Chimpomatic

Dead Child

Attack

Touch & Go

Dead Child is a side-project for renowned post-rock guitarist Dave Pajo - formerly of Slint and occasional member of Tortoise. I've always rated Pajo ; I think his playing puts him in the league of great American left-field guitarists such as Marc Ribot or Bill Frisell, and so I was intrigued to hear this record since it's being touted as Pajo's hommage to the music of his youth - Heavy Metal. Now, I like chunky rock. I'm a sucker for an overdriven guitar playing choppy riffs and squalling lead breaks, and that's a pretty good prospect in the hands of someone like Pajo, and on this front the record really delivers. Great tight production, with drums bass and guitar providing a high-energy modern sound and riffs as tight as Fu Manchu. However...

In paying hommage to Metal, the band has chosen to utilise the vocal skills of Dahm (Phantom Family Halo) and this is where things take a turn for the worse. The problem is that Dahm's vocal style and comic-book lyrics are just plain corny. The words are a collection of schoolboy metal cliches presented in stock rhyming-couplet pairs, and his vocal delivery sounds like it's all a big joke - I'm reminded of Electric Six . This works against the strong backing tracks; it's a gourmet meal smothered in ketchup, an Aston Martin with fluffy dice. The overall effect is that the music and the vocals are almost at odds with each other. Perhaps that was deliberate, but it's as if Dead Child can't decide whether they are serious or not. Sadly, "not" wins.

In fact, so horrible are the vocals that it puts me off listening to what could have been a great record. I appreciate the fact that it's hard to be original in the world of metal vocals, but even the throat-rasping cookie-monster stylings of grindcore would be preferable to this. A great set of tunes reduced to dismissable nonsense.

#Music
#HarrisPilton

30th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

White Williams

Smoke

Double Six

Cleveland born Joe WIlliams, aka White Williams does everything he possibly can to sabotage this record, but ultimately fails. His debut record is 'unapologetic pop' which strikes me as baffling. Having toured with the likes of Girl Talk and Dan Deacon, he feels compelled to lace these sunny pop songs with touches of the avant garde. His guitar will be slightly out of key or he'll hit a bum note on the keyboard every now and again which in my mind is a form of apology to being pop music. With influences ranging from the 80's electro of The Human League (Headlines) and the hazy rock n' roll of T-Rex (In The Club) this is a collection of fairly simple and straight forward songs that would make for an enjoyable listen if the creator wasn't so preoccupied with taking his sound to other directions. So in trying to turn a pop album into a challenging slice of Art Pop he ends up doing neither.

Williams is clearly caught between some fairly obvious polar opposites. Songs like Going Down try their hardest to derail the melody with out-of-tune quirkiness but fail to rival the adventures of the afore mentioned Dan Deacon and the unlistenable noise of Lice In The Rainbow, a three and a half minute headache of directionless squeaks and twitters, aims at the abstract compositions of Black Dice - whom Williams also opened for with his previous band, but just serves to irritate the listener beyond belief. The title track, with its slow, plodding electronica and muffled vocals is so devoid of any substance it crumbles at the slightest glance, like a Tarantino plot line.

I hate to be so negative as this album does show signs of potential. Danger is the best song here, as it emerges from a cloud of tuneless mess it slips smoothly into a blissed out melody consisting of one word, "Danger." But it's a sad state of affairs when the strongest song features one word repeated over and over. Williams' desire to fit into that dubious genre 'Art Pop' is ultimately what kills this record. He has a natural ability to create effortless melody and catchy hooks but his half-hearted avant-garde dressing removes this from any genre at all and thins the whole thing down to dishwater. I realise this review sounds a bit like a school report and for that I apologise, seeing as the age old phrase we all experienced, "could try harder," doesn't really apply here as Williams' ultimate failing is that he's just trying way too hard.

#Music
#BC

21st Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Kills

Midnight Boom

Domino

Regular tabloid readers and those familiar with the gossip pages of the free newspapers that litter public transport will no doubt have heard of The Kills. Not because the press have been dutifully reproducing record label Domino’s PR campaign or because the transatlantic duo provide the soundtrack for the 3am Girls wicked whisperings over complimentary champagne. Of course, it is because the Kills’ guitarist Jamie Hince happens to date the supermodel with a thing for scruffy rockers. There is a simple reason why Jamie Hince is better known as Mr Kate Moss and that is because, after the best part of a decade of trying, The Kills just aren’t very good.

It is a pleasure to review music of merit. It appeals to the inner fan who has a chance to wax lyrical and marvel at the kind of creativity a limited axe-smith such as myself can even dream of producing. The task of being a ‘critic’ is less enjoyable. Much as it may pain to stick the knife in; if the Chimpomatic reader wants an honest review then that is what you shall get.

