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(07/17/03 4:00am)
Following a disappointing Xiu Xiu show, my friends and I sauntered from the bar at Schuba's in Chicago to the stage to begrudgingly watch the following act. We met Devendra Banhart with good-natured shock. The shaggy, playful guy, who was a dead ringer for Cat Stevens, who played a Nick Drake-style of nylon sting picking and had tremendous control over his tenor with a powerful vibrato.\nThe Black Babies is a lo-fi mini-album that hardly does justice to Banhart's stage presence. The tape hiss and double tracking relegates his vocals to sounding shaky and makes his classical guitar sound like a steel string model. \nWhat doesn't get lost is Banhart's wit and beautiful guitar patterns, and eventually the poor recording becomes a rescuing factor for his music. Where he sounded vaudevillian on stage, on record he sounds like a demented backwoods character who drinks moonshine and writes perverted songs about the world inside his head. \nDrake's Tanworth-in-Arden home recordings is the particular homage, but Drake's mysticism was of a more human variety. Banhart (who sings on "Cosmos and Demos," "I've never told this story to another living soul/for fear it might awaken and the story would unfold") works out of a place that combines Dock Boggs with the Chronicles of Narnia.
(07/17/03 4:00am)
With a haze that recalls Yo La Tengo, hooks that resemble Pavement, song structures and vocals that evoke Elliott Smith and a producer who is duck-call player Jason Lytle from Grandaddy, Earlimart has the attention of the indie crowd which isn't obsessed with originality. And since the album title makes a statement for solidarity, Earlimart sounds like the house band for its forefathers. \nEveryone Down Here is an extremely consistent, concise and decent record from a band that is both dutifully reverent and partially restrained. That the drum sound and doo-hickey effects are stolen from Sumday can be blamed on Lytle, who obviously worked on the albums at the same time. The guitars are noisy at times, but as everyone knows by now, these kinds of bands weren't made to be played at whelming volumes. \nYour problem might be that Everyone Down Here is no better or worse than 15 others you might of heard of or three bands you could see at Vertigo. My problem is trying to come up with enthusiasm for a record I've been enjoying.
(07/10/03 4:00am)
Buddy Guy lives in my hometown. I'm not talking about Chicago, I'm talking about Flossmoor, a particularly white, southern \nsuburb of the city.\nFlossmoor is an isolated place. Buried beneath cavernous oak trees, it is surrounded by mildly dangerous, lower-class black towns like Ford Heights, Hazel Crest, Country Club Hills and Middle America -- consumer culture riddled (you know, business parks and endless strip malls), asphalt suburbs. You can't park a pickup truck in your driveway in Flossmoor, or leave your lawn unmowed -- it's against the law. The town was built up around Western Ave. as a weekend and summer retreat for rich, city businessmen.\nI'm not trying to suggest that Buddy Guy has sold-out or become a forgetful, middle-class black, because he's still an oddity in the town. He can often be found sitting on a lawn chair in front of his nuevo mansion, jerry-curl in full regala and having as little to do with the politics of Flossmoor as the blues should.\nOriginally born in Lettsworth, La., Guy moved up to Chicago, as many bluesmen had, in the late '50s. He became part of a kind of second-wave of urban blues guitar virtuosos. Eventually, he was more noted for his live act than the blues singles he put out on the Chicago-based Chess label.\nAnd so it went. He became a legend in his adopted hometown, and sat on his status for years. He had a comeback, at least in celebrity, in 1991 when his first album in a decade, Damn Right, I've Got the Blues, won a Grammy. He could often be found playing or hanging out at Legends, his Chicago blues club. But it was as if he was going through the motions, using an extra long guitar cord so he could walk into the audience and say, "How you doin' tonight?" to random patrons as he played fluid impersonations of himself.\nSo what is the big deal now about an acoustic record by another bloated, famous musician? Especially when said bloated musician's new record features pervasive guest whores B.B. King and Eric Clapton.\nTwo things gave hope for Guy's new album, Blues Singer. One was 2001's Sweet Tea, a celestial, psychedelic blues album that literally came out of nowhere. Working from the studio of the same name in deep Mississippi with the noted blues purists of the Fat Possum label, he created an album that was unlike any other in his career. The songs were unknown and Guy screamed his way through them rather than using his crusty, falsetto whine. And for the first time he sounded desperate. Not for the adoration or the cash money, but for the music to be successful on its own terms.\nThe second thing that gives hope to Blues Singer is that rats were found at 754 South Wabash -- Legends. This may seem unremarkable, perhaps a bit disturbing to former visitors, but something about the news item struck me as uplifting. Rather than covering up the grit in a wash of neon and glass, hence making it a fine place for middle-class day tripping, there were rats running around Guy's blues club. It only seems ambiently correct.\nSo is Blues Singer the acoustic flip side of Sweet Tea? Is Guy's newfound integrity still intact?\nDespite using the same studio and the same producer, the answer is a very disappointed and grimly stated no. Guy's delicate falsetto is back and so are the uninspired covers. The performances are wooden and the licks extremely obvious. King and Clapton's turns aren't quite overbearing, but wholly unnecessary. \nIf you want to hear a 40th or 56th version of Skip James' "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" or John Lee Hooker's "Crawling King Snake Blues," by all means listen to the disc, but Guy's versions are far from revelatory. Because also gone is the Fat Possum band, now replaced by the likes of Tony Garnier (a veteran of Lucinda Williams and Carly Simon sessions) on bass and famed studio drummer Jim Keltner (a former Fiona Apple and James Taylor sideman). These characters have very little to do with Diaspora sound, and fail to take the music to any significant place. \nThe hoodoo-voodoo conjuring of Sweet Tea is completely absent, which leads me to hypothesize that Guy recorded this album in Flossmoor, not southern Mississippi. Blues Singer reminds me of past Fourth of July's in my hometown, sitting on a hill at the local country club to watch the fireworks as night fell. Little kids hunker in awe as their rounded fathers puff on cigars with content smiles upon their faces and one eye to the revelry of their children. The fathers are proud of themselves, as they should be, because they've earned their way in the world and the Fourth is merely a manifestation of their success.\nIt's these kids that become problematic, they see the fathers' hubris as given and not earned and expect it too. They are privileged and unmoved by anything but drugs and sex, and then they make bands with those two things as the goals. Perhaps they perform some blues numbers, and they kind of sound like those on Blues Singer.
