For this image you can thank Bob Budiansky, Frank Springer, and all those responsible for The Transformers cross-media marketing strategies during the mid-1980s. Ah.
This Friday Is Out Of Context Thoapsl Says: A headmaster is not a role model.
The Ting Tings' earliersingles danced on a strange edge, for me: each one would have a really good hook at some point, but the rest of the music would be so annoying that I couldn't stand the song as a whole. (Their band name is bloody annoying, too.) But I think this new track finds a better balance. There's a greater strength and melancholy to this music; it avoids the annoying tics of their earlier singles. It's an interesting wedge of dancey pop, built around staccato piano and a compelling rhythm. There's a defiant, assertive edge to the vocal melody. Also, it's a great video: it cleverly assembles a set of dynamic visual "pieces", slices of action frozen and replayed, and then uses artificial defocus to create a faux-3D layering effect. The visual edits are a smart match to the rhythm, too. Good stuff.
Check out the percussion, man. That is mean. Stripping it back so far that even the drum kit is gone – you've got to admit, that sort of stone-cold awesomeness is pretty funny.
Even when modern electric blues is listenably good, it's usually so derivative that it's basically unremarkable; it's difficult to not be dull. But this here is a pretty neat sound, I think. For what it is, this is mighty fine stuff. (If you want an immediate comparison, you might think about Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in the mid-90s? But don't think about it too hard.) These guys look like they'd be good fun as a live act, too.
So is it true? Is guitar-based indie moving towards a sort of grunge revival, now or soon? There's certainly a 90s vibe floating around the place these days, but I'm sure it's not that simple... For instance: the loose chorus vocals at the end of this song are a very 00s gesture. (In fact, those voices at the end vaguely remind me of the Arcade Fire, oddly enough.) But I think the vocal tones in the rest of this song, and much of its riffage & rhythm, definitely show a strong 90s-indie influence. Australian-style 90s-indie, especially. But, not too much influence. So, actually, this is probably not a good example at all...
It's tricky to pin down Major Major here in terms of 90s revivalism, because there's really a different feel at work. The song sounds like any other guitar-indie at first, but it grows into something quite different. It's a neat track; the guitars have charm, there's some real emotion to the vocals, and I like it the more I listen to it. Also, "the beast is coming for me..." – it's a great lyric. The video is cheap and not particularly profound, but it has a nice look and it holds attention well enough.
So: not the best example for investigating signs of grunge revivalism in contemporary music, but possibly worthwhile on its own merits. Looking to their myspace, it seems that this single is actually much heavier than their usual stuff. Grunge is almost certainly a bad comparison to be making, then. So! Let's say we dodged some kind of bullet?
(Nice band name, too. Was it going for the Catch-22 reference? Would the name be better or worse if it was Major Major Major, or Major Major Major Major, or Major Major Major Major Major? How thick is the line between repetition for impact & interest, and repetition as a rambling joke? ...)
Most of the time, I can't really get into death metal; the scream vocals are just too dull for me. (There's no dynamic to it: it's constant, but in a way that erases tension instead of building it.) This isn't quite that, though. Here, the vocals are (just barely) on the side of melody and tone rather than guttural white noise. It feels like a scream for emotion, rather than a generic sound effect: it's interesting. Add that to some interesting structure and some nice guitar textures, and all of a sudden this is compelling stuff. There are rhythmic changes in the service of the song's form, rather than time-signature fripps for virtuosity's sake; it's not something you hear everywhere. People, this is good metal!
Also: excellent band name. At the very least, it's a heck of a lot better than most metal bands can manage. (I'm looking at you, Terror. And Kreator. And DragonForce. Although, actually I guess "DragonForce" is kind of awesome, when you think about it*...)
*By the way: I've just done some googling, and for a band you've never heard of, DragonForce sure have some astounding statistics. One of the songs on their myspace has over 2 million plays, and it's only been out for 2 months! They have more than 300,000 myspace friends, while Radiohead have less than 200,000! (And okay, Justin Timberlake has about a million, but he's special.) Also, they went through 4 different bass players in eight years. (If that's not rock, I don't wanna be right.) Most awesome of all, according to wikipedia: "The band have frequently referred to their style not just as power metal, but as extreme power metal." Yes.
