Pitchfork Music Festival 2006

It came and it went, kittens, and now we're left to contend with the sunburn, dehydration, and exhaustion that the Pitchfork Music Festival has left us with--not to mention the digital pictures, posters from Flatstock, calluses on our thumbs from refreshing our favorite music blogs this morning to see when and how they'll weigh in on the weekend, and a hankering to dust off our copies of Alligator, Destroyer's Rubies, and The Tyranny of Distance. Sure, this fest was more hot, more crowded, and had more stuff to be taken in than Intonation last month, but the sheer scale of it all pretty much forced me to focus my attention on the acts that I was really and truly psyched in advance to see. You just can't fake that shit in 90+ degree heat. We arrived on Saturday to the stompy, circusy sounds of Man Man. I had hoped to catch some of their set based on Pitchfork's insanely glowing concert review from last week, but from many accounts, their live show is better served by a more intimate club setting than an outdoor fest anyway. Band of Horses was up next, and after three different people have made a specific point to tell me that I'd really dig them, I had no choice but to catch up with the end portion of their set, after bearings (and snackables and beer) were gotten. Bed Bridwell's vocals made more sense to me live than they ever have on the few MP3s (incl. "The Funeral") I've downloaded, and the band's stonerish good nature was just as appealing as their meaty guitar sound. I'm looking forward to checking out the album. I've been surprised by the handful of negative remarks about the Mountain Goats' set that I've read on the interweb, as I've recently landed like an anorexic Ukrainian gymnast firmly and triumphantly on the John-Darnielle-can-do-no-wrong side of the mat. I can understand how some might have thought his banter went on a little long for an outdoor show, but dude is so witty, what with his self-flagellation about the stupidity of writing up a set list that included a brand new song in the second slot and rants about enduring a '70s Californian upbringing that brought endless rounds of singalongs with fuckin' guys in the fuckin' park with fuckin' acoustic guitars and his jokey fake-out that we were all going to join together to sing "Imagine" (we sang "No Children" and "Terror Song" instead), I don't know how anyone could not have been won over, even if his music wasn't someone's usual cup of tea. Destroyer was the band I was most excited to see on day one. (Also, Dan Bejar is the indie rock musician I would most like to hug. I'm pretty sure this is not the normal reaction elicited by such an intensely cerebral songwriter, but, gah, brutha just seems to me like he could use a friendly squeeze around the ol' midsection.) A propos of Zoilus's quoted observation that Bejar is the "hardest working music critic today," even the bloody stage banter during his set was meta. I was warning my companions not to expect pretty much any talking at all, based on his comment in this June interview in Pitchfork that "I don't banter with the audience, cause I don't have anything to say to them," but when he eventually approached the microphone, with air-quotes nearly visible around his head, and asked "is this thing on?" I felt like I was watching some Andy Kaufman-level performance art. He later went on to introduce a new song by proclaiming, then trailing off, "this song is about...ahhhh...", summarized another with "one quarter of that song was a protest song" (one of his band members--I couldn't see which--waited a beat before sallying, "protesting what? The other three-quarters of the song?"), and he bid farewell to the crowd before finishing up with "Looters' Follies" by mock-apologizing, "I know we've taken up a shitload of time with witty stage banter." But because he wasn't sneering behind any of those bons mots, the intellectual pleasures yielded by this acknowledgment that he was self-consciously Performing the Act of Playing an Outdoor Summer Concert merged with and buoyed the sumptuousness of his melodies and arrangements. (Though, I do have to wonder how it feels to be a grown man in his band belting out an alternating series of "la-di-das" and falsetto "wah-wah-wahs." That shit is funny, and intentionally so.) They went heavy on material from Destroyer's Rubies, which suited me just fine, but the few he played from earlier albums (the set list on Fluxblog cites "Crystal Country," "Modern Painters," and "It's Gonna Take an Airplane") only served to confirm that I need to start delving into his back catalog. Because Ted Leo is so consistently solid, and because I'd already seen him play live twice before, I made the foolish, foolish mistake of stepping away from the stage about halfway through his set. Yes, which means I heard "Biomusicology" from inside a porta-potty and "The Ballad of the Sin Eater" with a palmful of the interesting paste created when baseball diamond dust and hand sanitizer meet. Damn, damn, damn. There has been so much hating on the Walkmen recently that seems so excessive and so, well, wrong, that I thought surely their tight set here would serve to bring some back into the fold. Nope. I honestly don't get it. They seem a little less manic than they used to, but isn't that a good thing? A sign of becoming more assured, more mature musicians? Which is not to say that their songs lacked immediacy or energy or whatever. Matt Barrick was missing in action due to the impending arrival of his firstborn child (congrats!), but the secret of their success certainly can't be tied that directly to his propulsive drumming. I was nothing but impressed with what I heard on Saturday. Paul Maroon's confident guitar work especially stood out for me. I'm a newcomer to the Silver Jews' output and only know Tanglewood Numbers, but I was certainly excited to see the notoriously reclusive David Berman live. He was marvelously smart and droll, bidding us to mind our manners as the crowd started getting squirrely during emcee Tim Tuten's overly long intro, and confessing that he doesn't really like Brian Wilson at all. But, he also ended up, probably unintentionally, depressing the hell out of us with some of the song selections (closing with "There Is a Place"? Yowch), with his story about playing a gig in Tel Aviv a few days before things got really scary there, and, well, just with the weight of what it means for him to be here playing for us at all. I was especially taken with Cassie's presence on stage there with him. She was an amazing sight to behold with her short dress, wild hair, and enormous bass guitar, and her musicianship certainly was not to be denied, but I can't imagine the emotional gymnastics she must have to go through to be able to make it through all those songs, standing right there next to him every night. A formidable woman, indeed. The rest of the band was ace; I couldn't help commenting later in the car on the way home that it's so great to see slightly older musicians playing so well, with such ease in their stage presence. I had every intention of making it back down to the park to see, if not Tapes 'n Tapes, then at least Danielson to kick off day two, but I was so unexpectedly wrecked the next morning that it was all I could do to arrive about halfway through Jens Lekman's set. We heard him playing "Black Cab" as we walked over from the El, which felt like such a good omen for the rest of the day. The crowd was loving him (and, assuredly, his foxy all-girl horn section) and you could hear him sending the love right back out with his strong, smooth vocals. I'll be interested to see what he ends up doing with his next full-length. The National. Holy fuck. That is what I came to this festival for. Without a doubt my favorite act of the whole weekend. I was distraught over missing them at the Double Door earlier this year but consoled myself with knowing I'd see them this weekend. But, as my summertime music selections have taken a turn for the breezy and sun-soaked, I'd forgotten how much the brooding, wintry songs from Alligator mean to me until I started hearing them pour out of the speakers: "Abel," "Lit Up," "Looking for Astronauts," "Mr. November," and, holy Christ, "All the Wine." This was the only band that brought me near to tears all weekend. And not just misty eyelash blinky tears either; I had to choke back a few full-throated sobs heating up the inside of my face. Absolutely beautiful stuff. Matt Berninger looks variously like a Southern Californian movie star, an Austrian Olympic athlete, and a French thug, and sings like he's dealing with some genuine mental illness (in, y'know, the best and sexiest way possible). I saw him later walking around the Flatstock tent but was way, way, way too nervous to even risk talking to him. I cannot overstate how much I loved their set and can't wait to see them live again. I don't know how I scraped myself together afterward, but LK and I headed over to the Biz 3 tent, with a few hundred of our closest friends, to catch the waning minutes of CSS's set. It's worth exploring the cansei de ser sexy tag at Flickr or heading over to Gorilla vs. Bear to see some pictures because they were every bit as wild and fun as they're supposed to be. We were standing outside the tent, behind the stage, on the righthand side, so our view wasn't the greatest (and, personally, I had to rely on LK to narrate most of what was happening for me anyway, as I really couldn't see much over the heads of the assembled crowd), but we could definitely feel the love. It was also nice to hear the songs fleshed out with the full band and a little less in-your-face with the slickly produced bleepy-bloopiness. My curiosity about Devendra Banhart has only increased since last fall, especially after downloading "Hey Mama Wolf" and "Quedate Luna" from Cripple Crow. I can hardly believe it myself, but I think after taking in his set this weekend, I've pretty much been won over. He does what he does with such sincerity, and he and his band carry it off with some impressive musicianship that I wouldn't have expected from my impression of the lo-fi, we're-recording-inside-a-rusted-meat-locker wankiness of his earlier albums. As is his custom of late, he brought a kid up on stage to play a song near the end of the set, and I was just so touched by the selflessness of it all. He (Devendra) described being able to do that as an honor and one of the best things that comes out of his life as a touring musician, and I didn't doubt it for a moment. There was such an incredible beauty in the way he embraced the kid after he was done playing and held on to him like they were brothers reuniting after a long separation. Save yr e-mails, I know, I know: I'm such a hippie. I listened to Yo La Tengo from across the lawn, as I wanted to stay put to be sure to get a good spot along the barricade for Spoon. From what little I know of YLT's stuff, they sounded pretty solid. Spoon's roadies started trickling out onto the stage while YLT was wailing away, tuning and plugging stuff in, and eventually were joined by Jim Eno and the boys and later Britt himself. We cheered when Britt walked out, and he held a finger to his lips, politely shushing us so we wouldn't disturb the other show in progress. He assessed the crowd with a pleased look on his face, and I'm about 85% sure that he smiled at me. I was standing against the railing, facing the stage and beaming, not like a freak, but just like a perfectly content person who was looking forward to seeing one of her favorite bands for the first time. I'd like to think that that was his small way of greeting and acknowledging my happiness. There was, perhaps predictably, a lot of material from Gimme Fiction, which, hey, I'm not going to complain about, and they also got some great stuff from Kill the Moonlight in there, including "Someone Something," "Stay Don't Go" (no beatboxing, unforch), and--wowza!--"Paper Tiger." (I love it when musicians subtly make fun of their own songs by slipping funny different lyrics in there, and Britt got away with a good one here by singing "I will no longer do the devil's dishes.") They closed with "My Mathematical Mind," and Britt absolutely played the fucking shit out of his guitar. Down on the knees, feedback shrieking into the night air, the whole bit. It was a rousing end to a set that, while solid and satisfying, didn't exactly reach transcendent heights for me. And, music aside, I salute Britt's decision to go with green pants. Come on, guys: green pants!! I don't know why I was so taken with them, but I just couldn't stop thinking, "holy shit, he's wearing green pants." And, even better, he managed to pull them off without seeming self-consciously hip or even, horror of horrors, overtly metrosexual. I mean, I suppose this shouldn't be surprising coming from a guy who wrote a song called "The Fitted Shirt," but I gotta give credit where credit is due. Green pants, man. Green pants. I didn't have the energy left in me to push toward the front of the crowd to get a good position (or, ahem, good pictures) for Os Mutantes, so I took advantage of the pleasures that can be had from standing in the middle of a field, listening to some supremely groovy music, not elbow-to-elbow (or, in my case, elbow-to-hipbone) with a bunch of other sweaty, exhausted concertgoers: exchanged my last beer ticket for a heavenly cup of 312, chatted with my pals, danced all my kinks out, and watched people unself-consciously dancing their own kinks out as well. The bears, the seemingly out of place shirtless frat boys, the lovey-dovey couple out with their awkward single friend, the college-age kid who looked like he's probably a computer science major doing a modified poopy-pants dance--it was a joy to see them all feeling the music and having fun. The band was bright, happy, and overflowing with goodwill. They sent us out into the night in style. Big love to LK for tolerating and even indulging my fanaticism, KP for the ride, and DS, JZ, and Nora Rocket for the laughs and the good company.

