April 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 2009

Man, college doesn't want me to have a blog. Don't even try and hide it, college: essays, projects, film work. You don't care for this blogging enterprise, do you?

Well, too bad for you. Because these last five news days were hella slow, and leant me plenty of room to catch up. (Sigh...)

MUSIC

Pitchfork wins some points for showing The Antlers some love; they're probably going to be on my iTunes soon. The Dougall song hits me in all the right ways, too.

TMT points out that so far, 2009 has been a year without platinum records.

Rich Boy is superdramatic. Also on Fader, the new Trey Songz video is probably the most 2009 thing I've seen all year. Oh, and I really enjoy the new Horrors video; don't be put off by the useless intro: the aesthetic reaches closer to some sort of arthouse snuff film than an "ironic" music video.

God I love illRoots. Kid Cudi ft. Kanye West and Common, CDQ, and damn... damn.

FILM

/Film really brought it while I was out! Working backwards: Vanity fair indulges our collective crush on Tarantino's new project, Inglourious Basterds. Michelle Rodriguez spoils three films at once, including Avatar. Jackie Earle Haley is going to be Freddy Kruger! The trailer for Brüno looks really funny. Also trailering up, The Hangover. There are lots of details concerning casting for Nolan's new film, Inception, and one of my favorite actors - Cillian Murphy - is in talks to join! Magnolia is still being condescending about the Let The Right One In subtitle debacle.

Beware light, light spoilers, but AICN has some audience reactions to Brüno, and they all love it.

IFC rounds up some reviews. Sugar looks GREAT; I hope it arrives here. Apparently, Song of Sparrows is a visual stunner. Same goes for Tulpan. People really dig Adventureland as a coming-of-ager, not a laugh-fest.

WEIRD

Cleverness alert: via BoingBoing, Homer's Odyssey as written on twitter.

Russ Feingold likes Bon Iver.

New Lonely Island video!

WORLD

Democracy Now interiews Tim DeChristopher, a Utah student who posed as a bidder to disrupt an auction selling off land to be drilled for oil. DeChristopher is being charged with two felonies.

They also interview the ever-insightful Noam Chomsky.

SATURDAY EDITORIAL

I checked the Billboard Top 40 today. I don't check it regularly, and in fact, this may have been the first time I've ever checked it; it's not a personal habit. But it was interesting; Flo Rida was at number one, the All-American Rejects at two, and good for them, but damn if I've even mentioned them on this blog before - a blog doing its damnedest to keep up with the year of 2009.
I was making a mix for a friend of 90's music, which is basically a monthly occurrence on this laptop. But this time around I was giving a critical eye to what I put in - Third Eye Blind, Blind Melon, TLC, Alanis Morisette, y'know, those instant nostalgia pieces. But, well, this is hard to phrase: my generation, we were in elementary school through most of the 90s, and our access to "less popular" music was drastically limited. So our 90stalgia is not the 90stalgia of people who liked music in the 1990s, but of people who were learning to color and spell.
That's a challenge for me to wrap my head around, but I'm sure I'm not elucidating this feeling very clearly at all. Let me go for a metaphor. You grow up in City X, from birth until the age of thirteen. City X is, in your memory, the shiniest and nicest place on the planet, where everything is rad. Then at thirteen, you move to City Y, and with a more discerning eye, you note City Y's nuances, oddities, and quirks. But then, when you turn eighteen and take a vacation week in City X, you realize that your memories there were totally backwards and bizarre, which in turn changes the way you feel about City Y.
For me, this decade is defined by acts like Arcade Fire, The Knife, Devendra Banhart, The Decemberists, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Animal Collective, etc. But in ten years, a generation will hear "Dirty Little Secret" or "Shorty Got Low" on the radio and shout, "ahh, that's so 00's!" And me, I'll just feel confused, because both songs are fun, but ancillary to my experiences with the decade.
I guess this realization has challenged a notion of collective experience I have, the notion of a unified pop culture experiencing specific cultural signposts. But maybe decades are composed of separate, distinct subcultures? Or maybe even the smallest groupings are just to help us simplify a hopelessly complicated web of networks, opinions, and experiences.
Or maybe this decade is unique among previous others, specifically in terms of how it can be categorized and remembered? That's a dangerous conceit, and will be far more legitimate if I venture it with half a century's distance, but it's possible. Maybe the rise of the internet, the death of futurism as a unifying concern, and our mutual dissatisfaction with universality has actually given rise to a different intake procedure for media. Or maybe I just know too much about too many fractured subgroups, and I don't have the right perspective to characterize my era.
But that's why, in desperation I visited the Top 40. I thought it might be a refuge, but it was odd. Flo Rida and All-American Rejects hanging out at the top, Pink and Spears lingering in the middle, Kanye West's controversial and very-2008 single somehow grasping on at ten. This is not the top forty I know; these songs don't sound like 2009 to me. But I guess they do, and forever will, to the people who're memorizing their multiplication tables in their attic with the radio on, before they go turn on the Playstation. Wait, no, I guess the Wii?
Man... the 00's.

