, the title describes both the thirst for blood our protagonist, Priest Sang-hyeon, feels after a blood transfusion accidentally grants the vampiric blood burdens and pleasures, but also his thirst for lust and violence and all the prurient interests resisted in the priesthood. As we learn early in the film, the order was not a good fit in the first place for Sang-hyeon, a man more interested in science, who, during confessions, advises depressed followers to seek pharmaceuticals and not prayer (my kind of Priest!). Once infected with vampire blood, he's enjoying the shit out of extra-marital affair, and scheming with his lover to free her from the bounds of wedlock. This is where Thirst goes certifiably Lynchian, with dreams and life intersecting into a bloody mess of guilt, love and horror. Director Chan-wook Park loves the grand, Shakespearean tragedy — arch-enemies standing between star-crossed lovers, ugly fate and revenge tackling doomed inevitability, themes that become all too clear as it reaches the bloody conclusion. B

I should be in charge

2009-12-30T07:09:00.010-06:00

New airline rules

Stage 1 security:
Every passenger is required to allow a FAA certified surgeon to open the chest cavity and search for any devise that could be used to disrupt or destroy the aircraft.

Stage 2:
All passengers must poop and puke simultaneously into a bag in order to expel any baggies or rubbers filled with contraband.

Stage 3:
All passengers must perform a handstand, to assure heads are properly attached.
Any persons whose head falls off will not be allowed to board the aircraft.

Stage 4:
All passengers must recite one totally illogical sentence, and then attempt to explain a paradox, to prove that they are not a robot.

Wasted Postage: Reports from the Netflix Theater

2009-12-28T17:30:00.009-06:00

Lost in Translation (2003)
This mid-decade hit examined the type of moment or experience that happens in real life — one that, once it's over, hasn't changed anything dramatically, but leaves you feeling different, or perhaps older. Whether this makes for exciting cinema is up to the viewer. Critics said "yes," emphatically, my parents said "no." I say "sort of." Director Sofia Coppola lets atmosphere and (actors, of course) do all the talking. Her camera stays out of the way, mostly moving slowly and occasionally lingering on an interesting image or reflection, which is probably a wise choice as the alien city of Tokyo is the third lead in the film, after Bill Murray and Scarlet Johanson. Murray plays a depressed actor filming a whiskey commercial in Japan. He doesn't know the language or anyone in Tokyo, and he spends his nights drinking and smoking in the four-star hotel's lounge. His stagnation is eventually interrupted by another bored westerner, Scarlet Johanson, a recent Ivy-league grad stranded in the same hotel while her photographer husband is off on a magazine photo-shoot. The two form a platonic relationship initially based on a shared sense of empty isolation, but the two manage to go out and have fun despite their solemn neurosis, and of course, learn a thing or two from each other. At times, Johanson's seeming unwillingness to just explore the goddamn city on her own can be infuriating. You're young. You're beautiful, you are in a crazy fucking landscape. Go do something. Eventually she does, it just takes a man delving headfirst in a midlife crises to get her there. Lost in Translation is not all doom and gloom. Murray's genius for physical comedy and wry interaction with the locals provides relief through the film's first half. The culture clash is interesting in it's own right, and the film has just enough character development and subtle detail to substitute for plot. B

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell hard (2009)
The Goods only gets away with its overly-familiar "slobs vs snobs" plot-arc because of its farcical self-awareness and admittance of only one aspiration — crossing the line as often as possible. It even has the arbitrary challenge the slobs must meet in order to save their dying (golf club, workout gym, fraternity, etc) car lot from the mean rich guys next door. It essentially just lets the starved plot lay there, like a foster kid adopted as a scheme for tax breaks, except here the tax breaks are fart and dick jokes, told by some of the better comedic actors available. As Jeremy Piven, the mercenary car salesman brought into save the dealership, says "Don't over think it."
Ed Helms has a ball playing an asshole in a "$40 hair cut" who manages the BMW dealership across town who is also in a has-been boy ban that once opened for O-Town.
There are some laugh-out-loud jokes, plenty of gags that arrive DOA — but also enough don't-give-a-fuck attitude to at least warrant a rental for anyone looking for a funny dumb time. (Cue joke about the movie getting "pushed off the lot," not buying a "lemon," etc). C+