All Our Little Wishes Have Run Dry

The mighty Matthew Perpetua gives some love and linkage to the Divine Comedy's "To Die a Virgin" on Fluxblog today.

Britt Daniel picks out and discusses twelve of his favorite albums that are currently available for download on eMusic. "Judging by this list, that's what moves me: heartbreak and longing." Loves it.

Please be sure to bop over to Salon's Audiofile to download Justin Roberts's so-called kindie rock song "Meltdown." LK and I heard his band play it on the kids' stage at the Printers Row Book Fair earlier this month, and I almost sheepishly have to admit that it was one of my favorite things about the whole damn fair. Insanely catchy and instantly addictive. If only I could show you the hand motions that go with it. Ahhhh!

In case you haven't read/heard yet, Sleater-Kinney are no more (via, uh, yer ma). I never got as much into them as I know I should have (and still might), but of course I recognize what a hugely huge bummer it is.

Intonation Music Festival 2006

Thanks to the extreme last-minute generosity of two kind and well-connected friends, I was able to attend the Intonation Music Festival at Union Park this weekend.

The weather was perfect, and, though I'm still struggling to connect the dots of what I actually did and heard for most of those two days thanks to the 48-hour haze of beer and motherfucking Sparks I was operating under, I'm fairly certain I enjoyed the hell out of the whole circus.

I'm sure I'll be in turbo must. hear. every. note. mode when the Pitchfork Music Festival rolls around next month, but it was easy for me to be chilled out about not seeing all the acts this weekend since I didn't pay for the passes and had much less invested, personally and emotionally, in the artists collectively appearing on the bill. I'm sad I didn't arrive in time to catch Jose Gonzalez (who by most bloggers' accounts was fantastic), but I kept an ear open for High on Fire, Roky Erickson, and Boredoms from afar, I wiggled into the crowd toward the back to check out the end of Ghostface's set (he was so instantly charismatic that it didn't take long for me to have my fist raised in the air, cheering my lungs out as part of the collective, chanted homage to "Oh! Dee! Bee!"), and I made sure to grab a good patch of grass early in the day for the Stills (I was the one clapping in annoying syncopation to "Oh, Shoplifter").

I swung around to the front stage right area for Lady Sovereign (who I'd spied earlier in the afternoon tooling around in a groundskeeper's golf cart that she'd obviously commandeered with her utter fierceness--awesome), mostly to put myself in a good position for the Streets headlining set.

Kittens, aside from perhaps Spoon, who I'll be seeing next month at the 'Fork fest anyway, I can't think of another group I would currently be as excited to catch live as Mike Skinner and his band of merry geezers. I was able to jockey myself into an exceptional position in front of the stage-right stack of speakers, thanks to the courtesy of the other (taller) members of the audience who, upon seeing me lodged up in their armpits, would invariably observe, "oh, you're really short. Why don't you stand in front of us?" Mad, mad love for good festival manners! I mean, sure, standing in front of the speakers made my esophagus vibrate at near escape velocity in my chest cavity and the fact that I forgot to pack earplugs for the day resulted in ringing ears for a good 18 subsequent hours, but it was a small price to pay to jump around like a maniac and bask in the mass of irresistible contradictions that is Mike Skinner's flow.

I honestly don't even remember much of what they played. I know they definitely took care of the big ones like "Never Went to Church," "Dry Your Eyes," "When You Wasn't Famous," and "Could Well Be In," but beyond a few other educated guesses ("Pranging Out"? "Never Con an Honest John"?), I couldn't tell you in what order or what they supplemented the set with from the album I know least well, Original Pirate Material. Regardless. There was audience participation (a jumping contest with a front row denizen affectionately dubbed The Green Man, a Decemberists-style request for everyone to crouch down and then jump back up on cue) and a general "we're all in this together so let's fucking party" vibe. I mean, it was no Radiohead at Bonnaroo or anything, but still an amazing, rewarding live concert experience.

Sunday started out a bit more subdued, thanks to the early afternoon drizzle and my general unfamiliarity with the nuances of a beer-only hangover (choosy drunks choose bourbon!), but I eased back into things with Annie and Lupe Fiasco (this guy's gonna be huge). I made sure to stop by for Jon Brion's set; though I sometimes have my beefs with his film scores, he's so clearly a musician's musician that I couldn't help but love listening to him rock out on his guitar, even if he ran on a little long. I, lamentably, never got a chance to see a Guided by Voices show before they officially disbanded, so I knew I couldn't miss Uncle Bob's set.

The only song I recognized was "Game of Pricks" (from the sound of the stage banter, I think most of the rest of the stuff they played was from From a Compound Eye) but, at a certain point, it didn't seem to matter; a Pollard tune sounds like a Pollard tune, sure, but there's also that wonderful Pollard voice. I don't think I've ever fully appreciated what a singular instrument it is, but when he ripped into his first song, I was just bowled over by how great he sounded. Love the Bob, and I did get to see one of his legendary high kicks. I missed most of the Dead Prez set, between emptying the bladder and bidding farewell to my exhausted and goosebump'd companions and getting in position for Bloc Party.

I've come a long way in my appreciation of the band since my days of casual meh dismissal. The album is still a bit too long for my attention span these days, and the lyrics can border on off-puttingly sincere ("the price! Of gaa-hass! Keeps on rize-ih-hing!"), but they really do have a knack for taking you on a journey within the world of each song with meaty textures and teasingly taut momentum. Not to mention the fact that their fluid melodies don't get nearly as much credit as they're due. (Aside from Pallett's obvious formal prowess, there's a reason that Final Fantasy cover of "This Modern Love" affected me as deeply as it did.) Their set felt like the perfect closer to the day, and the weekend, between the rapturous excitement of the audience and the band's own enthusiastic willingness to live up to the responsibility of playing their self-proclaimed first-ever festival-headlining gig.

So, yes yes. It was quite a weekend, and I give a top of the lungs shout-out to CL-II for the ticket and NI for suggesting I might want to go and Kateri (and David Geb. and Karen) for being groovy to hang with. ClusterFest '06 has only just begun! (Viddy the rest of my pics here and a hearty hail-fellow-well-met to anyone who might have ended up here from NowPublic.)

My World-Traveling Friends

Grinnellians, I hope you've all been telling each other "see you in India!" at least once a day for the past week. (What's that? Is that the sound of one Giddy laughing...?) As Britney would say, have an awesome time, y'all!

Though she's not down in the dirt quite yet, be sure to keep abreast of S-Money's adventures in excavation this summer at her specially created Paradise LiveJournal.

And, just for fun, the run-on sentence of the week, from Green Pea-ness: "[Lucky Soul's 'Lips Are Unhappy' is] like three solid minutes of tambourine and piano and indie blisscore and GOOD LORD IT'S LIKE HAVING YOUR URETHRA LICKED BY KITTENS JUST FUCKING DOWNLOAD IT ALREADY."