(07/09/03 11:42pm)
Buddy Guy lives in my hometown. I'm not talking about Chicago, I'm talking about Flossmoor, a particularly white, southern \nsuburb of the city.\nFlossmoor is an isolated place. Buried beneath cavernous oak trees, it is surrounded by mildly dangerous, lower-class black towns like Ford Heights, Hazel Crest, Country Club Hills and Middle America -- consumer culture riddled (you know, business parks and endless strip malls), asphalt suburbs. You can't park a pickup truck in your driveway in Flossmoor, or leave your lawn unmowed -- it's against the law. The town was built up around Western Ave. as a weekend and summer retreat for rich, city businessmen.\nI'm not trying to suggest that Buddy Guy has sold-out or become a forgetful, middle-class black, because he's still an oddity in the town. He can often be found sitting on a lawn chair in front of his nuevo mansion, jerry-curl in full regala and having as little to do with the politics of Flossmoor as the blues should.\nOriginally born in Lettsworth, La., Guy moved up to Chicago, as many bluesmen had, in the late '50s. He became part of a kind of second-wave of urban blues guitar virtuosos. Eventually, he was more noted for his live act than the blues singles he put out on the Chicago-based Chess label.\nAnd so it went. He became a legend in his adopted hometown, and sat on his status for years. He had a comeback, at least in celebrity, in 1991 when his first album in a decade, Damn Right, I've Got the Blues, won a Grammy. He could often be found playing or hanging out at Legends, his Chicago blues club. But it was as if he was going through the motions, using an extra long guitar cord so he could walk into the audience and say, "How you doin' tonight?" to random patrons as he played fluid impersonations of himself.\nSo what is the big deal now about an acoustic record by another bloated, famous musician? Especially when said bloated musician's new record features pervasive guest whores B.B. King and Eric Clapton.\nTwo things gave hope for Guy's new album, Blues Singer. One was 2001's Sweet Tea, a celestial, psychedelic blues album that literally came out of nowhere. Working from the studio of the same name in deep Mississippi with the noted blues purists of the Fat Possum label, he created an album that was unlike any other in his career. The songs were unknown and Guy screamed his way through them rather than using his crusty, falsetto whine. And for the first time he sounded desperate. Not for the adoration or the cash money, but for the music to be successful on its own terms.\nThe second thing that gives hope to Blues Singer is that rats were found at 754 South Wabash -- Legends. This may seem unremarkable, perhaps a bit disturbing to former visitors, but something about the news item struck me as uplifting. Rather than covering up the grit in a wash of neon and glass, hence making it a fine place for middle-class day tripping, there were rats running around Guy's blues club. It only seems ambiently correct.\nSo is Blues Singer the acoustic flip side of Sweet Tea? Is Guy's newfound integrity still intact?\nDespite using the same studio and the same producer, the answer is a very disappointed and grimly stated no. Guy's delicate falsetto is back and so are the uninspired covers. The performances are wooden and the licks extremely obvious. King and Clapton's turns aren't quite overbearing, but wholly unnecessary. \nIf you want to hear a 40th or 56th version of Skip James' "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" or John Lee Hooker's "Crawling King Snake Blues," by all means listen to the disc, but Guy's versions are far from revelatory. Because also gone is the Fat Possum band, now replaced by the likes of Tony Garnier (a veteran of Lucinda Williams and Carly Simon sessions) on bass and famed studio drummer Jim Keltner (a former Fiona Apple and James Taylor sideman). These characters have very little to do with Diaspora sound, and fail to take the music to any significant place. \nThe hoodoo-voodoo conjuring of Sweet Tea is completely absent, which leads me to hypothesize that Guy recorded this album in Flossmoor, not southern Mississippi. Blues Singer reminds me of past Fourth of July's in my hometown, sitting on a hill at the local country club to watch the fireworks as night fell. Little kids hunker in awe as their rounded fathers puff on cigars with content smiles upon their faces and one eye to the revelry of their children. The fathers are proud of themselves, as they should be, because they've earned their way in the world and the Fourth is merely a manifestation of their success.\nIt's these kids that become problematic, they see the fathers' hubris as given and not earned and expect it too. They are privileged and unmoved by anything but drugs and sex, and then they make bands with those two things as the goals. Perhaps they perform some blues numbers, and they kind of sound like those on Blues Singer.
