Year of the Indie Rock Guitar Solo

I'm so glad John Darnielle pointed out in this (hilarious) recent post what a great year this has been for indie rock guitar solos. I haven't gotten around to sampling The Woods yet (shame on me, I know, A & O), but I've been thinking much the same thing about Face the Truth (OMG—"No More Shoes," motherfuckers!!!) and Peyton Pinkerton's expert work on Discover a Lovelier You. Anybody have any other favorites from this year that I may have missed?

Just like Dan Rydell not wanting anyone to tell him the outcome of Orlando Rojas's big game pitching for the Orioles until he has a chance to watch the videotape of it with Rebecca later that night (that reference was for you, Giddy), please, no one tell me anything about the new Death Cab album until I have a chance to listen to it myself. I know it's been available to stream online for a week or two now, but I'd like to do the whole "buy the CD and read the liner notes and listen to it in one sitting with my headphones on" ritual before I start reading other opinions and reviews. (I'm afraid to even look at the numerical rating Pitchfork gave it.) In my mind, it's going to be hard to top the intricate, breathtaking complexity of the masterpiece that is Transatlanticism, but I'm still looking forward to seeing what the boys have done with their newly increased budget and resources.

G.B. and A.C.

Not that I really have much by way of point of reference, but the Gurlesque Burlesque show at the Abbey on Saturday night was amazing. Aside from being sweaty, drunken, hilarious, rowdy, political, inclusive, and sexy as hell (um, and did I mention sweaty?), it served as a potent reminder that we so often overlook imagination as a key component of sexuality and eroticism. The unbelievable creativity on display in the performers' choice of music, motif, and message turned the night into this anything-goes party where everybody was desirable, everybody was a star. The room felt united in this friendly, communal, participatory celebration of the place where the delights of the body and mind intersect, rather than being a slimy, leering, onanistic spectacle to be consumed solely for pornographic titillation. This allowed for a two-way street of maturity and respect between the performers and the audience, which, oddly enough, generated a vibe that felt almost innocent. (Which was enhanced, of course, by the reverence with which many of the performers held all things World War II– and Cold War–era.) We cheered as they shed their clothes, not solely because we were turned on (though these fine specimens were most definitely hawt, in their splendid array of sizes, shapes, colors, ages, experience levels, and attitudes), but also because we were so thankful—thankful for their sharing their talents with us, thankful to be hanging out together for the night, thankful that this wonderful art form has been revived with such a genuine passion for the lessons it can teach us about gender and sexuality in an engaging and non-militant way. And, aside from only a handful of cheap jokes, which seemed to be all in good fun, there wasn't an overabundance of hatin' on the straights in the crowd, which is always nice. Highlights for me included the amazing song stylings of Nomy Lamm, a performance by the Hellcat Hussies that I'll bet damali ayo would have approved of, the smokin' hot Michelle L'Amour and her award-winning Snow White dance, the thrillingly bizarro Lady Ace, and the inspiring grande dame and headliner Satan's Angel.

I've been loving the New Pornographers' new album Twin Cinema. I can't fully support this theory yet, but I think it might make an excellent companion piece to Spoon's Gimme Fiction in the way they both use, uh, cinema, as jumping-off points for these rangy, jangly sonic treasure maps of texture and emotion. Neko Case nearly brings me to tears on "These Are the Fables."

A big welcome back to LBLA and CTLA and a shout-out to the cutest baby in the world, whom I finally got to meet this weekend.

Three Thousand, Six Hundred and Fifty-Odd Days

This is dedicated to all my home fries who live (or used to live) in Rogers Park: the Morse Ave. Is Great! blog (via Gapers Block). "That's way too blue to be safe, mister sky. How'd you get so blue? You stop that right now!"