Lazy Friday All Link Edition

Deadwood auteur David Milch (from an old interview on Salon): "Well, I think we all are vessels of God, you know. As Saint Paul says, if the hand doesn't know, that doesn't mean it's not part of the body, that just means it doesn't know. And that's why, when I'm able to be of service to the characters, I experience God's presence more acutely than I do when I'm not working. So I try to work as much as I can."

John Roderick: "My friends and tour mates influence me a lot, so I'm writing songs in part to impress other musicians. I hope that Matthew from Nada Surf, or Charles from The Wrens, or Colin from The Decemberists, or the boys in Centro-Matic or Death Cab hear my songs and dig them, and when they congratulate me I feel gratified. Chris Walla has apparently been playing and singing the song 'Honest' during his soundchecks, which is the best kind of compliment." (via) I am sooo ready for Putting the Days to Bed to come out.

A buncha little French kids sing Laura Veirs songs. Most perfect musical match evah! (via)

From BBC News: "'Fossil' rock rat pictured alive: Images have been obtained of a live Laotian rock rat, the animal science now believes to be the sole survivor of an ancient group of rodents." I knew a fossil rock rat once; his hair was receding in front but greasy and long in the back, and he was really, really into Deep Purple.

OMG, seriously? Five amazing high-hat parts? Five thumbs up! Loves it! Esp. the Steely Dan (and Ted Leo/Rx, too).

Ah yes, I'm a sucker for the unexpected, slightly gimmicky cover song. (Awesome fodder for mix CDs.) That Boy Least Likely To cover of "Faith" sounds like a loose tooth—wiggly and gummy and delicate yet reckless. I hate it. I love it. I hate it. I love it. (She's my sister. My daughter. My daughter, my sister.) It also makes me long for Craig Robinson to pull Pete & Bob out of retirement to shimmy and flap to it.

Music from '06 and Movies from '95

"It's quite possible that if you're not interested in creating cathartic moments for the audience, both you and your audience are fucked, to which I say, 'Oh well.' No one appreciates a professional anymore. Everyone's a mystic."
Pitchfork interviews Dan Bejar.

"He [Mike Skinner] has written about his dad's death on the new album. Skinner spent months trying to get right what he wanted to say about it. 'Months. On one three-minute song. It was very, very, very constipated, very difficult to write because of what I'm talking about.' The song that eventually emerged, Never Went To Church, has been the most highly praised of the album, particularly the last line, which Skinner addresses to his father, 'You left me behind to remind me of you.' He wanted to make it good, he says, because 'I wasn't going to say it again. And I already feel a bit like... it's a bit cheesy.'"
Mike Skinner talks shop with the Guardian (via) and reinforces the point I was trying to make last week. I fuckin' love this geezer.

Thanks to all of you who've been sending me links about Rufus's Judy Garland homage at Carnegie Hall tonight. (Sayeth Trent at PItNB: "Just when you thought that Rufus couldn't get any gayer he goes and attempts to out-gay himself.") It's going to be exquisite. Wish I could be there. I'm really hoping they make a DVD or CD available at some point.

JWard (not Jay Ward) and I caught Elvis Costello on his River in Reverse tour at Ravinia on Sunday night. I was thrilled to get to see him live. (Um, OK, mostly hear him live; we were on the lawn and couldn't see a damn thing except a parade of Crocs, little kids dancing like maniacs, high-school aged ushers swishing their white skirts to the beat, and drunk folks grabbing each other's asses.) The band was fucking amazing. They played straight through for about three hours, including two extremely generous encores. Elvis even intimated that they'd run out of prepared material and simply couldn't play any more. His voice is currently enjoying the best of both worlds; he's still got most of his full range of notes, but they're only getting richer and more resonant with middle age. In addition to all Allen Toussaint's arrangements and material, the set included both "Alison" and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding," so I'd say we got way more than our money's worth.

At Nikola's incredulous behest, I sat down and watched Clueless for the first time ever with him last weekend. Ah, high-waisted jeans and ska music. Mid-90s culture, we hardly knew ye. It holds up as respectably as it can, considering what a time capsule it is, and, I gotta say, only reconfirms how much I like Brittany Murphy in spite of myself. Call it presence, call it charisma, call it what you will, but she blindingly outshines everyone she's on screen with at any given moment. Though, yeah, you ultimately want to get to a point where you can control that shit and use it to your advantage without making your fellow actors look bad, there's something undeniably appealing about her and her ability to just plow through her scenes balls-out.

Happy birthday to Nora Rocket today!

Put Out the Fire, Boys, Don't Stop, Don't Stop

Through the miracle of the internet, I'm able to bring you my Tapes 'n Tapes/Cold War Kids concert review an astonishing three days after the show!

OK. So, I've been really high on Tapes 'n Tapes for a while now. I'd guess that, on average, I've listened to The Loon at least once a week for the past two and a half months (not that you'd ever know it from looking at my Last.fm/Audioscrobbler page, since I've still not been able to figure out how to get it to tally the playcounts from my Nano even with the supposedly handy free plug-ins--grr). It's a totally great album, I've been recommending it to friends left and right all spring, and I was really psyched to see them play the show at the Abbey on Friday night, especially after all the post-SXSW praise heaped on their performances by Stereogum and tons of other music blogs. Well, I hate to be a hater, but I was a little disappointed by their live set. It was totally competent, sure, but nowhere near transcendent. They sounded very loose, and not loose in the good way, when they first rolled out with "Just Drums." The keyboard was up way too hot in the mix, and the should-have-been-thrilling rhythmic interplay between the drums and guitar just couldn't seem to settle down into the pocket. They played through the entire album basically in running order with only a little variation and one new song. They sounded a little better, a little more confident with each passing song, but I was left resoundingly underwhelmed. The disproportionate amount of cheering, hooting, and applause from the audience certainly didn't help, either. It seemed like the packed house was celebrating their hipster cred via their own recognition of the tunes after the fewest number of introductory notes possible way more than they were celebrating the quality of the performances. I have a big problem with this kind of audience slut factor--giving it up too quickly and too easily--in general, though, so maybe I was just being overly sensitive. But, I don't think any of this changes the fact that they're still a great young band with great promise. On stage, they do have a very earnest, very goofy Minnesotan charm. Lead singer and guitarist Josh Grier seemed genuinely happy to be there, and, as far as diminutive yet powerful drummers go, though my heart will always belong to the Walkmen's Matt Barrick, TnT's Jeremy Hanson more than did his part to keep the set aloft. (Speaking of the Walkmen, why have there been so many mediocre reviews of A Hundred Miles Off? I think it's quite good.)

Openers for the openers, local group Moxie Motive, were way better than I expected them to be, and, if lead singer Matt Duhaime can shake the unfortunate Adam Duritz influence on his vocals, especially on the ballads, they'll be a band to watch. Plus, you just gotta love any indie rock group with the balls to pull out the upright bass and rock some 6/8 time signatures.

The night, however, absolutely belonged to the Cold War Kids. These guys are not fucking around. They put on a stellar set full of noise, jumping, sweating, percussing, and, perhaps most exciting of all, space. They possessed the confidence and the true musicianship to be completely unafraid to leave things a little ramshackle, a little unformed, a little unadorned. They intuitively knew that the notes they weren't playing and the empty corners they weren't filling were every bit as vital as the bluesy riffs and piano vamps hanging thick in the hot, smoky air. Nathan Willett, with his yelping, keening vocal delivery and old bluesman's hunch over the microphone, is a perfectly charismatic, even hypnotic, frontman, the kind who could conceivably convince impressionable young shepherdesses to abandon their flocks and slip off over the hillside to drink blackberry wine and howl at the moon all night. Bassist Matt Maust and guitarist Jonnie Russell wrestle their instruments like men possessed, pacing like caged animals, high-kicking at demons. Drummer Matt Aveiro lays it down nice and smooth, with nothing but impeccable fucking taste. Knowing, as many of you do, my love for Spoon's minimalist strut, which only produces more enticing friction the more elements it takes away, it's really no wonder that I feel myself falling for these Cold War Kids. Look for 'em on my 2006 year-end list.

I'm sure you've already read on Pitchfork that the Decemberists' major label debut and fourth full-length, The Crane Wife, is coming out October 3. Don't let us down, Colin. We're all counting on you to bring it.

New York Doll is an incredibly touching little film. Actually, I should say, Arthur "Killer" Kane's story is incredibly touching, and dumb-fucking-lucky documentarian Greg Whiteley just happened to be around to catch an extremely poignant part of it. There's a slight bit of condescension in his approach, but enough of Kane's heart shines through to redeem the whole project. Recommended.

Teleporting fish in Atlanta. Which eeriness brings me to

6.6.06!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whether you're heading to Hell, spending the day with Slayer, or taking in the "supremely unnecessary" remake of The Omen, I wish all of you all the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil you can handle!