(07/03/03 4:00am)
Liz Phair's self-titled, fourth album is guaranteed to be one of the most disputed releases of 2003. The debate, unfortunately, will not be about how good Liz Phair is, or whether or not it is a return to form, it will be about just how bad this new album is. The flurry of press so far has been scathing, calling Phair everything from a slut to a sell-out. These critics seem to forget that her last two albums weren't very good either.\nThe sell-out tag mainly came premature due to the people involved with the album's creation. Phair (or her record company) employed the likes of Pete Yorn's producer, Aimee Mann's husband, Michael Penn and the production team behind Avril Lavigne, The Matrix. Their production values add radio-friendly ease to Phair's songs, and her fans see this as a betrayal to the lo-fi brilliance of her debut album, Exile in Guyville.\nLiz Phair finds the singer-songwriter pandering with her pen as well as sonically. Shock-value songs like "Hot White Cum" and "Rock Me" (in which she sings, "I'm starting to think young guys rule") make a play to snickering, teenage boys, while others like "Extraordinary" and "Why Can't I?" seem to aim at a women's lib crowd. The extremes do not add up.\nPhair is and always has been a good songwriter, though. She gets more comfortable on "My Bionic Eyes" and "It's Sweet," providing melody, harder guitars and faster beats as well as somewhat interesting messages. This flirtation with decency is mostly what the open frustration is about, and hearing her faculties crumble is more sui generis than it is fascinating.\nPhair has created a record that she desperately wants to sell, even going so far as posing nude on the cover. Her methods are insipid and unforgivable, but her given talents are undeniable. If this were a Sheryl Crow album, the talk might be how this is tactfully subversive. For Phair though, it is just boring, but only as boring as Lucinda Williams or Kasey Chambers.
(07/03/03 4:00am)
The Black Eyed Peas once presented themselves as an alternative to the West Coast gangsta rap scene. Unfortunately, Elephunk, the group's third album, finds them needlessly pandering to the current, radio hip-pop fare. The Peas have created an album full of feel-good, meaningless tracks that claims diversity, but ends up sounding like a Neptunes' production. Witness the album's closer and big single, "Where is the Love," featuring Justin Timberlake and produced by Ron Fair, the genius behind Vanessa Carlton's and Christina Aguilera's debut records. Attempting to become an anthem of understanding, the song falls absolutely flat on a series of cliches -- "take control of your mind and meditate/let your soul gravitate, to the love ya'll." This song wouldn't be such a tragedy if the Peas hadn't spent the twelve tracks leading up to it with anthems of unconsciousness. Songs like "Let's Get Retarded," "Smells Like Funk" and "Latin Girls" are not only deplorable as messages, but as pop songs themselves. Elephunk is precisely the kind of album that keeps hip hop inert because of sheer triteness. Songs like "Let's Get Retarded," "Smells Like Funk" and "Latin Girls" are not only deplorable as messages, but as pop songs themselves. Elephunk is precisely the kind of album that keeps hip hop inert because of sheer triteness.
(07/03/03 4:00am)
The trio of white, female, liberal arts students from Long Island known as Northern State (Hesta Prynn, Guinea Love and DJ Sprout) are attempting to shoot past a novelty label. A series of frenzied articles brought attention to the group, which is innovative because of who it is made up of, not because of what it does. The Beastie Boys are an obvious connection to Northern State, the girls are brash and absurd in a similar manner, but the stupidity may not be a rhetorical act in the case of Northern State. \nThe girls reach for hip-hop history as well as political content. Prynn's heart is in the right place (if not the best articulated) on "A Thousand Words" when she spits out, "The country's getting ugly and there's more in store/but don't blame me cause I voted for Gore." More unfortunate is that this line is followed by rhyming "regal" with "and Snoopy was a beagle."\nYes, this is novelty, but so were the Beastie Boys. Northern State's willingness to be pert and search for unique soundscapes to flow over suggests a career and not a fly-by-night release. Dying In Stereo is a search for a voice -- once the imitations cease, these girls could be onto something.
(07/03/03 2:36am)
The trio of white, female, liberal arts students from Long Island known as Northern State (Hesta Prynn, Guinea Love and DJ Sprout) are attempting to shoot past a novelty label. A series of frenzied articles brought attention to the group, which is innovative because of who it is made up of, not because of what it does. The Beastie Boys are an obvious connection to Northern State, the girls are brash and absurd in a similar manner, but the stupidity may not be a rhetorical act in the case of Northern State. \nThe girls reach for hip-hop history as well as political content. Prynn's heart is in the right place (if not the best articulated) on "A Thousand Words" when she spits out, "The country's getting ugly and there's more in store/but don't blame me cause I voted for Gore." More unfortunate is that this line is followed by rhyming "regal" with "and Snoopy was a beagle."\nYes, this is novelty, but so were the Beastie Boys. Northern State's willingness to be pert and search for unique soundscapes to flow over suggests a career and not a fly-by-night release. Dying In Stereo is a search for a voice -- once the imitations cease, these girls could be onto something.
(07/03/03 2:31am)
The Black Eyed Peas once presented themselves as an alternative to the West Coast gangsta rap scene. Unfortunately, Elephunk, the group's third album, finds them needlessly pandering to the current, radio hip-pop fare. The Peas have created an album full of feel-good, meaningless tracks that claims diversity, but ends up sounding like a Neptunes' production. Witness the album's closer and big single, "Where is the Love," featuring Justin Timberlake and produced by Ron Fair, the genius behind Vanessa Carlton's and Christina Aguilera's debut records. Attempting to become an anthem of understanding, the song falls absolutely flat on a series of cliches -- "take control of your mind and meditate/let your soul gravitate, to the love ya'll." This song wouldn't be such a tragedy if the Peas hadn't spent the twelve tracks leading up to it with anthems of unconsciousness. Songs like "Let's Get Retarded," "Smells Like Funk" and "Latin Girls" are not only deplorable as messages, but as pop songs themselves. Elephunk is precisely the kind of album that keeps hip hop inert because of sheer triteness. Songs like "Let's Get Retarded," "Smells Like Funk" and "Latin Girls" are not only deplorable as messages, but as pop songs themselves. Elephunk is precisely the kind of album that keeps hip hop inert because of sheer triteness.
