Chimpomatic

16 Blocks

(dir. Richard Donner)

A cop with a shady past does everything it takes to get a witness in a police corruption case through 16 blocks to the courthouse, as a police force littered with corrupt officers try to stop them both.

Not bad by-the-numbers Bruce WIllis actioner, somewhat revolutionary for it's re-vitalisation of the freeze-frame ending.

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8th Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Thee More Shallows

Book Of Bad Breaks

Anticon

The third album sees this San Francisco trio up their game from shoegazing atmospherics to damn near post-rock genius. This shift in approach has led them to the hallowed grounds of the Anticon arena in which they are free to roam anywhere they please. And roam they do, but the success of this album lies both in the distance from which this band strays from the post-rock centre and the trail they leave behind allowing a route home at all times. This route may not be easy to find but it's always there and knowing this enables the listener to trust these guys to take them where they will.

Created in a similar spirit to Anticon favorites Why? or Fog, Thee More Shallows tread a fine line between coherency and shambles threatening to fall apart at any moment. Conventional song structure is turned on its arse with many songs masquerading as lo-fi, throwaway ditties then exploding into grand moments of majesty like on the epic Night At The Night School. Starting out all soft and warm the drums soon pick up to a running pace and reach heights you never thought possible at the beginning. Or sometimes doing the opposite as in The Dutch Fist. Here Dee Kesler's vocals are fed through a synthesizer and slowly build to glorious melodies then collapse in a dirty heap of drums and fuzz.

Songs are divided up and flow together masterfully with great use of instrumental interludes. Int.1 is a blissful string section that leads you into false security before it slides into a pummeling onslaught of hard-as-hell guitars. This leads into the awesome Proud Turkeys that continues this punk barrage until Int.2 which reunites us with the strings and tricks us into thinking it's all one song.

Towards the end of the record we get The White Mask, a song which really does mirror this album as a whole. It plods along for the first 4 minutes then dwindles into virtually nothing. Then just as it seems to be hanging on by a thread it pulls it all back together and launches itself in a cloud of fuzz and drums skyward for a final crashing finale.

This is an expertly crafted album that often tries to trick us into thinking it's a lo-fi waste of time. But on reaching the end you aren't sure what you've just been listening to but you'd quite like to start again and find out. It's a brave step forward for this band and now sees them in the kind of musical area where they have earned the right to do anything they please. Highly recommended.

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7th Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Fabienne Delsol

Between You And Me

Damaged Goods

This is the follow up to Delsol's 2004 debut No Time For Sorrows and it sees her continue her blend of 60's swing and cheeky euro-pop. She has a wonderfully playful voice that works best when sung in her native French tongue as in the album opener Vilaines Filles Mauvais Garcons and the gentle country tinged warmth of Pas Gentille. This is not to say that songs like debut single Catch Me A Rat don't fill the listener with delight. These are simple songs but it's their simplicity that charms and the swinging nostalgia that dominates much of the record is in no way contrived.

Leave Her For Me or Don't Throw Your Love Away could be the soundtrack to a 60's high school prom, or at least the French equivalent, while Loot has all the arrogance of a franco-Kinks. Whether it's Hawaiian style guitars, acid rhythms or foot-tappingly chirpy organs, Delsol's achingly sweet tales of love lost and found are stunningly addictive. One glimpse of her voice will have you smitten and your heart will be forever hers. If you ever bought a Nouvelle Vague record you should be ashamed of yourself, this is the real deal.

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3rd Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Disturbia

(dir. DJ Caruso)

iTunes generation remix of Rear Window, w Transformers star Shia Le Beouf here a moody teen who's spending the summer holidays stuck in his bedroom after getting one of those Asbo electronic tags on his leg.

It's a great set-up that lets the surveillance thrills play out when mom Carrie-Anne Moss pulls the plug on his wired-world - no XBox Live!? - what's left, but for him to stare out of the window? At first it's a toss-up between checking out hot new neighbour Sarah Roemer or keeping tabs on creepy David Morse, but once he's convinced her to come up and play w his binoculars, it's all systems go for them to spend the rest of the movie trying to work out if there's a serial killer living next door or not.