The El-Dubs have an EP coming out in October, called Ultimatum, whetting our collective appetite for the full-length slated to drop in early '06. I'm glad they're getting some stuff out there, and lord knows John could always use a few extra pennies for new notebooks and #2 pencils and whatnot, but aside from "Everything Is Talking," all of the others songs have been made available (granted, in different versions, yes) elsewhere: "The Commander Thinks Aloud" was featured on last year's Future Soundtrack for America, "Bride and Bridle" is from When I Pretend to Fall, "Delicate Hands" is included on a sampler that comes in the new issue of Spin with Death Cab on the cover, and "Ultimatum" has been posted as an MP3 on the Barsuk web site.

For those of you who are into mash-ups and Kanye West, Stereogum has the goods you crave: Sufjan and Kanye become "Zombies Walk" and the Beach Boys and Kanye become West Sounds. I can't vouch for the quality of either, as I haven't listened to them yet, but thought they looked promising enough to post anyway.

Jonathan Rosenbaum in this week's Chicago Reader on Terry Gilliam's new movie The Brothers Grimm: "With Lena Headey, Monica Bellucci, Peter Stormare, and Jonathan Pryce, the latter two giving some of their broadest turns as comic grotesques." Hummina-huh? If those bitches got any broader than they usually are, they'd have to start showing that shit in IMAX!

I just bought my tickets for tomorrow night's big Gurlesque Burlesque show at the Abbey. Our girl Nora Rocket, who is running tech, tells me Lady Ace is not to be missed. It's gonna be a fab time—Chicagoans with a taste for the bawdy should be sure to check it out.

To all of my wonderful and faithful readers, you'll notice that I've enabled the word verification step in the "post a comment" pop-up window. I've been getting some annoying comment spam in the past few weeks, and Blogger has made this safety function available to prevent it. This makes me a tremendously happy kitty and will help keep the playground clean for everyone. But be careful on the tire swing, for fuck's sake! I don't want to have to drag your ass to the emergency room with a concussion and projectile vomit streaked down your shirt. Heavens.

Freddy

Far be it from me to toot my own horn, but—

Fuck that. I'm the motherfuckin' Doc Severinsen of tooting my own horn over here.

(Doc Severinsen? Doc Severinsen, anyone? I mean, Miles would have been way too obvious, Chet Baker leaves that unfortunate heroin aftertaste, few people except the kids I went to high school with would have laughed at an Allen Vizzutti reference, and I wouldn't even want to try to compete with the Wynton Marsalis comedy here, so it seemed like Doc was the right way to go.)

Though I give the good folks at The Onion A.V. Club massive, massive props for mentioning it at all in their list of 10 Notorious Flops Worth Seeing, I'd like to point out that I was all over Tom Green's Freddy Got Fingered way back when it first came out in 2001.

Apropos of crawling inside a dead deer:

"'CD burning is a problem that is really undermining sales,' stated [RIAA chief executive Mitch] Bainwol in an interview prior to mercilessly beating a dead horse. In an attempt to form a solid counter-point to this argument, I contacted Steve Jobs (Apple CEO), who stated 'I'm sorry, but I can't hear your question over the sweet sound of my money waterfall, which I had installed after 20 million iPods were sold.'" (from yesterday's Tiny Mix Tapes)

The Apologist

Meme of the month? Reconsidering previously maligned art. DS gave it up so beautifully and convincingly for The Life Aquatic; I revisited Closer just last week; and watching The Village with LK and NB on Friday night really made me revise my thoughts on where it belongs in Shyamalan's body of work. I was proud to have been one of the few people who actually liked the movie when I saw it the first time around with CTLA last year, but I wasn't exactly immune to the effects of the critical whipping it took and, as such, considered it a lesser effort. But, seeing it again with the benefit of some distance made me appreciate a lot of the really subtle, really weird ways he's dealing with the issues he's interrogating here. In addition to being a nifty little commentary on American isolationism (as The Onion AV Club, in their estimable quest to be one of Shyamalan's few hip, credible defenders, was right to point out), the movie builds on that idea to explore the rather uncomfortable place where privilege and survival intersect (cf my thoughts on The Pianist—is it mere coincidence that Adrien Brody features prominently in both films?).