(07/03/03 2:29am)
Liz Phair's self-titled, fourth album is guaranteed to be one of the most disputed releases of 2003. The debate, unfortunately, will not be about how good Liz Phair is, or whether or not it is a return to form, it will be about just how bad this new album is. The flurry of press so far has been scathing, calling Phair everything from a slut to a sell-out. These critics seem to forget that her last two albums weren't very good either.\nThe sell-out tag mainly came premature due to the people involved with the album's creation. Phair (or her record company) employed the likes of Pete Yorn's producer, Aimee Mann's husband, Michael Penn and the production team behind Avril Lavigne, The Matrix. Their production values add radio-friendly ease to Phair's songs, and her fans see this as a betrayal to the lo-fi brilliance of her debut album, Exile in Guyville.\nLiz Phair finds the singer-songwriter pandering with her pen as well as sonically. Shock-value songs like "Hot White Cum" and "Rock Me" (in which she sings, "I'm starting to think young guys rule") make a play to snickering, teenage boys, while others like "Extraordinary" and "Why Can't I?" seem to aim at a women's lib crowd. The extremes do not add up.\nPhair is and always has been a good songwriter, though. She gets more comfortable on "My Bionic Eyes" and "It's Sweet," providing melody, harder guitars and faster beats as well as somewhat interesting messages. This flirtation with decency is mostly what the open frustration is about, and hearing her faculties crumble is more sui generis than it is fascinating.\nPhair has created a record that she desperately wants to sell, even going so far as posing nude on the cover. Her methods are insipid and unforgivable, but her given talents are undeniable. If this were a Sheryl Crow album, the talk might be how this is tactfully subversive. For Phair though, it is just boring, but only as boring as Lucinda Williams or Kasey Chambers.
(06/26/03 4:00am)
If all the things I could be rallying my efforts toward in the world of popular music, Radiohead would seem to be the least likely of targets. That's absolutely wrong though, Radiohead is the perfect mark for animosity and chagrin not only for its devoted breed of know-nothing know-it-alls, but for its own pretensions of the musical variety. \nNot surprisingly, with the release of its sixth studio album, Hail to the Thief, earlier this month, the band garnered a great deal of press coverage. The towering majority of the press ranged from glowing to impressed. \nThe noted rock snobs of pitchforkmedia.com wrote in their review, "Experimentation fueled the creativity that gave us Kid A and Amnesiac, but that's old hat to Radiohead, who are trying and largely succeeding in their efforts to shape pop music into as boundless and possible a medium as it should be."\nEven the Weekend's resident romantic, Isaac Edwards, joined the adverts, claiming, "Taking the raw energy and angst of The Bends and OK Computer, the nervous electronic blips of Kid A and the enigma of Amnesiac, Radiohead's newest release performs a masterful balancing act between using the past as a foundation and using the past as a formula."\nI think Isaac got a little closer when he used the word "formula" in his review. For Radiohead's new album is nothing more than a collection of slightly- tweaked, indie guitar rock. The tweak comes with the pop sheen that glosses over Hail to the Thief, making sure that Thom Yorke sounds as close to a deity as possible every time out. His posing is distasteful, and Radiohead's new political (and less direct than expected) stance makes the "formulaic" rock even harder to stomach. Yorke now joins pop star politiocos Bono and Madonna in a group of people who don't just believe, but know they are better than normal people.\nThose open to Yorke's discourse may be happy with HTTT's lyrics, they project images nicely. My problem begins when the supposed king of modern-age paranoia makes claims for isolationism. I find the most poignant lyric on the new album to be from "Go to Sleep," in which Yorke sings, "I'm gonna go to sleep/and let this wash all over me/we don't really want a monster taking over/tip toeing, tying down."\nThe maniacal paranoia, which is presumed to be what all the excitement is about, is premature. Yorke admits to escaping in a way pop stars can only foresee, because, in the end, how does George W. Bush really effect Radiohead? He's just trying to spread pop culture to the Middle East and give tax breaks so the smart, suburban kids can buy the band's records. \nAlso, I never pictured the musical personification of paranoia to be so laborious. Taking a cue from the post-Syd Barrett Pink Floyd, Radiohead builds to its crescendos slowly. Yorke's vocal repetitions and the group's ambient constructions allow a change of pace to feel like a Jimmy Swaggert miracle. \nThe chord changes may be different, even inventive, but since when do odd chords make for good rock? Radiohead is not different enough to hold up its established reputation, and Hail to the Thief, like Amnesiac and The Bends, pulls off guitar rock that is simply less obvious. In a way, the group is similar to big-time acts like Bruce Springsteen or U2, insofar as it is the best of a diluted bunch and not the epochal talent of a generation. \nYorke and his arty brothers must not fear for being called asinine; they seem to have a brain for PR and promotion. Recently, they showed the video for the new single from HTTT on repeat over Times Square for an afternoon, and Yorke even manages to seem witty and a bit dangerous in interviews. The fact that the group doesn't care about fans ripping its music off the internet is also a huge reason to like Radiohead. \nBut try as I might (and I really tried hard), the brilliance never hit me as I meandered along with the albums my peers claimed to define themselves by. Kid A was better than I expected, a fine introduction into the sophisticated world of underground electronica, and I, along with every other basement band my senior year in high school, played and sang "Karma Police." I'm pulling my punches though; Radiohead sucks, I hate its music and playing its records makes my girlfriend upset and flighty.