Week in literal review makes no sense, because this week was a slow news week.

REVIEWS

The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love
Let's get this out there, right off the bat: this is not a new direction for Meloy's rambling band of rastabouts. They've been laying the groundwork for an album like this (that is to say, a sprawling prog-rock opera about shapeshifters and forest queens) since they started plucking strings. Their albums always feature massive narrative set pieces, like pissed-off mariners or wives with feathery secrets. Meloy has simply taken this aesthetic to its most extreme, or rather, purest form. And damn it, on record, it works.
The narrative is better than some possibly confused reviewers (cough) have given it credit for. It's a love story with twists and turns, interesting supporting characters (a raging river included) and a fitting, honest ending. Sonically, it's also really solid; the band uses a blender aesthetic, shifting tones and genres to suit the story's needs. The forest queen is pissed? Lay on the sharp, rocking riffs. A couple recalls a lovely night together? Accordions, strummed country acoustics, and soft vocals. Ghosts are getting their revenge? Children's choir and jarring, percussive strings. People, this is what we call having a wide range.
There's been much ado in reviews about whether or not individual songs stand up. First of all, I'd ask why this matters - what happened, critics, to your desperate concerns about the death of the album artist? It sounds like you're holding the hammer to the coffin's nail on this one. But second, although the songs definitely fit most neatly into their album context, they mostly work like any Decemberists song ever has - self contained scenes with elaborate language, refreshing instrumentation and dramatic sweep. Nothing has truly changed; it's just an evolution.
The album has plenty of badass moments (a particularly fatal agreement with a river, comeuppance for infanticide) and plenty of sonic highlights (any moment belted out by the forest queen, a particular harpsichord melody, and a lovely little interlude) that make it a fantastic piece of music and a high point for the band.

Jeremy Jay, Slow Dance
I can't strictly call this album a grower, but I can ask you to get through your first listen patiently, then go through it again to have a blast. Because the first time through the album, I'll admit, I was thoroughly underwhelmed. It all seemed like a pretentious wreck. But listening a second time, with expectations calibrated, I actually found it really solid.
Take my personal favorite track on Slow Dance, "Gallop." The first time around, it felt simple and forgettable, but the second time around, I picked up a hell of a lot more depth: the way the echoing finger snaps create a deep space within the song, the jangling guitar's faux-drama - it's fun. Titular "Slow Dance" seemed boringly overwrought at first, but now it seems charmingly earnest.
This isn't to say it's a perfect album. The sparse instrumentation sets a specific vibe, but specificity and quality don't always go hand in hand here, and although every song has redeeming elements, there's nothing here to demand that vital second listen, except maybe stellar closer "Where Could We Go Tonight?" Why it's buried at the end, I will never understand. And yeah, sometimes we veer off into the land of the pretentious; Jeremy Jay tends to repeat single words multiple times before shouting "yeah!" on, well, most of the tracks here, and the trick loses its smirking appeal when it becomes too obvious.
But there's emotion and quality on Slow Dance, and if you can make it the end, then run through it all again, it's safe to say you'll be rewarded.

PERSONAL

I have been watching way too much All My Children for my own good. Damn it, David Hayward, you are fucking EVERYBODY'S shit up!

Oh, and try and avoid Röyksopp's "The Girl and The Robot" single, because if you listen to it once, you will end up listening to it literally one hundred times without stopping. Damn you, Robyn!

2009 FILMS SEEN: 15
2009 SONGS ON MY ITUNES: 639
Current Computer Situation: MacBook Pro, getting all emotional.