Because of his father's money and influence, William Hurt's character, Edward Walker, is able to provide the means for the physical establishment of the village in question. Though the lifestyle and the reasons for living it might appear creepy and reactionary to us as an audience (ahem, that's a big part of the point), it is nevertheless rooted in the pursuit of what the small, self-appointed community feels is good and true and noble. Things get a bit more murky, however, when, about halfway through the film, Edward allows his daughter to venture out into "the towns" to get medicine for her mortally wounded fiance, the only person in about 20 years who's been granted permission to do so, despite other deaths and illnesses (incl. those of young children). Is this decision really as compassionate as he claims? Is it really a valiant attempt to ensure the perpetuation of their way of life through the children that will result from his daughter's marriage? Or is it simply that he feels unique in his grief for his future son-in-law, that it's somehow a different, exceptional situation this time because it's happening to him? Does his fear of death (his own death, and the deaths of his loved ones) cause him to bend the rules of his own creation because he so desperately wants his DNA to flourish? And what does any/all of that say about the human impulse to jettison previously cherished principles when the going gets tough? Is it a sign of fundamental weakness of character or a sign of hard-won maturity? The moral/ethical spectrum being explored here is fascinatingly complex and should provide a stinging corrective for those tempted to dismiss Shyamalan out of hand for...whatever myriad things the haters are tempted to dismiss him out of hand for: his hubris as an artist (grandiosely, "AN M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN FILM!"), the minimalism he paints with, his Christian sympathies, his indebtedness to (early) Spielberg with respect to genre tweaking and heartstring pulling, etc. (None of which, for the record, I happen to have a problem with.) Um, and the monsters are still scary, too, even though I knew they were coming.

Also caught up with Junebug this weekend, which is up to its ears in indie cred, thanks to the appearance of Will Oldham in a small walk-on role and a score by Yo La Tengo.

I ran by the Metro this weekend to pick up tickets for the upcoming Sufjan Stevens show, and, oh brutha, if this is what we have to look forward to, now I really can't wait!

Natasha Lyonne—WTF? (Via the IMDB.)

RIP, Bob Moog.

Ever true to form, I'm a day late and a dollar short: happy birthday, DS! Hope you had a grand celebration. (When I say it, the phrase "a dollar short" ends up sounding like some kind of British colloquialism for measuring height: "I'm a dollar short so I should probably lose two stone, eh?")

Condolences to the Taize Community

I spoke on the phone last night with a friend of mine who's about to enter the novitiate at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. After some general catching-up, he told me about the horrible news that Brother Roger, the 90-year-old founder of the Taize Community, had been fatally stabbed during a prayer service in front of a 2,000+ person congregation on Tuesday. I don't think this story has been widely covered in the American media, but, even for those of you who aren't especially religious, it shouldn't be too difficult to grasp the shock and sadness of this news. I'm not terribly familiar with the Taize Community and their style of worship myself, but, based on the little I do know, their unflagging commitment to peace, even after this direct attack against them, is just one of the most radical stances that can be held by any group of people right now. Condolences and admiration.

Things I Like Today

Rebecca Traister's body-image poem on Salon (written in homage to Nike's recently launched What Story Does Your Body Tell? campaign):

My belly is protuberant
A preview
Of what I will look like pregnant
If I ever get pregnant
Which might have to be on my own
Because I am a crappy dater
And cannot seem to sustain a relationship.
Just do it.

Hey, Ho! Lascaux!, one of Slate's consistently delightful, unapologetically punny headlines. This one is for a compilation of highlights from their readers' forum discussion of evolutionary psychology.

The promotional poster for The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Love me some Carell, love me some Keener—potentially the best movie ever?