Although there's something of a generic big chase finale, for the most part it's a solid mainstream thriller, less indie than the trailer makes out, but v enjoyable nonetheless.

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1st Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Various Artists

Hallam Foe - Original Soundtrack

Domino

Film maker David McKenzie wanted to free himself from the convention of composing an original score as a sound track to his forthcoming film Hallam Foe. Discouraged by the prohibitive costs of forking out for already licensed published source music McKenzie decided the best avenue to pursue this would be to approach a record label about buying up a job lot. It was a move that evidently paid off with McKenzie and Hallam Foe winning this year's Best Music in a Film Silver Bear award at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival. McKenzie's master-stroke was plumping for Domino as his label of choice. Who better to paint the aural landscape of a coming of age tale set in contemporary Britain than Domino? With the exception of the title track by label luminaries Franz Ferdinand, not a single song in this collection was commissioned for the film but instead the whole Domino archive was trawled for appropriate tunes. It's a deal that pays off for everyone because Domino have the opportunity to showcase some of their lesser known talent. And what a stable of talent it is too. As much as a film soundtrack this is a chance for the label to say 'meet the family'.

Listening to the Hallam Foe reminded me of those big occasions when one meets a whole new family, perhaps the in-laws or a new step family for the first time. In this case the Domino family. Like all family do's it is a gathering of quite disparate characters who all have little more than a name in common. Like a family from a Mike Leigh film, or Jonathan Franzen novel there are inevitably secrets. The Domino's are no exception and provide a soundtrack populated by acts who all have a role to play.

Opening the album is 'Blue Boy' by Orange Juice, with Edwyn Collins in the role of the family hatchback driving Uncle reminding all that he once zipped around on a scooter and chopped out songs with military beats and Clash riffs. King Creosote discloses the discovery of an extra marital affair that everyone pretends not to know about in 'The Someone Else'. Rebellious cousins have shown up with Clinic's 'if i could read your mind' snarled out like Jonny Rotten singing a Smiths song and U.N.P.O.C screeching 'here on my own' like Frank Black attempting a Talking Heads number. Pssap is the cute little niece playing kazoo and singing about their Tricycle. The role of exotic wife of the uncle who made all the money is played by Juana Molina with a sultry seductive voice. Franz Ferdinand are the golden boys who have been overindulged and fail to entertain. The sister who's been damaged by a broken heart comes in the form of the sweet and sensitive 'I hope that you get what you want' by the soothing Woodbine and all the teenage heart break is narrated by James Yorkston with the wisdom of an 80 year old granddad. The gathering is completed by a couple of annoying younger brother's, in particular Double Shadow with their pretentious sub Prince effort and Future Pilot AKA who linger with a brooding air of menace.

Like any big do, it's not possible to remember all names and recall all the characters, some just add a background hum to the atmosphere of the Hallam Foe affair but on this one meeting alone the Domino family are ones that I'd definitely like to spend more time with.

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31st Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Knocked Up

(dir. Judd Apatow)

Another solid comedy from Judd Apatow and his crew (are they really called the Jew-Tang Clan?). The set-up's pretty straightforward: stoner Seth Rogan accidentally gets out-of-his-league hottie Katherine Heigl (Dr Izzie from Grey's Anatomy) pregnant during a boozy one night stand; she decides to keep the baby, he decides to try and make it work. Meanwhile, she's living w her sister Leslie Mann and brother in law Paul Rudd (the cooler shop nerd in 40 Year Old Virgin), whose constant bitching at each other makes her wonder if there's any hope for relationships ever working out. Seth's bong-loading roommates don't help much either. What makes this work above and beyond the confines of its slacker romcom premise, is that it's played in what passses for a pretty realistic style in Hollywood these days. Guys talk in guy talk (endlessly riffing on pop culture); the girls do girls' world properly. The communication breakdown is played for laughs, but also feels accurate. Populated w cast members from his excellent Freaks And Geeks, as well as past hits like 40 Year Old Virgin, Apatow goes a long way to making mainstream comedy relevant again. Still a bit too long, but it doesn't seem like anyone's heading back to the 90 minute-mark in a hurry.