For an out-of-nowhere pop wannabe, this is not nearly as terrible as it should be. I think that's largely due to the production, which manages to keep the sound pleasantly immediate and direct... as opposed to most commercial songwriter-pop, which tends to swathe the sound in a fog of ProTools unreality. This guy may look kind of like he's aiming to be a male Delta Goodrem – although apparently, he's trying to be a male Billy Joel? – but either way, he's doing a surprisingly good job. The songwriting isn't exactly sublime, but it's more than solid pop. Sarakula doesn't look like a sex symbol or a pretty boy, but he's less pudgy than Alex Lloyd. If he manages to swing some decent radio airplay & a guest slot on Rove, he could easily be another hotcakes.
Sons Of God — "Jesus Christ" Through Adriaan
Rage's "we'll play anything at 4am" open submissions philosophy occasionally throws up some truly bizarre stuff. (Also, Made Austria.) Take this: it sounds like 80s-style synth-rock (except for the evangelical-Christian lyrics), the stereo drops in and out like the tape was wearing out, the video looks like somebody pointed a camera at a tv screen while playing a loop of 1980s-tech visual effects, the name is "Adriaan"... and no, this isn't on YouTube. It isn't anywhere. Somebody discovered a Betamax tape that their crazy uncle had made while born-again and dropping acid in 1988, they mailed it off to Rage, and the Rage programmers were happy to broadcast it at 4 in the morning. And it will never be seen again.
For goodness' sake, people! If this doesn't make it for you then there's no hope, I have no hope for you. (See also.) Damn it all! Watch, listen, forget about it, this is wonderful. I promise. Please pay attention.
You know what I thought this was like, adaptation-wise? American Psycho. An "unfilmable" text, adapted in a way that amplified the ironic and parodic elements of the original at the expense of its more serious aspects. And an excellent film as a result.
Vast numbers of people are already reviewing this movie to death, but I haven't yet seen anyone point out that Watchmen is funny. And that's on purpose: it's supposed to be funny. It's serious too, but there's a thread of irony that's essential to the fabric of the whole. All very dark, very deep, but: by stretching and inverting superhero tropes the way it does, Watchmen (book & film both) is essentially a kind of parody.
(This is even more true for the film than for the original novel. There's a deeper suspension of disbelief when you're reading words and absorbing pictures; the absurdities are suppressed. But when it's live-action, a movie about costumed crimefighters can't help but highlight the strange and the ridiculous. And that's before you even get to the more obvious jokes – moulded nipples on the costume body armour, Rorschach's "Dark Knight" voice...)
Do you believe me? Just because a work explores some deep and serious ideas doesn't mean it isn't funny at the same time. I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with acknowledging that, but it's true. When done well, that's part of what makes a good work so great: the humour can lend verisimilitude, and bring entertainment value too.
I love the original graphic novel, but I haven't read it for several years. (That was on purpose: I didn't want the differences between book and film to be too obvious to me, to be too annoying.) I went in with fairly low expectations. Based on the reviews I'd read, I was expecting that the movie wouldn't gel somehow; that it would duplicate the graphic novel's look but not its mood, that it would tell the events but not the story. The characters wouldn't seem right. It would be unsatisfying. That's what I was expecting.
Are you interested in my opinion?
Watchmen entertained the hell out of me. I thought it worked as a dark parody of superheroes (and of superhero movies), it worked as a compelling and unorthodox film narrative, it even worked as an action-romance with philosophical scaffolding. And I thought the fight scenes were awesome – seriously, some of the best movie fight scenes I've seen. (And that's coming from someone who usually hates any use of slow-motion, and who was only half-heartedly a fan of the action sequences in 300.) The music was great, too. (It's the musical choices that go a long way towards establishing a good subtone of parody throughout, too; I'm talking to you, Leonard Cohen's synth-heavy 1980s version of Hallelujah.)
I feel like I really need to talk about Watchmen with someone who watches a lot of movies, but hasn't read the graphic novel. Even better, someone who isn't especially familiar with comicbooks and superheroes generally. What on earth does this film seem like, to someone like that? There's so much bizarre excess in this movie, it's such an unusual brew of wild ideas... how does that play, to someone who has never read a superhero comic?