You Left Me Behind to Remind Me of You

Michelle Collins has been on fizz-ire this week. LK and I accidentally caught a portion of Deal or No Deal the other night, and, as we'd never seen it before, we were alternately stunned and baffled by its insipidity. The You Can't Make It Up episode summary posted the next day, complete with Celine Dion screen-captures, was like so much manna from the comedy heavens, reconfirming my perception of the show as being a vile waste of time and money. But, for all that post's hilarity, her riff on Cute Overload's alpaca footballing star was just crazy-brilliant. Didn't know it was possible to improve on something that was already wiping-away-tears funny. The Guillemots cover the Streets' "Never Went to Church." I've been digging on the Guillemots for a little while, and I'm big-time into The Streets right now, so what could go wrong, right? But, arrrrrrg, I just can't go 100 percent of the way with this cover. As far as the music itself goes, the Guillemots' take is more interesting than it could have been, but I have a real problem with the fade-out repetition of that line at the end. Mike Skinner's slightly treacly version is definitely not one of the sonic stand-outs on his latest album, but it's nevertheless become one of my favorites simply because of that line. The reason it works so well is that it's kind of tossed off in the middle of the song. It totally caught me off guard the first time I heard it, and my heart would have 'sploded right out of my chest from the truth and brilliance of it, that is, if my heart hadn't stopped beating entirely for a few moments. But, Skinner doesn't give you any time to dwell on it. The song just matter of factly chugs along back into the sub-Kanye's "Roses" chorus (which Pitchfork brilliantly referred to at the end of last year as his "please-don't-die-grandma" song), and then on through to the end. And, well, isn't that what it's like to have an epiphany about some irreducible aspect of the human condition? Those realizations come out of nowhere, hit you hard, then drift on by, their force a mere echo, leaving it incumbent upon you to hold the memory of them and adjust your perspective accordingly or just let them disappear into the rushing, receding current of your life. I mean, this is really emotionally sophisticated stuff. But Fyfe Dangerfield totally dilutes it both through repetition and by saving it until the end of the song, like it's some kind of summary or punchline or something. No one's ever had an epiphany gift-wrapped for them at an opportune moment and then gently repeated until they catch it and really have time to process it. Here, it just plays like the most banal pop music or processed romantic comedy cheese. Unforch.

Please Stop with the Ellipses in RomCom Titles

Aieeee! Elizabethtown has to be one of the worst films I've seen since Rumor Has It.... Truly execrable. Paul Schneider's kind of nice in his little supporting role, but, otherwise, it's a total mess. I hate Kirsten Dunst, Orlando Bloom looks sooo much better as a blond, Judy Greer's comic talents are utterly squandered, and Susan Sarandon should be ashamed of herself for the boner joke she consented to deliver on screen (you read that right). The music is great, as always, but if that's the best thing you can say about Crowe's most recent films, he needs to take the hint and just start directing music videos until he can get his groove back. I said to LK at one point, "I can't believe this thing was written by the same person who wrote Say Anything...." It's really embarrassing, but more than that, it's really a shame. Steer clear, unless you're prepared to snark it up for two hours with some pals and some drinks. Because, for reals, you're gonna need those drinks to be numb enough to handle the last little bit of montage and voice over. "A single green vine shoot is able to grow through cement." Gag!

An unexpected shout-out to Northwest Indiana's very own Town Theatre on Salon today! I was absolutely tickled to see it given its due as the Grand Pompadour of the "strangest and unlikeliest art-house theater[s] anywhere in North America." Andrew O'Hehir mentions the free cake and coffee available in the lobby during intermission, which is certainly one of its most unique and charming attributes, but I've always been partial to the rusty old suits of armor propped up near the proscenium. This theater has been a huge part of my moviegoing life, from the second semester of my senior year in high school when I was only attending classes half-day and could stay out late for showings of stuff like Swingers to the extremely uncomfortable evening I spent watching Boys Don't Cry there with my father to bored summers home during college when CTLA and I would do the aural equivalent of squinting through British gangster movies like Sexy Beast whose slangy, heavily accented dialogue was done no favors by the theater's echoey acoustics to the year of aimless desperation I spent living at home between graduating from IU and moving to Chicago when I would go see subtitled piffle like Le Placard just to surround myself with any little bit of worldly glamour I could find to keep me from giving up the hope that I'd eventually do anything of substance with my life. Cheers to Salon for saluting this suburban oasis of respectable film culture and this landmark from my own wayward youth!

Chicagoans, come stalk my sexy ass at the Tapes n' Tapes/Cold War Kids show at the Abbey tomorrow night, where nine out of ten attendees will probably be live blogging the event. Unless, y'know, the music bloggers and other denizens of elbo.ws are, like, so totally over those buzz bands already. LOL, whatevs, OKBYE.

Lordi Have Mercy!

Seriously, if my cellphone supported MP3s, I would so make Lordi's "Rock the Hell Outta You" my ringtone right now. It may not be Eurovision Song Contest winner "Hard Rock Hallelujah," but, it'll do, pig. It'll do.

I recall reading about the group on David Byrne's blog a little while back, but the curiosity ultimately came to me last night after reading S/FJ's online only New Yorker Q&A about--get this--why certain British acts have so much trouble crossing over in America. Bwah-hahahahaha! The fact that that Q&A (and his column on the same subject) exist at all strikes me as being very Bart Simpson writing on the blackboard as "punishment." It's like the editorial Powers That Be at the NYer thought the best way to address his involvement in the whole Merritt rockism/racism flap was to get him to write about, Dizzee Rascal notwithstanding, a bunch of whitey white motherfuckers! Or maybe he dreamt the idea up himself. Who knows. But still. Anyway, slight and perhaps unintentional comedy to one side, it's nice to finally hear someone with some highly acute listening skills (rightly) praise the Arctic Monkeys and (politely) explain why Coldplay used to be really quite good but now not so much.

The Proposition and Lady Vengeance

Went in for a bloody revenge/ties-that-bind double feature on Sunday: The Proposition at the Music Box, then Lady Vengeance at the Landmark. I'm glad I saw them in that order because the second served as a much needed corrective to the first.

I very much wanted to like the Nick Cave Australian Western (it's basically useless to call it anything but, on account of it probably wouldn't have received nearly as much notice without that pedigree), but it was just a bit too ramshackle to really win me over. Playing with archetypes is a tricky business; when it's done well, it can be completely thrilling, but when, as here, you just get a handful of very basic, very familiar character outlines that are supposed to be Meaningful simply by virtue of being Suggestive of something Universal (count the number of Biblicals in the reviews gathered on Metacritic!), it all starts to feel very emperor-has-no-clothes. The characters look exactly like they should look, talk exactly the way they should talk, act out exactly the plot points they should act out, but to what end? I felt like I only had about one dimension to swim around in while I was watching the movie. I could appreciate the craft on the surface, but there wasn't a whole hell of a lot of meaning left to ponder beyond that point.

It's thick with atmosphere and portent, and, where it succeeds, it does so largely on the strength of the visual storytelling. A filmmaker doesn't have to do much work to make the Australian outback look stunning, but John Hillcoat framed it nicely with some interesting editing that simultaneously kept the obviousness of the plot at bay while respecting its functionality, and, evidently, created a safe space for some grand, swinging-for-the-fences acting to boot. I qualify the success of the visuals with "largely" because the other place where the film really soars and comes into its own is through the too-spare use of black humor. Par example, after mentally and emotionally unstable youngest brother Mike is sentenced to 100 lashes, the brutal flogging scene weeps its way, like Passion of the Christ with cowboy hats, through shots of the townsfolk watching dispassionately, the blood being wrung out of the cat-o'-nine-tails, the slo-mo wailing horror in his face, all soundtracked to a mournful, a cappella Irish folk tune. A beat or two for the audience to catch its breath, then one of the attending officers counts, "thirty-eight." More of this (and Ray Winstone's running-into-a-closed-door pratfall and a soldier's limping that calls back, about an hour later, his accidentally shooting his toes off and the "we're not misanthropes, we're a family" one-liner), please! But the bulk of the script was unfortunately bogged down with a lot of stilted, highfalutin diction that might have been gorgeously, gothically poetic in a Bad Seeds song, but just ended up sounding like something Drusilla would have written if given enough time and creative resources. (Seriously? That scene of Emily Watson in the bathtub describing her dream about the dead baby gripping her finger? That kind of shit drives me nuts.)

I just started in on the first season of Deadwood (thanks, Lisa Ro!), and even after only a few episodes, I could feel the fresh memory of the meatiness of its dialogue and labyrinthine sociopolitical machinations spoiling my experience of The Proposition. Though, like many of the most successful Westerns (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly being foremost in my mind at the moment), The Proposition picked up some steam toward the end in its inevitable, tragic conclusion, it still left just a little too much hanging in the breeze without a satisfying context or connection.

Danny Huston is, for me, def the standout in the cast, a monster worthy of all the veneration and fear the other characters build up around him, worthy not because he does so much more scenery-chewing, but because he does so much less. He's repeatedly described as being dog-like, but I kept seeing the calm insanity of a beautiful, magnificent cat in his perpetually crouched, coiled performance. (Anthony Lane goes for ursine; fair enough.)

Unlike The Proposition's limited rewards, Lady Vengeance is positively stuffed with treasures as you keep digging deeper and deeper. Atonement for past sins! The different functions played in a person's life by individual and collective grieving! A human being's fundamental ability to choose to be a devil or an angel in any given situation! The unimaginable hurts visited upon us by an unblinking universe! The balm of religion and its occasional situational uselessness! The formative importance of both the family of our birth and the family of our circumstance! I could go on.