(06/26/03 4:00am)
It's hard to fault a movie that offers nothing less than what it promises. "From Justin to Kelly," the movie made-for-profit and starring the original "American Idol" stars Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson, is a non-stop barrage of product placement, good-looking young people, dance scenes and finely-crafted pop tunes.\nThe storyline is acceptably thin, a fictional tale based on a push-and-pull relationship between Justin and Kelly while they are furloughed on Spring Break in Miami. Both of the prefab stars have two friends with them to act as comedic foils, alter egos and arch rivals in turn. In order to get from point A to point B, the crafty writers penned some of the most transparent segues short of a porno. When looked at in a historical context, this plot is an afterthought to the music, a common plague amongst rock operas, which this is. It's also completely forgivable when the music is good, and in this movie that's the matter of contention.\nI talked my weekend guest, Robert, into going with me to see "From Justin to Kelly" on the terms that I would pay for his ticket and he could get extremely toasted beforehand. We went into the film not begrudgingly, but inspired to have a good time. What we saw made us laugh, made us nauseous, made us somewhat lusty and pissed all within an hour and a half. In terms of a Sunday afternoon, that's not too bad.\nThough Robert is not often surprised by my taste in pop music (I mentioned afterwards how much better the movie would have been had it starred Justin Timberlake instead of Guarini), he was disappointed that I found one song of intelligence in the movie. This was the minor-key song shuffled and delivered by Kelly's fake antagonist and the film's resident slut, Alexa (Katherine Bailess), who sang a tasty number about wanting "to go too far" while doing the splits in a push-up bra and bikini bottom.\nUnfortunately, Alexa's number was the only song that tested the conventional formulas of pop. Justin and Kelly represent the extremely sanitized version of pop that is needed for the underage crowd now that Timberlake and Britney Spears fuck and drink. The "American Idol" grads merely present their faux images in swooping ballads and rehashed disco dance numbers.\nDespite some hilarious suburban white-boy rhyming and the inextricable, and hence interesting, dance routines, "From Justin to Kelly" failed to live up to my "Beach Blanket Bingo" hopes. This kind of camp tends to get better with age though, for now, it must stand for something.
(06/26/03 2:16am)
It's hard to fault a movie that offers nothing less than what it promises. "From Justin to Kelly," the movie made-for-profit and starring the original "American Idol" stars Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson, is a non-stop barrage of product placement, good-looking young people, dance scenes and finely-crafted pop tunes.\nThe storyline is acceptably thin, a fictional tale based on a push-and-pull relationship between Justin and Kelly while they are furloughed on Spring Break in Miami. Both of the prefab stars have two friends with them to act as comedic foils, alter egos and arch rivals in turn. In order to get from point A to point B, the crafty writers penned some of the most transparent segues short of a porno. When looked at in a historical context, this plot is an afterthought to the music, a common plague amongst rock operas, which this is. It's also completely forgivable when the music is good, and in this movie that's the matter of contention.\nI talked my weekend guest, Robert, into going with me to see "From Justin to Kelly" on the terms that I would pay for his ticket and he could get extremely toasted beforehand. We went into the film not begrudgingly, but inspired to have a good time. What we saw made us laugh, made us nauseous, made us somewhat lusty and pissed all within an hour and a half. In terms of a Sunday afternoon, that's not too bad.\nThough Robert is not often surprised by my taste in pop music (I mentioned afterwards how much better the movie would have been had it starred Justin Timberlake instead of Guarini), he was disappointed that I found one song of intelligence in the movie. This was the minor-key song shuffled and delivered by Kelly's fake antagonist and the film's resident slut, Alexa (Katherine Bailess), who sang a tasty number about wanting "to go too far" while doing the splits in a push-up bra and bikini bottom.\nUnfortunately, Alexa's number was the only song that tested the conventional formulas of pop. Justin and Kelly represent the extremely sanitized version of pop that is needed for the underage crowd now that Timberlake and Britney Spears fuck and drink. The "American Idol" grads merely present their faux images in swooping ballads and rehashed disco dance numbers.\nDespite some hilarious suburban white-boy rhyming and the inextricable, and hence interesting, dance routines, "From Justin to Kelly" failed to live up to my "Beach Blanket Bingo" hopes. This kind of camp tends to get better with age though, for now, it must stand for something.
(06/26/03 2:13am)
If all the things I could be rallying my efforts toward in the world of popular music, Radiohead would seem to be the least likely of targets. That's absolutely wrong though, Radiohead is the perfect mark for animosity and chagrin not only for its devoted breed of know-nothing know-it-alls, but for its own pretensions of the musical variety. \nNot surprisingly, with the release of its sixth studio album, Hail to the Thief, earlier this month, the band garnered a great deal of press coverage. The towering majority of the press ranged from glowing to impressed. \nThe noted rock snobs of pitchforkmedia.com wrote in their review, "Experimentation fueled the creativity that gave us Kid A and Amnesiac, but that's old hat to Radiohead, who are trying and largely succeeding in their efforts to shape pop music into as boundless and possible a medium as it should be."\nEven the Weekend's resident romantic, Isaac Edwards, joined the adverts, claiming, "Taking the raw energy and angst of The Bends and OK Computer, the nervous electronic blips of Kid A and the enigma of Amnesiac, Radiohead's newest release performs a masterful balancing act between using the past as a foundation and using the past as a formula."\nI think Isaac got a little closer when he used the word "formula" in his review. For Radiohead's new album is nothing more than a collection of slightly- tweaked, indie guitar rock. The tweak comes with the pop sheen that glosses over Hail to the Thief, making sure that Thom Yorke sounds as close to a deity as possible every time out. His posing is distasteful, and Radiohead's new political (and less direct than expected) stance makes the "formulaic" rock even harder to stomach. Yorke now joins pop star politiocos Bono and Madonna in a group of people who don't just believe, but know they are better than normal people.\nThose open to Yorke's discourse may be happy with HTTT's lyrics, they project images nicely. My problem begins when the supposed king of modern-age paranoia makes claims for isolationism. I find the most poignant lyric on the new album to be from "Go to Sleep," in which Yorke sings, "I'm gonna go to sleep/and let this wash all over me/we don't really want a monster taking over/tip toeing, tying down."\nThe maniacal paranoia, which is presumed to be what all the excitement is about, is premature. Yorke admits to escaping in a way pop stars can only foresee, because, in the end, how does George W. Bush really effect Radiohead? He's just trying to spread pop culture to the Middle East and give tax breaks so the smart, suburban kids can buy the band's records. \nAlso, I never pictured the musical personification of paranoia to be so laborious. Taking a cue from the post-Syd Barrett Pink Floyd, Radiohead builds to its crescendos slowly. Yorke's vocal repetitions and the group's ambient constructions allow a change of pace to feel like a Jimmy Swaggert miracle. \nThe chord changes may be different, even inventive, but since when do odd chords make for good rock? Radiohead is not different enough to hold up its established reputation, and Hail to the Thief, like Amnesiac and The Bends, pulls off guitar rock that is simply less obvious. In a way, the group is similar to big-time acts like Bruce Springsteen or U2, insofar as it is the best of a diluted bunch and not the epochal talent of a generation. \nYorke and his arty brothers must not fear for being called asinine; they seem to have a brain for PR and promotion. Recently, they showed the video for the new single from HTTT on repeat over Times Square for an afternoon, and Yorke even manages to seem witty and a bit dangerous in interviews. The fact that the group doesn't care about fans ripping its music off the internet is also a huge reason to like Radiohead. \nBut try as I might (and I really tried hard), the brilliance never hit me as I meandered along with the albums my peers claimed to define themselves by. Kid A was better than I expected, a fine introduction into the sophisticated world of underground electronica, and I, along with every other basement band my senior year in high school, played and sang "Karma Police." I'm pulling my punches though; Radiohead sucks, I hate its music and playing its records makes my girlfriend upset and flighty.
(06/19/03 4:00am)
Somewhere in the bleakest of all possible worlds lie the fellows from Grandaddy. Obsessed with the dissolution of nature and its eventual and inevitable displacement by technology, the group is able to paint extremely vivid pictures of a burnt-out planet.\nAs songs from the band's previous album, 2001's masterful The Software Slump, about a sad, alcoholic robot foretold, Grandaddy believes that nostalgia is coming on faster these days. Ever look at an Apple IIe or an early cell phone lately and realize that was only 10 to 15 years ago? While technology is their sworn enemy, the Modesto, Calif., Luddites find ways to bring the themes to life by combining acoustic guitars and auteur Jason Lytle's folkie-falsetto with demonstrative computer sounds and dirty synthesizers. \nWith its third full-length, Grandaddy explores the stories of the people in this decaying world. "Becky wondered why/she'd never noticed dragonflies/her drag and click had never yielded anything as perfect/as a dragonfly," chirps Lytle on "The Group Who Couldn't Say," a song about some office workers being overwhelmed by nature on a trip to the country.\nWhile Software Slump was a wilting, pleading record, Sumday is glorious by comparison. The waning prettiness comes around, but Sumday is mainly composed of more electric guitar and some of the greatest pop songs this side of Justin Timberlake's solo record. The opening track and single, "Now It's On" is incredibly bouncy, featuring Grandaddy's trademark knack for the cheap, melodious run. "The Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World" has a Beach Boys-esque chorus harmony to accompany the simple, beatless piano chords.\nThough Lytle may get lost in the specifics, and admittedly Sumday is a little bit too consistently mid-tempo, the spirit of the album is faultless. While not necessarily impenetrable, Grandaddy is able to be smart about composition by befitting Lytle's lyrics with the correct music. In that sense, Sumday becomes reminiscent of Van Morrison's masterwork Astral Weeks.\n"I'm OK with my decay/I have no choice/I have no voice/I have no say/On my decay/I have no choice/so I'll rejoice," Lytle sings on "O.K. With My Decay." It is the suggestion of a post-Apocalyptic world where it's not the sinners who have been washed away, but an interchangeable number of politicos, religiosos and criminals, leaving the computers not to take over, but to rot.
(06/19/03 12:07am)
Somewhere in the bleakest of all possible worlds lie the fellows from Grandaddy. Obsessed with the dissolution of nature and its eventual and inevitable displacement by technology, the group is able to paint extremely vivid pictures of a burnt-out planet.\nAs songs from the band's previous album, 2001's masterful The Software Slump, about a sad, alcoholic robot foretold, Grandaddy believes that nostalgia is coming on faster these days. Ever look at an Apple IIe or an early cell phone lately and realize that was only 10 to 15 years ago? While technology is their sworn enemy, the Modesto, Calif., Luddites find ways to bring the themes to life by combining acoustic guitars and auteur Jason Lytle's folkie-falsetto with demonstrative computer sounds and dirty synthesizers. \nWith its third full-length, Grandaddy explores the stories of the people in this decaying world. "Becky wondered why/she'd never noticed dragonflies/her drag and click had never yielded anything as perfect/as a dragonfly," chirps Lytle on "The Group Who Couldn't Say," a song about some office workers being overwhelmed by nature on a trip to the country.\nWhile Software Slump was a wilting, pleading record, Sumday is glorious by comparison. The waning prettiness comes around, but Sumday is mainly composed of more electric guitar and some of the greatest pop songs this side of Justin Timberlake's solo record. The opening track and single, "Now It's On" is incredibly bouncy, featuring Grandaddy's trademark knack for the cheap, melodious run. "The Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World" has a Beach Boys-esque chorus harmony to accompany the simple, beatless piano chords.\nThough Lytle may get lost in the specifics, and admittedly Sumday is a little bit too consistently mid-tempo, the spirit of the album is faultless. While not necessarily impenetrable, Grandaddy is able to be smart about composition by befitting Lytle's lyrics with the correct music. In that sense, Sumday becomes reminiscent of Van Morrison's masterwork Astral Weeks.\n"I'm OK with my decay/I have no choice/I have no voice/I have no say/On my decay/I have no choice/so I'll rejoice," Lytle sings on "O.K. With My Decay." It is the suggestion of a post-Apocalyptic world where it's not the sinners who have been washed away, but an interchangeable number of politicos, religiosos and criminals, leaving the computers not to take over, but to rot.