One thing in particular I thought interesting: by adapting the original text so faithfully, the first third (or so) of the film ends up with a narrative structure that's extremely unusual for a blockbuster. The way the story shifts from character to character and back and forth in time, exploring backstory and shifting perspectives (and all the while advancing the plot) – it's done in a way that's quite unusual, I think. There have been a lot of "ensemble"-type movies in the recent past, so many now that it's almost a subgenre of its own – I'm thinking about films like Magnolia, maybe I Heart Huckabees or Syriana or Crash, maybe even Pulp Fiction. All very different in tone, but I hope you know what I mean when I say they're similar in structure: multiple characters, interweaving storylines that build to a connected climax. You know what I mean. Watchmen has multiple characters and interweaving storylines that build to a connected climax, too.
But Watchmen is different to those films. It explores the characters' backstory and "origins" in ways that other ensemble films don't, I think. Following the pattern of the original text, the stories of the different characters are actually told differently, using narrative forms that reflect who they are. The segments with Dreiberg and Jupiter have a different feel to Rorschach's origin-told-via-psych-evaluation, which is different again to Manhattan's origin-told-via-simultaneous-time. Ensemble films often have different characters and different stories, but I think it's unusual to see different narrators used in this way. It works really well, too. It's a credit to the creators that it's never distracting, confusing or clunky – Watchmen is always a single film, not several different films cut together. (Or not to me, anyhow; again, I really need to talk to someone who knows the film but not the book! This is what I get for going to see it on opening night, when nobody else has seen it yet...)
There is a lot to this film, substance and style both. From sly easter eggs like "Good luck, Mister Gorsky" and the use of Apple's 1984 ad, to more subtle jokes (like the ironic/obvious musical selections), this is a film absolutely crammed with interesting details. The cast are great; in a couple of cases, they're excellent. If I wanted to nitpick, I'd say the very final scene was just slightly off – something about the pacing, maybe? – but even in the original book, that was a scene that never quite worked for me. Some people have said that the film doesn't evoke the Cold War feeling of imminent nuclear holocaust clearly enough; for myself, I thought that it was evoked well enough. But I might be more familiar with that sort of Cold War mindset than some people, I've been thinking about it a bit lately..?
I want to see it again. It's a great story, well told and thoroughly entertaining. It's funny!
In summary: see this film. If only so that I can talk to you about it.
Back back back to the front, to the top! Lap it all up, folks. It's been a little while since last we sat down to watch some Rage, but that's cool. I'll make this post a little too long, just to compensate. Right now is now right now! And 2009 is rushing in bold and fresh, burning our lips like millionaires' toothpaste.
I'm still not sure if I like the music, but it's a neat video. The whole "suburban shaman" costume design is excellent. It's zeitgeisty too, I think; you could mistake her for a background dancer from an MGMT clip. The more I listen, the closer I am to liking it. Worth paying attention to, for sure...
A slow burner, this one. The quiet vocals (almost whispered, in parts) build excellent tension. The music goes in some interesting directions, too... the synth tones and percussion choices remind me a little of Pivot.
Visuals are neat – it's a clever and amusing idea to do a shoutout to retro vector graphics like this. It's specifically referencing this old game, I think (I was too young for the original, but I distinctly remember playing 90s shareware knockoffs that were near-identical).
Good stuff! Not spectacular, but I think it's on the right side of boring.
Really neat video: deminiaturised stop-motion-animation, 1960s-ish off-brand toys, visuals that remind me of that old Gumby tv show. The video fits & synchs really well with the sound, too. But for some reason, I couldn't find the music as interesting as the images; it's a fizzysour indierock guitarbuzz, fun but nothing special. The melodic hook is catchy enough, and the lead guitar break is pretty nice? That's about it, I guess.
Cool video – constructed from authentic old fairytale animations, maybe? If not, they've totally nailed that old look. The narrative metaphors are a bit obvious & hackneyed (a common Bloc Party tic – they're very earnest musicians, politics-wise), but they're still well done. The songwriting is a little obvious, too... come on guys, a dramatic key change near the end? You can do better than that.
The guitar solo bit is mighty fine, even if it only goes for a few bars. The sound overall is a nice, interesting mix of guitars and dancey stuff – there's nothing else around at the moment that's quite like it. Punchy, energetic sound: I think it's good.