The pacing of the film is nothing short of remarkable. Before I realized what it was doing, I thought to myself while watching it, "gosh, this is the longest resolution to a film I've seen in some time." It just kept ending, and ending, and ending. But then I realized, of course it's the longest resolution to a film I've seen in some time--the film is all about resolution: finishing chapters, tying up loose ends, mourning what's passed/past, repairing what we can, apologizing for what we can't, selfishly chasing after that which we imagine will allow our individual selves to heal, dimly realizing we are redeemed by our friends' and family's love for us sometimes in spite of but more often because of our inability to fully achieve the closure we crave. Instead of the brief, explosive money shot we're used to getting in most revenge flicks, temporarily satisfying but not necessarily complex, inevitable but weightless, the substance of Lady Vengeance is in its ending and constitutes a good half of the running time.

Having not seen the preceding two films (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy) in director Chan-wook Park's so-called vengeance trilogy, I can't pretend to speak to what he's doing in relation to his own oeuvre and that of what J.R. Jones calls the "extreme Asian" genre, but, based on what I saw here, I am in nothing but awe of his skills. He liberally uses all the elements that I loved most about The Proposition--and some that I didn't love there but was completely swept up in here--with profligate abandon. More music, more black comedy, more single-minded-hero-on-a-mission plot points, more innocents in gut-wrenchingly disturbing peril, more ridiculous coincidences that bring long-separated family members back together, more hyper-stylized framing that looks cool for the sake of looking cool, more operatic emotions snuck in under the radar of genre conventions, more keen understanding of the conflicting impulses in human nature that lead us to make difficult decisions--not to mention a far less enigmatic and far less charming villain and a protagonist with far more mixed motives, far more at stake, emotionally, and far more (interesting) complicity in the villain's actions and eventual downfall.

It's also bloody as hell, gorgeous to look at (the opening credit sequence is especially noteworthy, doing more for the colors red and white than Jack and Meg have in recent memory), and doesn't take itself seriously at all, except when it does and, even then, it takes great pains to earn it. Sure, there's a touch of sappiness here and there that you're going to be hard pressed not to find in all but the most unrepentantly gruesome Asian exploitation flicks, but they're generally easily glossed over if that's the kind of thing that's likely to stick in your craw. Lee Yeong-ae carries the thing on her back effortlessly. She caroms from murderous rage that manages to remain profoundly human to adorable cheekiness (the scene where she simply holds up a bar of soap by way of explanation for a minor villain's well-deserved comeuppance is particularly delightful) to a mother's heartbroken willingness to accept the consequences of the way she's failed her child to angelic self-sacrifice, all without smudging her most excellent, and oft-remarked upon, red eyeshadow. The movie itself is outstanding, and, as I say above, pairs wonderfully with The Proposition, for the ways they speak to and inform each other.

On the movie tip, I finally saw an actual preview for Olivier Assayas's Clean before Lady Vengeance this weekend. The good handful of reviews I read when it was released on the coasts here in the U.S. about a month ago definitely got me excited about it, but the trailer pretty much had me salivating in anticipation. Do any of you filmies know if it's going to open in Chicago at any point in the near future? The "release dates" page on the IMDB is no help; it only goes as far as the April 28 limited release date. Boo! The Windy City needs some Maggie Cheung too!

"[T]here are those who sympathise with my predicament--as if becoming 30 were a terrible accident that could have been avoided if only I had not been quite so silly": Various British celebrities and Alice Cooper share their two pence on what they're proud to have done and what they wish they would have done before they turned 30 (via).

"At a certain point, you have to wonder which is the outside culture. I mean, I think it's a lot more normal to grow up Evangelical than to grow up in New York!": Matthew Perpetua in conversation with the author of Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock on Fluxblog.

"[T]he human brain has a specific centre that does nothing more, and nothing less, than recognize faces. This centre is what enables us to recognize each other with such certainty. Prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, is what you get when that centre is damaged or otherwise unable to perform its functions": a lucid, good-humored description of what it's like to live as a social being with face-blindness (via).

And, for fans of both Cute Overload and my own "Wild Animal Edition" post below, I bring you: Vicious Dog Pack Kills Gator in Florida.

Post-BEA Reading Material Glut

"If I were free to choose from everybody alive, just snap my fingers and say come here you, I wouldn't pick Jose. Nehru, he's nearer the mark. Wendell Willkie. I'd settle for Garbo any day. Why not? A person ought to be able to marry men or women or--listen, if you came to me and said you wanted to hitch up with Man o' War, I'd respect your feeling. No, I'm serious. Love should be allowed. I'm all for it. Now that I've got a pretty good idea what it is." --Breakfast at Tiffany's

"I had this whole history with [David] Byrne. In New York, I used to get mistaken for him all the time....Then at some point I saw 'Burning Down the House' and I remember something in me just twitched when I saw Byrne because he was this fully realized version of myself. We're both these uptight white guys trying to stumble into grace....
"You know, there are two kinds of singers: those who sing about who they are, like Townes Van Zandt, and those who sing about who they wish they are, like me. But I'll tell you, what happens sometimes is that, incrementally, you become that person you're singing about. What people see in my songs is me in my deep-focus mode. That's when I get to tear away the veil of my anxiety. If I'm holding out for anything, I guess, it's that: to become the 'me' in my songs." --Jim White, interviewed in The Believer, May 2006

"Even the pictures that show the downtime, by the very virtue of being photos, inject a sense of import, or at least worthiness, by drawing attention to the subject. They fail to capture the outright depression and malevolence that can settle in on a homesick and hungover band stranded, for example, at a truck stop buffet on an interstate somewhere in the middle of Iowa. I mean, look at what I just wrote: even those words make it seem way more romantic than it is!" --Bill Janovitz, Exile on Main Street, excerpted in the 33 1/3 Greatest Hits Volume 1 sampler

Wild Animal Edition

Bears killed and ate a monkey in a zoo on Sunday in the Netherlands, jest in time for visitors to witness the carnage and be traumatized forever.
(Link)

The first wild grizzly bear/polar bear hybrid is found in Canada. Any word yet on the gorilla-shark mutant of the Discovery Channel's dreams?
(Link)

Alligators killed three women in Florida this week; previously, there had only been seventeen confirmed deadly gator attacks in the state since 1948.
(Link)
A British website's report on the same story features the headline "Florida rocked by alligator attacks." This could also work as a perfect lead-in for a review of a really kick-ass Cajun music festival. In this article, an exasperated trapper laments, "We can't just keep developing wetlands for homes and shopping centres and then wonder why we are up to our ears in alligators." I don't know about you, but, every time an alligator is closing in tight for a nibble on the old earlobes, I inevitably find myself wondering, "why am I up to my ears in alligators?"

And, only lethal to my sense of cynicism: hamster tongues.

I'm Getting Tired Of...The Banjo

"When you are listening to a rock & roll song the way you listen to 'Jumping Jack Flash,' or something similar, that's the way you should really spend your whole life. That's how you should be all the time: just grooving to something simple, something basically good, something effective and something not too big. That's what life is. Rock & roll is one of the keys of the many, many keys to a very complex life. Don't get fucked up with all the many keys. Groove to rock & roll and then you'll probably find one of the best keys of all." --Pete Townshend

I grew up reading Rolling Stone thanks to my father's general addiction to periodicals and inability to throw anything away, and, though its cultural relevance is only a cold, pale shadow of what it once was, I recently opted to receive a few free issues through a special deal that came with my subscription to Salon. Lucky me, I was just in time to receive the big 1000th issue, which you may or may not have seen screaming at you on newsstands in lurid, holographic 3D. I feared that its bulk and overly glossy packaging would make me want to puke with its self-importance and self-referentiality, but it's actually really stellar. I spent a good portion of the weekend devouring it. There are the predictable contributions from Jann Wenner, Cameron Crowe, and Greil Marcus (who cites the above Pete Townshend quote from the eighteenth issue of the magazine in 1968 in his longish piece on RS's early years), but there's also some extremely enjoyable guest essays, perhaps my favorite of which is Bret Easton Ellis's meditation on Tom Cruise's appearance on the cover in 1990 (Days of Thunder era). Referencing the scene in American Psycho when Patrick Bateman shares an elevator ride with Cruise, Ellis writes, hilariously, "I keep thinking about that scene in the elevator in American Psycho and how different it would be played today. Would Bateman, the man also obsessed with appearances, either see a kindred soul or--after witnessing the couch-jumping, the hectoring on the Today show, Scientology, the thing called Vanilla Sky--quietly back away and hope to go unnoticed?"

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a beautiful essay about the famous photograph of John and Yoko taken on the day of his death (writer Scott Spencer ruminates, "Remembering Lennon's boyish boast about the Beatles' being more popular than Jesus, and seeing again the profound artistic sympathy with which Leibovitz composed this last portrait of him, we realize: Here is our Pietà") and many in-their-prime photos of some of the sexiest motherfuckers ever to have worked in popular music. I'm thinking here specifically of this shot of Mick & Keith and this shot of Bowie paying intentional homage to James Dean. Yes, yes. As Giddy once famously said of me, in jest (somewhat), on her Friendster page, I like magazines.

In Eddie Izzard voice: We've got suits of babies! We've got babies on suits!

Did everybody read the Fork's looong interview with Sufjan today? I nearly fell out of my chair when I read that part about his "small obsession with birds" ("I think I might have gone a little overboard, because I have three field guides, I'm saving up for a pair of binoculars, and I want to buy the elephant folio book of Audubon prints of birds of North America. So I've probably invested a little too much time in this"). Sure, sure, on the surface it looks like it can just be chalked up to all the research he did to write the "Lord God Bird" song for NPR, but the Wrestling Entropy family knows better--there must have been some weird voodoo going on with the avian-themed packaging Chris conceived for my 2005 year-end mix and the inclusion of "Chicago" thereon. (Just like when Ben Folds and Neil Hannon went on tour together a few years ago, and CTLA claimed I magically made it happen by rubbing their albums together in my big CD binder.)

And a big ol' happy birthday to BAK today!!

Baby, You've Got to Be More Discerning

"When somebody's like 'I'm going to get a rock band, and there's going to be eight people in it and there's going to be a violin and a cello and an accordion' then I'm kinda like, it's got to be f*cking mind-blowing because I'm not going to have the patience for your process because your process is kind of obvious. But when somebody says 'I'm going to only use broken instruments to try to arrange a beautiful symphony' then if there's even one moment of beautiful clarity then I'm totally satisfied."

So says Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) in conversation with You Ain't No Picasso (via), and so splits my own brain in two. There's the part of me that's cheering along with the truth of locating the one moment of beauty in the big mess of artistic honesty, and there's the other part of me that instinctively bristles at the snobby insiderness of statements like that. The whole broken instruments aesthetic can be just as obvious as the kind of indie band with precious orchestration he's maligning. (And, ahem, isn't the Arcade Fire, with whom he's most famously worked, pretty much the very definition of obvious and boring indie band with strings and accordion? I mean, even if you're the Arcade Fire's biggest fan and grant that their process is one of the "fucking mind-blowing" exceptions, it's nevertheless gotta be pretty difficult to deny.) I fall down a little bit harder on the side of bristling in this particular instance, mostly because he has the temerity to talk trash about Bjork's string arrangements in the same interview. This guy is clearly way too smart for his own good, but whether that turns out to be too smart for our own good still remains to be seen. For what it's worth, his cover of Bloc Party's This Modern Love is so gorgeous it nearly brought me to tears. Final Fantasy's much-blogged about He Poos Clouds is being released this summer, though I haven't been able to successfully determine if it's May 9 or June 13 (I've seen both dates listed variously around the intarweb).

Did anyone have any luck scoring Radiohead tickets this weekend? I felt pretty rotten about striking out until I read that even the proprietor of Stereogum got screwed.

Other music news and downloady goodness:

*Check out the jangly adrenaline rush of Fire Island, AK, a leaked track from the new Long Winters album (via)

*Neil Hannon's lush orchestrations and tea-dappled melodies sound more effortless than ever on these two leaked Divine Comedy tunes, "To Die a Virgin" and "Lady Diva," both from his forthcoming album. It's also good to hear him get back to using, in "To Die a Virgin," one of those archly British dialogue samples from some obscure English movie (provenance unknown) over the song's introductory notes

*Yeah, Beirut's Postcards from Italy really is that good

*If the Rappers Delight Club (via) doesn't string a crooked and twinkling smile across your face like a strand of dollar-store lights on a snow-encrusted Christmas tree, then you've probably grown up a little too much

Happy birthday to Mikow (5-5), my sister (5-6), and Nick (today!). Wish y'all could have made it out to celebrate with me and my little choir of amber-colored prescription bottles this weekend.

Next Time, Look It Up in Your Gut

[UPDATE: The link to Colbert's speech has been updated to reflect the fact that it got yanked from YouTube and subsequently reposted on Google Video. Why the censorship? BoingBoing has the scoop.]

I know these clips have been bouncing around the internet for the past day or two, but, seriously, Stephen Colbert is amazing here at the White House Correspondents' dinner this weekend. I mean, yeah, we all loved when Stewart gave it to Carlson and Begala up the pooper, but to do this shtick fifteen feet away from Dubya himself? Le sigh. He had me at "somebody shoot me in the face." Salon salutes him and his masterful use of irony here.

Ah, springtime in Bloomington. I really do miss it sometimes. The flowers are sprouting on campus, the Little Fivers are racing their hearts out, the fast food goes digital...

Lists to make you smarterer: Alex Ross posts his list of 100 key pieces of music from the twentieth century, and Ebert gives some space on his site for Jim Emerson's list of 102 movies you should see if you want to consider yourself "movie-literate" (via).

I Want to Feed You Butter Rum Candy

An embarrassment of musical riches this summer: first we hear that The Divine Comedy is about to deliver a new album, and now comes word that The Long Winters' third full length, Putting the Days to Bed, will be released on July 25. Can't wait.

All right, my little Satanists, are you ready for the National Day of Slayer? (via)

I think I finally may have found a podcast worth committing myself to: Stylus magazine's Stycast (via--and, while you're there, heed his advice to visit the ridiculously great Green Pea-ness blog). I listened to #248 on my commute this morning, and I have to say it was worth it for the Coldcut feat. Roots Manuva track alone.

Just when Mimi Smartypants was starting to give me a resounding case of the mehs, she dashes off a paragraph about her small daughter's newfound reverence for skateboarding. She writes, "My kid will not be some lame-o Betty standing on the sidelines while the boys practice their bean plants and fakie tail grabs. So we each held her hands while she rolled along, and all the way home she would not shut up about it." Skate or die...from the cuteness! Loves it!

The Notorious Jimmy James

OK, if there are any pussified and whiny indie kids out there who want to start a band so they can wear cool clothes and sing about their feelings and chat up pretty emo girls with pixie haircuts and facial piercings, LISTEN UP. You are forbidden to do any of this until you study at the feet of My Morning Jacket.

Other than a vague perception of them being jammy and Southern-fried, I knew nothing about this band, and largely because of the aforementioned perceptions, didn't think I needed to know anything about them, before I saw them play on the Northwestern campus last night. Kittens, I have been touched by the power of ROCK. Those motherfuckers walked on stage looking like they'd just been released from prison somewhere and played their fucking hearts out. They could have phoned it in for this student show in the gym. They could have fooled us by hiding behind the bluster and momentum of their hair and beards. But, no. They flung their bodies across the stage and whipped that hair around and screamed and sweated and went through some kind of public musical catharsis for our benefit. It was spectacular, in the truest sense of the word. I mean, yeah, there was a fair amount of guitar wankery, but, my background in jazz being what it is, I have infinitely more patience with semi-indulgent soloing in a live setting than I do on a recording. Not to mention that the kind of music they play is best experienced like a blast from a furnace at the gates of hell: hot, loud, and overpowering, which is to say, not through the tiny plastic earbuds plugged in to your iPod. It deserves a stack of amps and groovy lighting and the reverence of a crowd of kids who were inspired to shout things like, "why don't you just play all night!" I have a better understanding now than perhaps I ever did why Pamela des Barres wrote I'm with the Band, and why she lived it before she wrote it. Oh, and they played maybe four or five songs, and then, by way of greeting and introduction, lead singer Jim James steps up to the microphone and, perfectly framed against a bastketball hoop and the gray cinder block walls of the Patten Gymnasium, drawls, "I hear you don't have a fencing team here at Grover Cleveland. Well, I'm going to do my best to start one up for you." I nearly died.

Oh, yeah, and Stephen Malkmus played a solo set (which I unfortunately missed but I'm told was chockful of older Pavement and Silver Jews material) and the New Pornographers, including Neko Case, were the second band on the bill. Did I forget to mention all that in the heat of my excitement about MMJ? Pretty much best concert ever. Thanks again for the heads up, KP and DS. (I still owe you for the ticket.)

The reason I missed Malkmus's set was because I was en route from Navy Pier to Evanston after seeing A Flea in Her Ear at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Ah, who doesn't love a good, fast French farce? GH asked me a while ago to tag along with her and her gals to their season-subscription seats, and the show, while by no means revelatory, was still a delightful, brightly colored bit of piffle. Rick Hall was so effective in his dual role as man-of-the-house Chandebise and bellboy Poche that I found myself illogically wondering how in the world they were going to stage a face-to-face confrontation between the two characters.

This just in! Christianity is repressive, men are assholes, and the U.S. government hates pornography. All this, and not much more, courtesy of The Notorious Bettie Page, the kind of biopic that gives biopics a bad name. Lots of shuttling from plot point to plot point with only the skimpiest of G-strings connecting them to a greater theme or raison d'etre. Now, I don't necessarily go to movies based on true stories or real people looking for historical accuracy or trenchant re-creations of a larger social context, but I do, at the very least, expect to be entertained. The one-note-ness of Bettie Page was not only reductive in its simplifying of the character and the era, but deeply boring as well.

Sure, Gretchen Mol (Rounders, anyone?) looked great and was sexy as hell in the title role (though I do tend to agree with Violet Blue [beware the link; NSFW] when she says Mol doesn't exactly fill out Page's "ruffle-butt panties"), but, when basically all the part required of her was the repeated furrowing of her immaculately tweezed brow in earnest consideration every time her boundaries were being pushed by the series of increasingly fetishistic photographic demands being made of her, looking good is pretty much the most a person could ask for. She does work extra hard in one of the final scenes showing her, after recommitting her life to the Church (which, after a garish and blatantly sexualized "conversion" sequence, complete with her kneeling all dewy-eyed in front of the preacher man, is mainly dramatized by showing her buttoning a white sweater up over a black brassiere), reading from the Bible to (ahem, mostly male) passersby in an autumnal-looking park somewhere. Though her leap from slightly daffy but deliriously exuberant pin-up queen to devout evangelist has, despite some heavy-handed foreshadowing, no sense of dramatic inevitability whatsoever, Mol does her absolute best to translate her radiance from the flesh to the soul. Yet despite Mol's best efforts here, this fact of Page's personal history is just one more inconvenient episode to be gotten through until director Mary Harron can show us Bettie dancing (in homage to this ridiculous yet adorable video? [she's fully clothed and completely SFW here]) over the final credits.

Though I think Bettie's pictures and persona are totally awesome, I've never been one of those leopard-print, cat-eye-glasses hipster gals who would cite her as a major hero or sexual influence or anything, so my complaints here don't really stem from any kind of proprietary sense that no one's ever gonna do my Bettie justice. But, I did want to leave the movie theater feeling like I knew even a little bit more about her and her milieu than I did when I went in; I wanted to feel like I had something to chew on, some tangled tensions to try to resolve in my own head in idle moments of pondering on the train or at lunch this week. And this isn't to say that I didn't glean a few factoids about the nature of her work with Irving and Paula Klaw and Bunny Yeager and the Kefauver hearings on juvenile delinquency. But, Harron tips her hand so strenuously in favor of Bettie's heroic place at the center of a very thin slice of 1950s female sexuality, with only the barest, Walk the Line-esque examination of the events that led her there, that, quite apart from accounts of Page's post-cheesecake life, there was no ambiguity in this version of her story at all. It's all, yay Bettie, yay sexytime, fuck anything that distracts us for a moment from images of her frisky smile and plump bum, including the messy complexities of the woman herself. Yet, as we all know, the most effective titillation requires a little something be left to the viewer's imagination.

Radioheading to the Windy City!

Radiohead is coming to town after all, kittens! (No thanks to Millennium Park and the Cultural Affairs Department.) June 19 and 20 at the Auditorium. Tickets on sale May 6. (T'anks for the heads-up, BAK.)

Unformed Thoughts on Brick, Etc.

I happily caught up with Brick this weekend, and thought to myself, gee, how nice for a director to use noir's speech patterns as a point of entry into his homage rather than slipping in on another retread of gorgeous (but ultimately kinda boring) shadowy black and white cinematography. Sure, few things are as pleasurable as some really sumptuous chiaroscuro lighting, but there's also no surer or faster way to paint yourself into a style-over-substance corner. Which isn't to say that Brick is particularly substantial--it's an easy metaphor, that high school feels like life and death, like the high stakes drama of back alley shady dealings gone wrong--but at least it didn't take the easy way out with its formal conventions. I mean, as the components of the hard-boiled detective genre become more and more fetishized (which is not to say romanticized, which it obviously always has been) in contemporary film and TV, has everyone forgotten that many of the best old detective movies started out as novels? That the chewiness of the language provides the frame over which to drape the now-iconic bits of mise-en-scene? Director and screenwriter Rian Johnson deserves kudos for remembering and acting on this. The cinematography, certainly lovely in its own way, owes more of a debt to the most deconstructed, postmodern noir ever, Altman's The Long Goodbye, all pastel colors and shallow focus and squintingly uncomfortable scenes shot in full daylight.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is, simply put, brilliant, again. Lukas Haas is fantastic as the suburban heroin-dealing baddie The Pin. Reviewers have cited the comic absurdity of the scene where his mother serves him and his minions milk and cookies in the kitchen, and sure it's funny, but it also feels every bit as potent as seeing any classic screen villain stroking a long-haired cat. The vaguely Oedipal kiss on the cheek he gives her provides the perfect, fleeting glimpse into the irrational soft spot that all great, completely amoral characters need. The funnier, and sadder, line that I haven't seen anyone except Andrew O'Hehir mention here is delivered during the scene on the beach where The Pin suddenly asks Gordon-Levitt's character if he's ever read any Tolkein. "You know, the Hobbit books? I really like his descriptions of things. Makes you feel like you're there." Boom. Again, another perfunctory, though weighty, reminder that, yes, these are teenage characters we're dealing with. The tender innocence of it reminded me of one of my favorite lines from Rushmore, where Max, drunk at dinner after the debut of his Serpico play, screams, "You hurt my feelings!" Just that subtle reorientation to the true place these characters are coming from does a world of good for the director's mission, no matter how stylized or over-the-top. And as someone who finds herself endlessly defending the stylized and over-the-top, I like having these little moments to be able to point to.

On quite the other end of the tonal spectrum, LK and I watched Rivers and Tides, the Andy Goldsworthy documentary, on DVD two nights ago. I remember when previews for it were being played before virtually everything I saw at our local Landmark theaters a few years ago and, thanks to LBLA reminding me about it after she saw a free screening in DC in December, I finally remembered to dump it in my Kittenflix queue. Wow. This film clung for dear life on to the right side of the razor-thin divide between being mind-bendingly fascinating and stultifyingly self-serious with art-fuckery. I mean, the first words of the movie were something like, "I'd say, art nourishes me" in Goldsworthy's precious little Scottish burr. I should have started gagging immediately. And yet. He's so endearingly earnest about the inspiration he takes from the natural world and the respect he has for it, and the footage of his pieces is so unbelievably beautiful, that I actually gasped several times when the camera would reveal whatever stunningly simple and profound project he was working on. I hadn't anticipated having that kind of reaction. It got to the point where LK and I were cheering for him to add just one. more. pebble. on to his pinecone-shaped piles of rocks and shouting, when one would collapse, with the kind of communal frustration that you usually only hear erupt around a television when an athlete bungles a key play during the championship game. (Wow, how was that for some totally non-sport-specific lingo there?) Anyway, this isn't the kind of DVD you can just throw on for kicks, but, for us, late on a rainy Sunday night, it was completely perfect.

WTF? But I love cilantro!

Recent Reading

"Ed says, 'So are you going to tell me a story?'
"Starlight says, 'That's what I'm here for. But usually the guy wants to know what I'm wearing.'
"Ed says, 'I want to hear a story about a cheerleader and the Devil.'
"Bones says, 'So what's she wearing?'
"Pete says, 'Make it a story that goes backwards.'
"Jeff says, 'Put something scary in it.'
"Alibi says, 'Sexy.'
"Brenner says, 'I want it to be about good and evil and true love, and it should also be funny. No talking animals. Not too much fooling around with narrative structure. The ending should be happy but still realistic, believable, you know, and there shouldn't be a moral although we should be able to think back later and have some sort of revelation. No and suddenly they woke up and discovered that it was all a dream. Got that?'
"Starlight says, 'Okay. The Devil and a cheerleader. Got it. Okay.'"
--Kelly Link, "Lull," Magic for Beginners

"And weirdly, [Mötley Crüe's autobiography] The Dirt isn't a bad book. For a start, it's definitive, if you're looking for the definitive book on vile, abusive, misogynistic behavior: if there are any worse stories than this in rock and roll, they aren't worth telling, because the human mind would not be capable of comprehending them without the aid of expert gynecological and pharmaceutical assistance....
"Oh, but what do any of these things matter? Is it really possible that Mötley Crüe have destroyed all the literature in the world, everything that came before them, and everything written since? I rather fear it is."
--Nick Hornby, "Stuff I've Been Reading," The Believer, April 2006

She Is Good to Me and I Am Good to Her

Moses Martin? Gwyneth and Chris named their new baby Moses Martin? Are you kidding me? Oh my, that is just too fucking delightful. What's with their baby names' Old Testament theme? First Apple, then Moses. Ooh, if the next one isn't a minor prophet, I'll eat my hat. (Sing it with me, Benji.)

Speaking of which, how's about that Gospel of Judas that's just recently been verified as being authentic? (The announcement was ever so nicely timed for Holy Week. I guess the Church can't be begrudged their version of sweeps. Stay tuned for sexy guest stars, dangerous stunts, and never-before-seen ancient Coptic manuscripts!) I think the more we know about the early days of Christianity and the formation of the canon, the better off everyone's going to be. I mean, yeah, I'm a big religious studies nerd, but when it comes to uncovering the shady dealings and fractious infighting and marginal belief systems that were considered so dangerous they had to be repressed at all costs, I can hardly stand how exciting it is! (And now it's time for a commercial break plugging Elaine Pagels's fantastic book on the Gospel of Thomas, Beyond Belief. I would loan it to you if I hadn't given my copy out to someone else already.)

Malcolm Gladwell-watch! "My mandate is to convince people that [psychological science] is exciting and to use the discipline in making us think in different ways about social problems or political issues, and that requires taking some liberties — not liberties, that's too strong a word — that requires having fun with it." A wonderful, lengthy article about him in the Association for Psychological Science's journal, Observer (via).