(06/12/03 4:00am)
Xiu Xiu is a decisively weird, little band from San Jose, Calif. Playing its records for company is like a litmus test for what kind of person is at hand. Responses usually come in the opposed spheres of "what the hell" awe and "I don't get it" disgust. \nXiu Xiu's equally peculiar frontman Jamie Stewart wrote via an email interview, "I never understood why anyone would bother consciously setting out to repeat someone else's feelings and artistic implosions. All of the records that I have loved have been by people who did something new. So while sonically Xiu Xiu might not sound like them (although some we surely do) we very very much want to imitate the spirit (I am not sure of how else to say it) of people who do and have done new things."\nWhat Stewart and his band are doing is something quite different indeed. At once, Xiu Xiu's music is giving personality to the prefab nature of techno and fearlessly updating the inert sounds of folk music. Experimenting with tape loops and programmed beats is one thing, but as the band has progressed and gained a grounding in strong song compositions and uncomfortably personal lyrics it has launched to the forefront of the West Coast art-rock movement. A place it shares with labelmates and sometimes collaborators, the Shaggs-inspired, Deerhoof.\nXiu Xiu takes its name from Joan Chen's 1998 film "Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl." The film is the story of a young Chinese girl who is taken from her home as part of a government program, overworked, lied to, raped and eventually kills herself; a totally dismal affair. \nStewart explained the connection: "That movie is like what the songs we were trying to do insofar as it has no resolution and is totally unsymbolic insofar as it is a direct narrative of events. It is the most depressing movie I have ever seen. It fit in a lot with things going on in that it offers no explanation of how awful life can be or how touching. It just is."\nIn 2000, with friends and former band members from the San Jose vicinity, Stewart, Cory McCullough, Yvonne Chen and Lauren Andrews began to form the germ of the idea. Their debut record, Knife Play, was released in 2002 on the Olympia-based 5 Rue Christine label. It was a bewildering and scattered record, with influences from gamelan percussion (a Javanese style of music centered around gongs), Stewart's goth-like vocals and some straightforward, akimbo post-punk. Knife Play was a wellspring of fascinating moments, but failed in being a fully realized work.\nAfter the idea-heavy, more computerized EP Chapel of the Chimes (also released in 2002); Xiu Xiu came out with A Promise this February, an album of unparalleled originality. Pulling together the disparity of its condition, A Promise is unabashedly sad and modernly poetic. Stewart often refers to specific people, friends and relatives of his, in the songs, making the album feel like an aural diorama of a Hubert Selby novel.\n"A lot of REALLY bad things for some reason happened and continue to myself and members of Xiu Xiu and people over a short period of time and it is a way to stare at them and document them and man I do not know why," Stewart writes of his subject matter. "Life is too much sometimes that there is not a lot else to do. It is not to make people feel uncomfortable, to like freak out the squares, it is just what is up right now."\nIndicative of what A Promise holds in store is the cover art, a photo of a naked Vietnamese boy on a bed holding an upside down baby doll. "I was on vacation in Vietnam and the person on the cover kept pestering me to have sex with him for money, but I offered him the pose instead. He thought it was fine or at least said he did. The photo and whole thing felt so confusing and intense. It was beautiful and exploitive and scary and a little funny and depressing and sad and exciting. I have no idea whether it was right or wrong to do it." \nStewart, a preschool employee by day, is the son of record producer Michael Stewart, whose greatest claim to fame is from his production work on Billy Joel's Piano Man album. Jamie has confirmed that he learned from his father that music could never go too far. Consequently, Xiu Xiu has been praised or damned for its plethoric depictions of the sad and disturbed. Stewart often sounds insanely out of his head, like a drunk and drugged Ian Curtis dangling from his lariat in the kitchen.\nSecuring a comparison to the dead Joy Division singer is the last song on A Promise, a terror-inducing track called "Ian Curtis Wishlist." Over a calming and repetitive cello, Stewart literally kicks and screams a manifesto of love and disappointment. Just before turning into monstrous explosion of sound, he yelps, "'DO YA LUV ME, JAMIE STEWART?!'/Jane S. I am kidding/I'm just KIDDING!"\n"I was super, super, super drunk and super, super, super heart broken," Stewart writes. "I had fallen for the woman named in the song Jane S. and she had been the first person I had liked in four years and she very politely declined and I felt like such an ass for being so unrealistic and excited and for trying. It was a horrible combination of being lonely and embarrassed. I heroically and in keeping with the uber, uber angst party I was in the middle of wrote a poem about it on the bus, got wasted and recorded the vocals. YEAH!!!!!!!! Later on my best friend fucked Jane S. and then lied to me about it. That song never ends."\n"We are just trying to make music that is honest to us and sometimes it works and sometimes it sucks."\nWith a tour with Devendra Banhart this summer, a new limited edition, mini album, Fag Patrol, just out and an upcoming full-length in February 2004, Xiu Xiu is displaying remarkable imagination and prolificacy. Possibly, Jamie Stewart will be defining new parameters of happiness soon. Highly unlikely, though, as dourness seems to be a virtue in his world.