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31st Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Miracle Fortress

Five Roses

Rough Trade

It's no coincidence that the release of Miracle Fortress' debut album happens to coincide with the belated start of the british summertime. Montreal based multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Graham Van Pelt must be a powerful man indeed to keep the sunshine at bay until he felt fit to offer this album to the world as one play of this idyllic piece of work will tell you where the nice whether has been for all this time. Listening to Five Roses is like lying on your back looking up at the sun, shimmering and dancing between the branches of a sheltering tree. As it blows gently in the breeze shards of light make their way through the foliage to intermittently soak you in their warmth. I include the tree in this analogy because this isn't just your sun bleached, airy-fairy pop record, it's much more varied than that. Van Pelt's vocals drift effortlessly on soaring thermals of delicate synths but also march triumphantly alongside pounding drums and joyous guitars.

Records of this type can often stay out too long in the sun and end up with no real focus to punctuate the breezy soundscapes. Opening track Whirrs puts that to right straight away with it's stomping rhythm and driving guitars. It's not the rising warmth of the rest of the record but it tells us unequivocally to feel free to plan the barbecue cos it's gonna be blue sky's from here on in. Debut single Have You Seen Her In Your Dreams is pure bliss with its soft melodies that will melt any heart and dispel any recollection of winter. Maybe Lately takes a slightly different path to your affection with it's Brian Wilson harmonies and jaunty baselines while Hold Your Secrets To Your Heart is a gently progressing but ultimately triumphant pop master stroke.

The album has a definite progressive structure as it steadily enlarges on this hopefulness throughout the forty three minutes. From the delicate droplets of warmth of the first half songs like Blasphemy with its midway gear shift slowly increase the downpour until the finale of This Thing About You provides us with the full panoramic view of the glorious ocean spread out before us. Granted, this song could evoke images of a T Mobile advert where a guy smugly struts around town on his phone without a care in the world purely cos he's got 400 free minutes, but stick with it and these appalling images will soon melt away. It's a triumphant end to a beautiful day.

Not since I discovered the highs of Loney, Dear's Sologne have I been this satisfied with a record. This is pure comfort without being easy listening. It's blissfully engaging and shimmers and shines as if soaked in light. Highly recommended.

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30th Jul 2007 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Eugene McGuinness

The Early Learnings Of...

Double Six

Hailing from Northern Ireland (via Liverpool and London apparently, whatever that means) the 21 year old Eugene McGuinness follows hs single 'Monsters Under The Bed' with his first album, ‘The Early Learnings Of…’, on Domino's new publishing off-shoot Double Six.

Eight tracks clock in at a compact half-hour and take the listener on a brightly coloured trip through the nocturnal anxieties of McGuinness. The journey is peopled by Vampires and ‘Monsters Under The Bed’ and pleas to ‘Turn Up The radio’ and drown out the troubled voices in his head. 

Sounds traumatic, but McGuinness works in the same vein of musical whimsy as label alumni The Magnetic Fields.  In fact, album opener ‘High Score’ has a bouncing, bittersweet quality which mines dangerously close to former band’s particular sound.  There is plenty of layering to the melodies, switching between acoustic orchestration and synthesised keyboard in a manner similar to Gulag Orkestar.

‘English Rain’ and ‘Big Issue Salesmen’ feature in McGuinness’s pitch to wrestle the title of suburban, lyrical laureates from the likes of Belle and Sebastien.  In ‘Bold Street’ we veer across a streetscene of buskers and schoolboys and late-night vomit before skipping into a rendition of Twinkle-twinkle little star.  The displaced, alienation of Morrissey is always in McGuinness’s sights, but there is none of the raw bite to it.  Eugene is a young, middle-class, street-poet whose strolls through the city always lead him back to the comfort of his TV set, internet connection and a pot noodle.  You sense his gentle, metropolitan paranoia will never take him anywhere really challenging.

Highlights like ‘Monsters Under The Bed’ and ‘A Child Lost Tesco’ seize you with their chirpy restlessness and lyrical flair.  It’s all bit of a musical fairground, bright lights and ghost-trains, but you’re never in any real danger as Mc Guinness busily fills his notebook with new things to worry about.

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28th Jul 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet