Songs from 2011 - Part 3 - Believer

A friend recommended John Maus's Heaven is Real to me years ago on the strength of the song "Do Your Best." I loved that record then, but it took Maus four years to follow it up and I forgot about him.

"Believer" is Maus's best song yet. Like "Do Your Best," "Believer" relies on bass drum on the 2s and 4s and a plodding bass line keep the pulsing, antiquated synths in check, and when he sings they call me the believer! I must take his word for it. "Believer" is a song from another time and place---maybe space, maybe the future, or maybe the past. It's just about the finest thing I've heard this year. I'm especially fond of the bridge and final choruses. You'll see this one on year-end lists, believe me.

Songs from 2011 - Part 2 - Out of the Eye

In 2009, Woods damaged the flow of their new LP Songs of Shame by slotting "September With Pete" fourth. Normally I approve of risky decisions like this, but the song is bad. And long. I skip it, and you probably do too. Check the play count on iTunes.
And it's a shame because Woods can create memorable experimental sounds. When they performed at Pitchfork Fest 2011, their jams weren't the best part, but they weren't bad either, not like "September" is.

The new album Sun and Shade is good. "Pushing Onlys" and "Who Do I Think I Am?" probably should be my songs of 2011, but here's "Out of the Eye," in which Woods uses their homemade sonics to write a Neu! song. Motorik drumming, psych guitar, and that distant echo-y noise thing that only Woods' weirdo with the headset can make. It's like we're back in '77. Not as thrilling as "Negativland" but what is? Sun and Shade has one other long song, and while not as memorable, it also doesn't point so obviously to one genre or musical movement like "Out of the Eye". This might appeal to you, oh dear listener. Woods in 2k11: writing the complete LP.

Songs from 2011 - Part 1 - If You Leave...

Last year, I started talking about my favorite songs in September, but mostly in December when everyone else was talking about them. I denied my readers access to great music because of it, and I apologize---oh my god---I'm sorry. You could have been downloading instead of carrying on with your lives.

Anyway, it's useful to talk about these things now, so here goes.

The Men nearly de-mapped you last year with songs like "Lazarus" from their lp Immaculada. This year, they're back with Leave Home, a ripper on Sacred Bones (check out their offerings). As with "Lazarus," "If You Leave..." opens with noise/ feedback/ fuzz/ a preview of the noisy music to come, and then launches into a delayed, reverb-y shoegaze jam. The rest of the record is mean.

I only mention it because they're playing in Chicago next Friday. How come Googling "The Men Show Chicago" didn't turn up what I wanted? (Got weirder when I included "hardcore").

My week in media: June & July

"It's good to be back in the USA. Fuck anybody that tells you it isn't the best country in the world."

Bradford Cox, a hero of mine, said this at Pitchfork Festival 2011 during a set that confirms my belief that his band Deerhunter is on top of their game, has been for years, hopefully will be for time to come. This post isn't about Deerhunter, but it is about the USA and an unusual influx of patriotic media on my brainstem.

I started watching The West Wing. It's an excellent drama (-edy? Usually really funny!) about a fictional president and his crew. The characters work too much, walk around all day, sometimes care very much about things, attempt to cultivate social lives, and then walk around some more. They never walk around and drink some more. They sit when they drink. Regardless, each episode has (so far) been superb or at least compelling. My complaint is the same as other people's: The West Wing's corny Full House-ish sentimental network television music and idealism are sometimes blushworthy. But sometimes they feel so good, too. What would DFW say? Is The West Wing the least ironic show in recent memory? No se.

Then there's All the King's Men, Robert Rossen's Best Picture-winning (1949) adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's book of the same name. Main character and humble everyguy Willie Stark (Academy Award winner Broderick Crawford) works his way up from nothing and then breaks bad so hard. His platform of for-the-people and by-the-people--he calls himself a hick---gets convoluted by money and big politics and power tripping and all that. He's a sensation, a governor with Presidential potential. It's Grapes of Wrath, Manchurian Candidate, and All the President's Men (whoa) with probably five newspaper headline montages to boot. It's barely remembered. What a shame.

Finally, E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime is the finest book I've read this year. The main characters---a family in chic New Rochelle, NY---encounter the poor and the very rich. Doctorow creates an American tapestry. Historical figures are characters. Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan have a dinner date. Harry Houdini gets existential. Booker T. Washington mediates a police standoff. If that isn't enough, it has one of the most memorable race conflicts since To Kill a Mockingbird.

If the United States isn't the best country, it's got to be the best at thinking about whether or not it is.

Did you hear? Bats in the Belfry - In Bloom

The greatest feeling comes after finals are over. Instead of falling asleep---which is what you should do, considering your punk-ass is running on Rockstar and Doritos---you start to play guitar. You've neglected it in the last month, and the chords come difficultly at first---not to mention, it is hot in your dorm room. The college will not install AC for whatever reason---a choice that's alienating potential students---and it is making these new songs you write sound sluggish. If not sluggish, then slow. You cannot top 100 BPM, but you've found your voice and some simple melodic lines that please you, and you've called in your buddies for backup. Your vacation record is in the works.

In Bloom by Bats in the Belfry is evocative summer music that defeats the ridiculous notion that music needs to be technical or showy to be good. Basic but tasteful guitar playing anchors the affair. Kellen Shipley---Bats in the Belfry's mastermind---projects his voice as if into an empty gym or humid night. His harmonizers come in at all the right times. Shipley eschews the lo-fi recording techniques employed by his peers and retains his amateur charm in this way. By not hiding in murky production, Bats in the Belfry achieve the timelessness that comes from recording onto tape (which I assume they did).

So what influences are there? Of course, In Bloom means Nirvana, but Bats in the Belfry don't share Nirvana's penchant for rhythmic pummeling and misanthropic lyrics. In fact, the lyrics sound heartfelt and unironic. It's a welcome diversion from tongue-in-cheek indie bullshit, and it calls to mind the powerful Galaxie 500. The music is there too. You ought to be listening to Galaxie 500. 

In Bloom first appeared as a cd-r on Rover. Labelmates to Sean McCann and Horse Marriage. Why are cd-rs cool? Help needed, mind cannot grasp the appeal. Edition of 100, sold out. As a result, limited access and few last.fm listeners. That should change. On the other hand, it was fun to research a mysterious band for once. Bats in the Belfry were a welcome surprise. 

Get it here!

Bad Movie Society - Nic Cage

If it weren't for Nic Cage, 1993's Deadfall would have been on a Fred Claus level. Dig writer/ director Christopher Coppola for a moment. When he's not Ali G'ing hard on his imdb page, he's creating pieces of crap such as Deadfall. Plot needed serious resuscitation. Cliches abounded. Just festering work, really. 

On the other hand, Cage turns in a maniacal performance as con artist Eddie. Channeling Frank Booth in the worst way, Cage mumbles, then yells, and then fights his way to an untimely death in a deep fryer. Viva la fuckin' France, man. Please help me find his Deadfall highlight reel on Youtube.

Then there was Know1ng. Yes, it's spelled with a 1. Completely unacceptable film about the world's end. Mix The Da Vinci Code with Signs with third-rate sci-fi, and you've got an abomination replete with time capsules, psychopathic-soothsaying dead grandmothers, and a race to save the movie's children. Cage's performance is subdued in comparison, but that doesn't mean Know1ng is worse. It's a better film than Deadfall. Deadfall is classic 'dear filmmakers, don't do this ever' fodder. Pure WGN sports rain-delay material. 

Bringing Out the Dead should have been better. Martin Scorsese directed it. You know him because he's awesome. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino...need I go on? He's the man, and yet, his '99 film about Cage as a desperate NY ambulance driver is confusing and uninspired. 

So we haven't had much luck with minor Nicolas Cage, and yet, I want to see Wicker Man badly.

The Killing: Boom or Bust?

The Killing's developer, Veena Sud, knows that her new AMC show exists within the conversation about Twin Peaks. She can't ignore Twin Peaks's legacy or the guideposts Lynch and Frost set up twenty years ago. I wonder why writers would even try a murder-mystery television drama given that it was done nearly perfectly then. Nevertheless, Sud tries, and she invites the comparisons with taglines like "Who killed Rosie Larsen?" and by setting the show in Seattle. Fortunately, The Killing is its own show, not just bait for Twin Peaks's fanboys and girls, and I'm caught up/ addicted. 

Relative newcomer Mireille Enos is the main character. As detective Linden, she follows leads which take her all over Seattle in pursuit of Rosie's killer. These assignments are ruining her social life, and though her engagement to Rick (Callum Keith Rennie) provides the show with a clock or countdown, meaning, she better get back to him before he leaves her, that aspect of the show is not well-developed or necessary. I groan each time he calls or they fight. 

Holder (Joel Kinnaman) is Linden's sidekick. He challenges the rules of police behavior every couple of minutes and is wonderfully rough around the edges. Might have a drug problem too. Hope so. Politician and Seattle mayoral candidate Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell) can't decide on the type of campaign he wants to run, whether he's a good guy or scumbag politician as winning politicians tend to be, or if he's capable of distancing himself from the Rosie Larsen murder case in which he is tangled. 

Twin Peaks gave us all the suspects in the pilot. I can't remember who Rosie Larsen's suspects were in episode two, but they are memory now, and I feel like the current suspects will be memory soon, too. In other words, the plot thickens, the world spins, and The Killing becomes more engaging. 

Seattle's gloom naturally influences the way the show looks, and the gloomy grays, greens, and blues, coupled with the slow pace of the show, makes The Killing a heavy but visually sound hour of television. The soundtrack is twinkly and a little too CBS for my tastes, but that's fine. Neko Case's song "Hold On, Hold On" finds its way onto episode 5, and I had never heard her before. Opened my laptop, typed furiously, and was like whoa, another New Pornographers member who does it better on their own.  

Eventually, and Twin Peaks had this problem too, Rosie's killer needs to be caught. And then what happens to The Killing? The Twin Peaks people had some options because of the surrealism they'd established, but still, look what happened: chess games, inter-dimensional buildings, grown women thinking they're cheerleaders, and this. Am I signing up for another soap opera by way of murder? Hopefully not, and when the time comes to reveal Rosie's killer, here's hoping AMC gives the show a couple of episodes denouement and pulls the plug.