Incrementally Nearer

OK. So, I don't want you people to think that I've turned over a new leaf or anything. All the same overarching formal problems are still there and I still think it was horribly miscast, but. After the Cubs game preempted our weekly Gilmore Girls fix, and after the local Blockbuster ended up not carrying any of the complete seasons on DVD, LK rented Closer for us to watch, not realizing I'd already seen it and, um, y'know, formed an opinion about it. I said I'd watch it with her until I got too disgusted to take any more. Well, I was actually able to make it through the whole thing, mostly thanks to my newfound appreciation for Clive Owen's performance. I still think he's way too suave and good-looking for the role (as is everyone else in the film, except Natalie Portman, who should have been more hot but less pretty), but, without him, the movie likely would have suffered irreparable damage. Everyone is discernably better in their scenes with him. Somehow, magically, he turns these movie stars into actors when they're on screen together. Suddenly, there are multiple layers in the emotional subtext, and the dialogue sounds like actual language, and there is an undercurrent of genuine eroticism infusing everything (rather than just being assumed because of the natural attractiveness of the cast). I really couldn't believe the marked difference that his presence made. Which is, of course, to say nothing of his own performance, which is magnetic and unpredictable and filled with way more interesting rage and intensity and intelligence than I'd remembered. He's really the only reason to see this movie.

It's been an outstanding couple days of music for me. Following in the footsteps (and thanks to the CD-loaning generosity) of the inhabitants of Casa de Ziesball, I have been dipping into Elvis Costello's back catalog, and, fuck me, I have become obsessed with Armed Forces. This sentiment should probably be filed under "unsurprising revelations" (as John Darnielle has occasionally said of comparable discoveries), but damn. Where has this album been all my life? (Literally, all my life. I'm pretty sure it came out the year I was born.) I've also been enjoying the Pernice Brothers' new one, and yesterday I received the oustanding finished version of a collaborative mix CD that I contributed to, complete with custom-made packaging created by the unbelievably awesome kids behind Pin Monkey Press. And then last night, before I went to bed, I discovered that my apartment building had been bulldozed and an amusement park made entirely out of pixie sticks, tinsel, and number two pencils had been erected in its place, and as I stood marveling at this feat of ramshackle engineering, a dangerously inept amateur lion tamer who'd been awake for 72 hours on a cross-country bender walked up and offered me a cup of strong lemon-flavored tea to drink and a lit pair of Roman candles to wear as earrings. No, wait, I mean, I listened to the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album. Christ, it's beautiful. The hipsters were right again.

Samuel L. Jackson on Snakes on a Plane (via Salon's gossip column The Fix). This absolutely destroyed me with laughter when I read it today. Pure genius.

A colleague of mine recently introduced the Mimi Smartypants blog to me, which I am loving already. I totally want to take a cue from this post and start telling all my female friends how brave and strong they are.

I can't remember whom I may or may not have told about this blog post written by a local musician critiquing Chicago's mainstream press coverage of Intonation (via Gapers Block), so I thought I'd just post it here for everyone. My favorite sentence: "As for the Sun-Times, Dero calls Four Tet 'laptronica' in quotes, in much the same way that I call music played in a small combo setting with guitars, bass, and drums 'rockonica' or 'bandalicious' to make them seem foreign and silly to my readers."

B, I had a major breakthrough yesterday with the PDF/font problem I'd been having at work. More on this later with you via e or cell.

EDIT: I'm a fairly huge fan of Liev Schreiber, and I've been very happy with the recent uptick in his exposure due to his work on Broadway in Glengarry Glen Ross and his forthcoming film adaptation of Everything Is Illuminated. Here's a nice lengthy interview with him from this week's Onion.

Late Afternoon Stupidity

Three Kittenpants contributors pick the world's greatest cover bands.

This is from a couple days ago, but I couldn't not share it. I keep thinking about her "ROIMG!" joke and doing that embarrassing almost laughing out loud when you're riding the L alone because you remembered something funny thing.