"You'll hear a little bit of auto tune and you're like, 'You're too fucking good for that. Why would you let them do that to you? Don't you know what that means?' It's not an effect like people try to say, it's for people like Shania Twain who can't sing. Yet there they are, all over the radio, jizzing saccharine all over you": Neko Case talks to Pitchfork about songwriting, singing, and Celine Dion's horrifying Anne Geddes baby photo book.

Girls Don't Poop.

Oh man, seeing a show like the one Gogol Bordello put on Saturday is pretty much the whole reason I go to rock concerts. To have experiences like that, plain and simple. Every time I buy a ticket to anything, I'm always chasing down that ideal, secretly hoping I'm going to come out at the end of the night feeling like I just went through a major catharsis. Hoping there will be deafening noise and sweating and jumping and screaming and fist-pumping and emotional electricity and pure fucking joy. To stand in a surging crowd that feels so wild and yet so happy and so safe. Eugene Hutz and his band of merrymakers bring all that and some goddamn wicked facial hair to boot. Not to be missed. Thanks for being there with me, Nora Rocket and JZ. Hoptza!

Puppies Puppies Puppies Puppies Puppies!

CRP authors in the blogosphere this week: Dirk Jamison writes for Largehearted Boy and Doug Crandell gets written up for Post Road Magazine. These are two of my favorite new voices we've published recently, and both of the write-ups just make me love them even more.

Scroll down here to last week's episode, fast forward to approximately minute seven, and revel in the glory that is a This American Life piece on--wait for it--The Puppy Channel. I know, I could hardly believe it either. (Thanks for this and the Post Road link, LK.)

Has anyone anywhere ever had a relatively good/positive experience buying tickets for an event? Because I honestly don't think I have. I'm not talking about the sweet old lady who took your money at the front door of your little sister's choir concert. I'm talking about buying tickets to see a rock show or whatever. When I use Ticketmonster, I feel screwed, which makes me angry. When I make the effort to go to a box office, people are usually bitchy, which pisses me off. I hustled as fast as I could after work last night to get to the box office at the Metro before it closed at 6 to buy tickets for this weekend's Gogol Bordello show (Nora Rocket and JZ and I will be MAKING MERRY OUT OF NOTHING, LIKE IN REFUGEE CAMP! OH YEAH, WHOA NO!). My dilemma: will I make it to the box office in time if I try to hunt down one of my bank's very few cash machines in the distance between my office and the venue? But, what's this? Joy of joys: the website says they accept Visa, Mastercard, and American Express! Perfection. What an epoch of convenience I'm lucky to be living in!

Still, I'm cutting it close (thank you, rush hour brown line delays!), and I blow in to the Metro store windswept and out of breath at about 5:55. There are maybe four or five people standing behind various counters, some setting up merch for that night's show, others tapping on laptops and flipping through magazines. No eye contact whatsoever is made with the frantic, disheveled Polish tornado that has just tumbled through the door. I stagger around the room, trying to deduce if any of these clearly superior specimens of humanity have any interest in helping a sister out. I finally point-blank ask a petite blond woman, "can I buy tickets for a show on Saturday?" "Oh, you'll have to talk to her," she says, pointing to a woman standing about eight feet to her right. For fuck's sake. "Hi, can I buy three tickets for the Gogol Bordello show on Saturday?" I ask the woman standing eight feet to my left. She barely says a word to me, makes minimal eye contact, and starts processing the order. I reach into my bag for my wallet, and, just to be sure, I ask, "I can use a card to pay, right?" This query is met with eyeballs of steel. "There's a 4% surcharge on the total ticket price if you want to use a card." I temporarily die for a moment, standing right there on my own two little feet as I hear this, because OMG, WTF, not being surcharged was the whole reason I elected to make the journey to the box office in the first place and being able to use my card was the whole reason I didn't stop for cash on the way! (Bitch.) But, as politely as I can muster (read: not very politely at this point), I ask if there are any cash machines in the vicinity. "There's one on the front of the building, there's one across the street, there's one on the corner, but I'm closin' in five minutes." This is the point at which, in all exchanges like this, I am always tempted to begin weeping and rending my garmets as I deliver a soliloquy on the theme of Am I Not Pure of Heart? Am I not pure of heart? Did I not try as hard as I could to get here as quickly as I could? Was I not met with transportation challenges on the way? Did I not initially consider withdrawing cash from my checking account to make this transaction easier on you, the customer service representative? Is it not spring in Chicago and was I not struggling to walk against the wind off the lake with my very short skirt threatening to become my very short belt every step of the way? Regardless, I would like to believe that that exceptionally moving performance was subtextually obvious when I, instead, said, "um, OK, then here ya go," and handed over my debit card.

I mean, whatevs. I got the tickets, I'm going to the show, I'm looking forward to it, all is well in the kingdom of Entropy. But, is it just me, or are these hoops that must inevitably be jumped through just not very rock 'n' roll? I mean, how do the corduroy-clad hipsterati deal with these sorts of indignities when they're making plans to go see Art Brut or whoeverthefuck? Or is it just me? Do these box office workers smell the square on me when I walk in the door and then proceed to treat me like the guy from High Fidelity who was looking for a copy of "I Just Called to Say I Love You"? But, I mean, I usually walk among them fairly well disguised--hello, little camouflage skirt, bright red lipstick, black plastic frame glasses, black messenger bag festooned with band pins? What else do they want from me? People, people, people--there has got to be a better way!

New Divine Comedy

Not that I'm usually the model of restraint or anything, but allow me to FLIP THE FUCK OUT for a moment as I announce with fist-pumping anticipation that a NEW DIVINE COMEDY ALBUM will be released this summer. It's called Victory for the Comic Muse, the title a cheeky play on Neil's ultra-rare debut disk, Fanfare for the Comic Muse, which predates Liberation by a few years and which I have never heard. The DC website says the new one is out June 19 in the U.K., which I hope, but doubt, will mean June 20 in the U.S. Even if not, ah, well, that's what we have Amazon.co.uk for, eh kids?

Poetry in an Empty Coke Can

I absolutely can. not. wait. for Brick to open here. Everything I've read about it sounds right up my alley, and the fact that I'm totally gaga for Joseph Gordon-Levitt after loving the fuck out of Mysterious Skin last year (it's funny that that's the second time I've linked to that old post within the past week and a half) is only fluffy bunny frosting on the kitten whiskers cake. According to the official site, Chicago is included in this coming weekend's limited release roll-out. Rawk. Chickety check Salon's brief interview with director Rian Johnson here.

Mr. Green Pea-Ness writes with passionate, breathless, furious intensity about Nelly Furtado's unstoppable new single "Maneater" (which similarly blew me away when I got around to downloading it this weekend), about what it means when Voxtrot covers the Talking Heads, and about seeing the Guillemots live.

Speaking of the Guillemots, their From the Cliffs EP compilation disk doesn't quite live up, back-to-front, to the promise of "Trains to Brazil" (then again, what could?), but their "Made Up Lovesong #43" has to be one of the silliest, happiest, swooniest things I've heard in ages. It's not just a song about love, it's a song that makes you feel like you're falling in love. If you see me walking around town with a goofy grin on my usually scowl-marked face and a bounce in my otherwise leaden step, I'm probably just listening to that song on my Nano. Approach with caution; I might huuuug you!

The Hype Machine recently pointed me in the direction of Joanna Newsom's predictably stunning cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Angel." I've never been able to figure out exactly why Jimi's music in general, and this song in particular, touches me so deeply. The reaction he elicits in me is a totally distinct beast from the respect I have for the rest of his contemporaries in the rock canon. I mean, I was putting "Angel" on mix tapes in high school when I thought "classic rock" meant those cheesy recordings of guitar shredders interpreting Mozart sonatas and shit (kidding; I wasn't that bad off), and I remember getting emotional at the EMP in Seattle with Holla Mossick and LBLA a few summers ago as we strolled through a room that reverently displayed the first draft of his lyrics for "Angel" scribbled on the back of an envelope or napkin or similar scrap of paper. Anyway, all of this is to say that, despite the shoddy quality of the live recording, for me, this MP3 provides a potent and irresistible combination of Joanna's otherworldly harp, her gift for singing way more than just the notes, and Jimi's divinely inspired (haha, not a pun, you bastards) composition.

I forgot to post this last week: Liza Minnelli losing her mind on Larry King.

Her almost-spit take when that guy calls up and says he's a musical theater major in Arizona is classic. Whatever demented asshole edited this thing together deserves an Emmy. Also, I love that some bastard on YouTube has tagged the clip with "trainwrecks." (Thanks, Benji.)

Had the chance to support some local art this weekend. LK and I popped by the Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts on Friday night for the opening of Columbia's Interdisciplinary Arts & Media Thesis Show, featuring Liz Wuerffle's lovely series of pieces combining maps, pictures, and other memories of a life spent on the move. Dan Schwarzlose's synesthesia installation was also really cool, though I'm not sure how the interactive portion of it will be handled when he's not there behind the bar taking orders for stuff like hearing Yellow and touching Buddha Nature. On Sunday, I saw Seanachai's production of A Whistle in the Dark (at the Victory Gardens until May 14), which is certainly worth a look for the slowly burning, quietly seething rage that Coby Goss does so well and for Dan Waller's tour de force performance of tightly coiled menace shot through with scrappy, wounded pride.