The Stepfather (1987)
This B-movie horror classic was stripped of all its subtext and intrigue for a Hollywood remake this year, but the original still packs a bloody punch. Terry O'Quinn (Lost's John Locke) plays Jerry Blake, a Reagan-era man with punishable-by-death expectations for his family unit. The film begins with Blake shaving off his latest disguise — a full-on '80s beard — grabbing his briefcase, walking down the stairs past his dismembered family, and off to work, whistling as he walks.
The next scene finds him settling in with his new family several months later, a widow smitten by Blake's earnest charm and strong family values, and her trouble-making daughter who knows right away that there's something wrong with Blake. For the rest of the film, we see him creep closer to the edge of revisiting mass murder, and bump off a few townspeople along the way as he prepares to find a new family that might not be so damn disappointing. B+

Darkman (1990)
This off-beat superhero flick flopped on the heals of Batman, but has since received a slowly growing cult of admiration. It was director Sam Raimi's (Spiderman, Drag Me to Hell) first foray into big-budget Hollywood after his Evil Dead success in the '80s. Raimi's slapstick-horror sensibilities often work well in the superhero universe (a universe with origins in brightly-colored comic books), and often cause a sense of unease when paired with the bloody emotions central to the film. His original story follows a scientist (Liam Neeson) who uses a prototype technology to reconstruct his face after a horrific fire. The only catch is the artificial skin disintegrates in light after 90 minutes. Neeson slowly uses several different faces to exact revenge on the crime syndicate that caused his disfigurement. It is a film ahead of it's time: an R-rated superhero dusted in melancholy and (true to it's name) darkness. Darkman is highly entertaining, occasionally cheesy in that special Raimi way, but always original. B- (also watch for a great surprise cameo from Bruce Campbell at the end)

New to me: My favorite (non-2009) albums of the year

2009-12-21T17:00:00.005-06:00

I finally made space in my spare music-listening time to explore some of indie rock's seminal figures this year, bands that I had put off for far too long in place of new stuff.

Wire - Pink Flag (1977)
This was Spoon's favorite band during its early years, singer Brit Daniel has said in past interviews. Wire is one of the less known but (as it often is) more influential punk acts to emerge out of Britain in '77. The band forged an intellectual devotion to minimalism — paired-down drums and thickly-distorted yet precise and purposeful electric guitars. Every hi-hat tap is intended to mean more than the showers of cymbals and fills found in the popular rock of the day. Pink Flag is pure, boiled-down snarl and rejection, 21 two-minute songs that grow better and more nuanced with every listen. As mentioned above, it set the precedent for Spoon's approach to tearing songs into the most essential bits, discarding anything superfluous, the key word used by most critics being "economical." Beyond all the deconstructionism and strict internal-rule-following, there are moments in Pink Flag that make even a Yankee like myself want to yell "oi" before instigating a soccer riot.

Pink Flag - Wire

Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)
This was the year I finally ( belatedly, predictably) got into Pavement. I had owned a copy of "Slanted and Enchanted" for a few years, but besides from a few key tracks, I was more in the "I understand its importance and respect it, even if I'm not totally blown away by it" it camp. I had enjoyed Steven Malkmus and the Jicks last record Real Emotional Trash, but again wasn't one of the worshipful legions dotting college towns and American cities.

Then I happened to pick up a used copy of "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain," and, paired with a Malkmus/Pavement mix made by my sister, I was hooked. I listened to "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain," nearly daily for about 8 weeks, unraveling the lyrical knots, trying to make sense of arrangements and Malkmus totally unpredictable sense of melody. All that, and the records is so fun and off-the-cuff that even while trying to over-think it, the tunes are irresistible. I've since bought "Brighten the Corners," and will eventually consume the entire catalog.

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain - P...