Whine

OK, so what is the deal with the sudden profusion of wines with goofy names and cartoony labels? I stopped off at Leland Liquors (the store's slogan, "We Cater to Your Spiritual Needs," never fails to amuse me) to pick up a bottle of red last night, and everywhere I looked it was all Warthogs and Fat Bastards and Yellow Tails and Bicycles and Amaroo-Kangaroo-Toodely-Doos. WTF? I really don't feel the need for my wine to be aggressively accessible and friendly, to practically leap off the rack and pump my arm with a vigorous Australian handshake. Gimme whiskey in a sippy cup or gin mixed with Hawaiian Punch, that I'm fine with. But, wine is one of the few things in my life that I'm perfectly happy to remain intimidated by. Of course I've purchased, and enjoyed, the aforementioned silly wines; they're great for those times when you're rushing through the liquor store on your way to a party and need quick assurance that they're not going to be completely foul. (Oh, three-buck Chuck, you nasty, nasty beast, yes, that's a thinly veiled reference to you.) I have no real problem with them in and of themselves, and it's not that I'm endorsing foodie pretentiousness and snobbery. (God knows the one place where my Hoosier bloom hasn't really worn off is my palate.) But, I don't appreciate the insinuation that I need a garish package to reassure me that "no, really, wine is for everybody! Even you can appreciate it. Come on in, the water's fine. See how much fun we're having?" Should it be so much to ask for wine to maintain a little mystique? Even at the lower end of the budget spectrum? For, with a little mystique comes a little of the sublime, and, by God, isn't that part of the reason we drink wine in the first place?

Today's Cute Goofball Mensch

It's all over but the hatin': the Arcade Fire is slated to play the Conde Nast Fashion Rocks show at Radio City Music Hall on September 8. Don'cha know the hipsterati will have a thing or two to say about that! *snicker*

I swear to God, I am not the source of this MP3 leak! (It is one of the groovier tracks on the album, though.)

It's been so nice reading the memorial comments for Peter Jennings over the past few days here in the House That Entropy Built. One more for the road: from Salon, Peter Jennings and the death of panache.

Rory was wearing this t-shirt on last night's repeat of Gilmore Girls. Hottt.

'Balls and Flowers

Please, please, please do yourself a favor and go see Murderball at your earliest convenience. It is, simply, a phenomenal documentary. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you won't be disappointed, I promise.

I tend to agree with Jim Jarmusch's comment in last week's Entertainment Weekly about wanting to reach for a gun when people describe Broken Flowers as being more "commercial" than his other movies. It's about as commercial as a Nabokov novel is commercial. And I don't make that comparison lightly: this movie feels deeply influenced by Lolita in a lot of ways that I've been disappointed to find most reviewers haven't commented on. (I thought for sure Rosenbaum would have been all over it, but he really seems to be losing his touch these days. Or, more like he just doesn't give a damn anymore.) It's got the same aimless road trip, the same subtly taunting sexualization of all things female, the same futile attempt to recapture lost love from the past, the same lurking dread that the main character is being followed by his doppelganger (here, a son), the same slow descent into the trashiest regions of Americana, and, well, yes, a sublimely tacky yet lusciously nubile young tart named Lolita. Ahem. At any rate, it's always somewhat jolting to readjust to Jarmusch's rhythms when you settle down into the theater after running around in the bustle of the city. It's like forcing yourself to breathe in time with a body lying next to you. You're then rewarded for your effort with a kind of delicately opaque intimacy that seems maddening at first, yet becomes deeper and richer the longer you ponder it. I'm not anywhere close to wrapping my head around everything that's going on in the film, but I do know that Bill Murray has never done more with less (the scene where he sits, alone, on his leather couch, in his darkened living room, not drinking a flute of champagne, is perhaps the most riveting exercise in cinematic inactivity I've seen outside French film) and that the image of the burned CD that pal Winston (Jeffrey Wright, superb) gives him, emblazoned in black marker with the words DON—FROM WINSTON / GOOD LUCK, is every bit as sweetly funny as the Swiss army knife wrapped with the first inch of scotch tape from Rushmore.