Damn it Pyke, every time now you're doing it to me. Do I have to buy your whole album? Is that what you're trying to make me do? With the subtle production touches, the songwriting that's never as dull or predictable as it should be, the sugarfree nostalgia stabs? Damn you, Pyke! So good, always so good. Always better than it seems. Prick.
Groovy band name, but the song didn't grab me until the chorus energy kicked in. Hnn! A decent bit of vocal kick – that's how you stop an indie song from being another dull sopfest. The video is annoying, but maybe I just don't like clowns & sparkles enough. The singer has a pretty look, tho...
So the zeitgeist is totally all echo-vocals, echo-percussion and 90s synths, now. (Half the songs in this post feature at least two out of three.) New Rave, or not. How did this happen? Who knows?
Synthesizers are drugs. You think you can control them... use them only on special occasions, for specialised effective uses... and when that goes well, you start using them more often. Even when they're not a good idea. And then, before you know it, the synths are everywhere all the time and everybody is doing it, all the time, and now you just can't stop it! Can't stop!
Still, the music grows on me. This is a rave(ish) epic, exceptionally well-constructed: overlapping vocals, overlapping rhythms. Shift your consciousness into some kind of trance state, nod your head repeatedly.
Surprisingly well-played punk-metal; the vocals give it a kind of a late-80s underground proto-grunge feel*. Metal guitar (& even a little percussion & acoustica near the end!), and vocals that are neither deathmetal scream nor emo whine. It's not especially original, but it's got a sweet, honest charm that suits my mood...
When it comes to metal, it's usually the vocals that tip me one way or the other. This here, I think I like it.
*There's an entire subgenre hidden in that description, spiralling around pre-fame Nirvana among others... I only discovered it a few years ago myself, but there's some great stuff in & around that scene.
I think I've figured out what's up with music. See, when I first wrote songs (being in a rock band in high school), there was something amazing about figuring it out, about being able to write a song and play it and Wow! It sounds just like a real song! And I think that's what most music groups and songwriters go through, at least at first. The problem is, I think, they're so excited that what they've written is just like a real song – it's good enough! – that they don't think beyond that. And that's why the vast majority of songs can sound so dull, so predictable. (Or that's how they can sound to someone who's been listening broadly and deeply enough, for a long enough time, I guess...)
The vast majority of songs are just using variations on the same old melodies, the same obvious chord progressions. That's not a bad thing in itself. It's not even that they're entirely unoriginal, because they're not. But if it sounds just like a real song, that's probably because it sounds like something you've heard before. There's a certain obviousness. Expectations are fulfilled.
So, there's nothing bad about it. It's good enough in the context of "hey! it sounds like a real song!"; that's why the musicians did it in the first place. But I think it might be that the musicians aren't thinking themselves beyond "good enough". They're not expecting or believing that they need to be better than adequate, that they need to be brilliant, that they need to be spectacular and genius and new. I think they're thinking: Hey, this sounds as good as something else – that's great!
If music wants to be remembered or to be truly huge, then it needs to be genuinely new & different, and to sound NOT just like any other song. It needs to be exciting. It needs to make you feel something profound. It needs to sound new.
(I know, I know, "new" is not new; 99.99% of everything sounds a bit like something else, of course. And there's nothing wrong with that, that's not the point I'm trying to make. It's not a question of uniqueness, it's a question of obviousness. It's a question of predictability. Good enough isn't good enough.)
So yeah, the Sunpilots have a song called Drones. It sounds like a real song.
(Good band name, though – The Sunpilots! Cool name...)
Anyhow, that's it for this roundup. Bit of a downer to end on, huh? And it's a bit of a clumsy rant there attempting a slightly complicated idea, but I'm tired and I don't feel like cutting it out just now. Let's watch Lily Allen's latest single again, instead. It's still good.
From one of many tales of Comet the Super-Horse and his tragic love for Supergirl. Googling it just now, I found there's an article here which conveniently summarises the contextual freakiness.
Of course, it was the 1960s; it was a freaky time. (Aren't they all?)
This Friday Is Out Of Context Thoapsl Says: A super-pet is not what lovers do.
Hey, you want to read something else? That I wrote? Because I wrote a draft of a novel the other day, too. Send me an email & I'll let you read it, I think. It's different. You might not like it. It has jokes, though. Also punctuation. Cheers :)
*swoon*