The Replacements - Let It Be (1984), Tim (1985)
Is it a cardinal sin to prefer Tim over Let It Be? Maybe I'm turning into a softy, but I found the 'Mats major label debut Tim to be the better introduction to the band, though it's occasionally mared by the much hyped at the time "digital recording" method employed by the record's producer and former Ramone Tommy Erdelyi. The drums sound distinctly '80s, the guitars occasionally veer towards over-processed, but the song writing is, as always, impeccable. As with Pavement, I had a small collection of Replacements songs, some of which downloaded via Napster (ignore that please, RIAA), and transferred computer to computer to this day. But as with many of the initial MP3's traded at the beginning of the century, the most popular ones available existed more for novelty than actual appreciation, meaning that the first Replacements song I ever heard was "Gary's Got a Boner," not exactly a defining moment for a group that wrote THE college rock anthem of the '80s "Bastards of Young" (I made that up. I was born in '85 and therefor have no idea what THE anthem of '80s college rock was). Any who, the Replacements of Let It Be were still barely holding onto their punk roots, but still mostly defined as a bunch of underachieving drunks that would rather fuck up the party than play at it.

That attitude never changed, even as the sound became more slick on Tim. According to All Music Guide (I know, I know not the most punk source on the planet), "The Replacements landed a spot on SNL, but were roaring drunk throughout the performances and Westerberg said "fuck" on the air. Their concerts had became notorious for such drunken, sloppy behavior ... The Replacements also refused to make accessible videos. The video for "Bastards of Young" featured nothing but a stereo system, playing the song — thereby cutting themselves off from the mass exposure MTV could have granted them."

Of course the self-destructive, fame-spurring behavior only enhances their appeal and legend, and I will continue to work my way through the Replacements' cannon.

The Replacements - Highlights ...

The Thermals - The Body the Blood the Machine (2006)
I wish I would have had this CD when it came out in 2006, to provide catharsis for those of us who didn't vote twice for a right-wing evangelical man-child president.

The Body, The Blood, The Machi...

Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque (1991)
Not one of indie rock's building blocks, but a great CD nonetheless. Teenage Fanclub came out of Scotland in the early nineties, and after signing with a major label, they were, with Nirvana, expected to be one the "alternative" bands to take over the mainstream (not that they sounded at all like Nirvana). But while Nirvana found stratospheric levels of success and then self-destruction, Teenage Fanclub just sort of fizzled before eventually disappearing from any sort of cultural relevance what-so-ever. Bandwagonesque preempts the perfect power-pop of Weezer, but with added bite in the lyrics. "Says she don't do drugs / but she does the pill," is the defining line in lead-off track and album standout "The Concept." Bandwagonesque's intelligent lyrics, catchy choruses and sharp yet melancholy guitars should have been a bigger hit than "Fred's Got Slacks," but it was not meant to be. The band's solid '93 follow up, Thirteen, curiously opens like a grunge-also ran — the thundering drums and metal-ish guitars sound plucked from Nevermind (now like true bandwagon jumpers!!) before Teenage Fanclub seem to say "Who the fuck are we kidding?" and settle into a groove that would have felt comfortably anywhere on Bandwagonesque.

"Although somewhat hard to believe in retrospect, Bandwagonesque topped Spin magazine's best-of-1991 year-end list in the face of staggering competition including Nirvana's Nevermind, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, and R.E.M.'s Out of Time; a few months later, they were tapped as Rolling Stone's Hot Band for 1992, and at the peak of their success, the Fannies even performed on Saturday Night Live, that same year also opening for Nirvana." - All Music Guide

Bandwagonesque - Teenage Fancl...

The National - Alligator (2005)
Gotta gives props to my sister again for this one. I got Boxer almost two years ago, and she got me a copy of Alligator several months, but only until recently have I had the time to really delve in. It's great.

Alligator - The National

Patti Smith - Horses (1975)
Here's another punk cornerstone that I just never had the time for in the past. Worth buying if not just for her devastating reinterpretation of "Gloria."

Horses - Patti Smith

Built to Spill - Keep it Like a Secret (1999)
Another shout out to the sis. Thanks for getting me into this one, too, with the inclusion of one o the album's best tracks, "Time Trap" on one of your mixes.

Keep It Like A Secret - Built ...