(06/12/03 4:00am)
This New Wave of the New Wave thing, interesting in terms of nostalgia, is basically a genre of subtleties. Like picking from a hat, it's a general rule of thumb that the discovered band will be arbitrary and that there is another one waiting, buried in a shallow grave. It is a group of bands (most based in New York) whose sound recalls the late '70s and early '80s era of CBGBs and amphetamine-driven New Wave, No Wave and Post-Punk bands like the Talking Heads, Television, Wire and Gang of Four. \nThe original was an excitingly new aggregate of Captain Beefheart and the Velvet Underground. The sound of old combined Beefheart's steady, staccato beats and anything goes avant-gardism with VU's moody primitivism and Lou Reed's monotonality. The tenets of dance (not really an antithesis to disco, but a hipper, less trivial version of it) were also prevalent in the heyday of New Wave.\nThese new bands are all direct descendants of this day gone by. What they have in common is good and deep taste in music and the perpetual beat. When involved with rebop and slight undulation, most of these bands can become contenders. Too often though, they become harassing rather than memorable.\nThe Strokes - Is This It? (RCA, 2001)
(06/12/03 4:00am)
"Assassination Tango" is the third film written and directed by Robert Duvall following "Angelo My Love" (1983) and "The Apostle" (1997). It is a film that slowly envelops a cross-section of a life, eventually revealing that amid cultural chaos, personal strife and moral evil lies the overwhelming pull towards normalcy.\nSimilar to his Oscar-winning role in 1983's "Tender Mercies," Duvall displays a remarkable ease in his persona as aging hit man John J. Anderson. Unlike the quiet dignity he portrayed in the aforementioned film, "Assassination Tango" finds Duvall confused, meticulous, outgoing and mannered. His attention to detail in creating Anderson is astounding, unfortunately the character is so real that he is inevitably quite boring.\nAnderson, described by his ambiguously shady friends as "the best," works as a hit man in Latin parts of New York City. He also lives a double life with his longtime girlfriend (Kathy Baker) and her ten-year-old daughter, lying about his profession as all the movie point guys must. The film mainly follows Anderson around Buenos Aires, where he is sent to assassinate an old Argentinean general.\nWhile there, he keeps to himself, choosing to handle things on his own in favor of using given contacts. Stumbling upon a pair of tango dancers in a swank, dimly lit club, Anderson finds himself intrigued by the female dancer, Manuela (Luciana Pedraza). He sparks up a relationship with her that is not explicitly sexual, but rather fatherly. She teaches him to tango and talks to him in a rather drawn out, non-dramatic fashion. Ultimately, like the tango and all things in their lives, the association feels guarded and crafted.\nDespite a few ostentatious moments (such as all of the lengthy tango montages), Duvall is able to get his ideas across effectively. All gun-fighting action takes place in less than 10 minutes of this two hour-plus movie, and little explanation of its coming is given. Instead, the focus is Duvall's character sketch, which is certainly complex and authentic, but never over the top. The evil is not so evil, his generosity is two-sided and his tics and expressions are common.\nThe concepts in "Assassination Tango" have depth, but as entertainment it's dull. Brilliant filmmakers like David Lynch have found ways to achieve the best of both worlds, and by comparison Duvall's voyeuristic art feels novice.
(06/12/03 1:11am)
"Assassination Tango" is the third film written and directed by Robert Duvall following "Angelo My Love" (1983) and "The Apostle" (1997). It is a film that slowly envelops a cross-section of a life, eventually revealing that amid cultural chaos, personal strife and moral evil lies the overwhelming pull towards normalcy.\nSimilar to his Oscar-winning role in 1983's "Tender Mercies," Duvall displays a remarkable ease in his persona as aging hit man John J. Anderson. Unlike the quiet dignity he portrayed in the aforementioned film, "Assassination Tango" finds Duvall confused, meticulous, outgoing and mannered. His attention to detail in creating Anderson is astounding, unfortunately the character is so real that he is inevitably quite boring.\nAnderson, described by his ambiguously shady friends as "the best," works as a hit man in Latin parts of New York City. He also lives a double life with his longtime girlfriend (Kathy Baker) and her ten-year-old daughter, lying about his profession as all the movie point guys must. The film mainly follows Anderson around Buenos Aires, where he is sent to assassinate an old Argentinean general.\nWhile there, he keeps to himself, choosing to handle things on his own in favor of using given contacts. Stumbling upon a pair of tango dancers in a swank, dimly lit club, Anderson finds himself intrigued by the female dancer, Manuela (Luciana Pedraza). He sparks up a relationship with her that is not explicitly sexual, but rather fatherly. She teaches him to tango and talks to him in a rather drawn out, non-dramatic fashion. Ultimately, like the tango and all things in their lives, the association feels guarded and crafted.\nDespite a few ostentatious moments (such as all of the lengthy tango montages), Duvall is able to get his ideas across effectively. All gun-fighting action takes place in less than 10 minutes of this two hour-plus movie, and little explanation of its coming is given. Instead, the focus is Duvall's character sketch, which is certainly complex and authentic, but never over the top. The evil is not so evil, his generosity is two-sided and his tics and expressions are common.\nThe concepts in "Assassination Tango" have depth, but as entertainment it's dull. Brilliant filmmakers like David Lynch have found ways to achieve the best of both worlds, and by comparison Duvall's voyeuristic art feels novice.