I always kind of scoff at nerdy white boys' love for Johnny Cash (you know who you are!), but . . . OMG, the Walk the Line preview is un-freakin'-believable! The hipsters in the theater cheered, cheered, when a character asks Cash, "and what's with all the black? It looks like you're going to a funeral" and he drawls in response "well . . . maybe I am . . ." and exhales a huge, white puff of cigarette smoke. Awesome. Joaquin looks amazing.

Even though I wasn't one of those kids who stood in line, like, once a week to see Rent on stage, the preview for the forthcoming movie version still made me cry. "Seasons of Love" is cheesy as fucking hell, but goddamn if it doesn't hit you right where it aims to hit you.

RIP, Peter Jennings. I've had a fondness for him ever since 9/11, when his suave, calm cool throughout the day, and night, reminded me why professional news anchors exist in the first place. Even though I don't watch network television much anymore, and network news even less, I'll still miss his classy, avuncular growl.

More fodder for my current Flaming Lips renaissance: two reviews of their biographical documentary The Fearless Freaks. I didn't have any reason to care to see it when it was being screened in the city last fall, but now I'll have to keep it in mind for my hypothetical Kittenflix queue.

Into the Ass of a Fly and Through the Stars

Stop press! A glorious, looong interview with Joss Whedon (via Pink Is the New Blog). It's a bit geeked out, as far as all the discussion of the sci-fi and comic book franchises he's been a part of, or would like to be a part of, goes, but still. It's Joss. Enjoy.

Ad Subtraction

Why, why, why do I not listen to Radiohead more often? Within the past week I've pulled out both Hail to the Thief and Amnesiac, and it's just, like, holy hell, Thom Yorke is throwing me a little party in my ears. A little party with spindly legged spiders and black crepe paper and microscopic diamonds echoing with reverberations of the big bang. When is the new album coming out? Early next year?

Like any human being with eyes and more than a passing interest in the ephemera of pop culture, I've been ceaselessly intrigued by those Dove ads (you know the ones I mean)--at first by the ads themselves and then by the wide range of reactions to them. Recently, Gapers Block has pointed me in the direction of both the shitty comments and the correctives to the shitty comments (esp. Wendy McClure's piece from the Sun Times), and Slate makes a worthy attempt to deconstruct the campaign in its estimable Ad Report Card column.

Speaking of advertisements, has anybody else seen that M&M's commercial that uses Iron & Wine's cover of Postal Service's "Such Great Heights"? As LK can attest to, my head nearly exploded when I first saw it last night. I'm usually not one of those people who gets all up in arms about artistic integrity and selling out to the Man (etc.), but something about this one really irritated me. It's not that I'm that much of an Iron & Wine fan. (I hold Sam Beam more than partially responsible for the sensitive hipster boys' detestable big beard phenomenon.) But, if I may borrow a sentiment from Pitchfork's review of the cut (scroll down to the sixth paragraph), the whispered intimacy of that version of the song just seems particularly ill-suited to the crass selling of junk food. Beam's hushed strumming and lo-fi lullaby croon always make me a little sad, no matter what he's singing about, and, I dunno, maybe I'm made uncomfortable by the inadvertent association of M&M's with a kind of late-night, bedroom sadness. Somehow it kind of makes me feel implicated, or exposed, in, like, a moment of depressive binge-eating, a futile attempt to mask some sort of pain with candy comfort food. And, is it just me, or does that not seem like the very best emotion to evoke in an attempt to sell a product? (On a related note, Stereogum compiles a list of other offensive uses of pop music in commercials, inspired by Target's recent appropriation of "Baby Got Back" for their back-to-school ads.)

Smoke

Sometimes, hearing "Smoke on the Water" played live, and well, at a wedding reception makes all the shitty things that have happened earlier in the day seem, momentarily, well, not quite so shitty. Rock on.