There are two fundamental problems with Midnight Boom. First of all there is a deja vu sense that this has all been done before. Edgy bands with minimal rhythms, choppy riffs and ‘cooler than thou’ vocal drawlings are nothing new. Even if they had managed to master this art, and no doubt it sounds great in the rehearsal rooms, by now it would be met with a shrug. Midnight Boom is offered up with very little panache. It is an album that sounds less like Television and more like the fuzzy sloganeering of the television sets from U2’s early 90s effort Zooropa and less akin to Blondie or Patti Smith and more like INXS straining for cool credibility.

It is this pursuit of cool that is the second of The Kills’ flaws. There is a sense that they know less of who they are and more of who they wish they were. It is a pyrrhic victory for style or substance resulting in an album that ends up feeling calculated and contrived. Songs such as Sour Cherry and Cheap and Cheerful lack any convincing passion or punch. The nagging refrain when listening to these tunes that try so hard to pretend that they’re not trying hard is of Brainstorm. The Arctic Monkeys could have been singing of Hince and sidekick Alison Mosshart when they mocked “top marks for not trying…but we can’t take our eyes off the t-shirt and ties combination.”

When all’s done I can’t help agreeing the Kills’ own statement that “I want you to be crazy, you’re boring baby.” Except for the fact you go out with Kate Moss obviously.

#Music
#Muxloe

25th Mar 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Vantage Point

(dir Pete Travis)

Presidential assassin thriller that rewinds the Spanish action several times until you get to see what’s really going on/get bored/realise it’s all totally ridiculous.

That said, it’s quite enjoyable. One of those dumb rides that thinks it’s a lot smarter than it it, but then finally gives in and rounds everything off with a big chase and one of the funniest mano y mano declarations of love you’ll see in a long time. And it’s only 90 minutes, which is a real plus in the chimp book of not wasting your life watching duff films.

Dennis Quaid is the Secret Service guy who took a bullet for President William Hurt a few years ago, and still Hasn’t Quite Got Over It.

Matthew Fox has got some time off the Lost island to play the Agent Who Vouches For Agent Quaid cos he’s an old buddy and still trusts him even though he’s a bit twitchy.

Forest Whitaker is a tourist filming stuff with his SONY handycam (coincidentally, it’s a Sony movie too, what are the odds?)

Sigourney Weaver plays a hard-nosed rolling news producer making some Tough Calls. But then they forget she’s in the film and she disappears.

Said Taghmaoui was much better in La Haine etc.

“8 Strangers. 8 Points of View. 1 Truth (the end sucks)”
 

#Film
#chimp71

26th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Bob Mould

District Line

Beggars

I've got to give this a fair trial because Bob Mould deserves it - having been a founder member of the massively influential and raw Husker Du, and then exorcising his pop demons and songwriting chops with Sugar, Mould has plenty of credit in the bank of cool. However, just taking things at face value, this album is a collection of promising but ultimately dull rock songs for grown-ups. Take the first track for example - Stupid Now - it starts out all Nirvana-in-quiet-mode with that good ol' Seattle tuning on the guitar, it has a nice modern feel to the production and Bob's voice sounds great... then along comes the chorus and the whiff of cheese becomes overwhelming; it honestly sounds like Linda Perry wrote this for a P!nk's new rockin' rekkid - it's that anthemic.

By rights, of course, no-one should deny Mould his payday. This is every bit as good as the aforementioned crafted crowd-pleasers peddled by America's one-woman tin pan alley, but somehow I don't think our Bob will get as much MTV airtime as P!nk. I hope that the ever-strong influence of FM radio in the US will help make this a success as it reaches out to middle America at drive-time, but for me personally I feel that this is rather like Francis Bacon deciding to paint like Jack Vettriano in order to have a wider appeal.

#Music
#HarrisPilton

5th Feb 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

The Superimposers

Harpsichord Treacle

Wonderfulsound

What do you look for in a new record?

The list might include a band's enthusiasm for the act of making music; being provoked by their lyrics; surprised by a sound, a riff, an unexpected instrument or chord. Anything that makes you sit up and think, 'I could never have done that, I wouldn't even know where to start'. Music making, though, has been liberated and people are no longer constrained by the mere inability to play an instrument. Who cares! Given a laptop, a vague rhythmic sense and the ability to sample a few bars played by someone else (possibly immeasurably more talented than you'll ever be) and you've got all you need. And thousands of you are at it.

The Superimposers are not musically incompetent in this way. They're just a little bit dull. There's no real surprise, no provocation, little of the unexpected. Sure, there's plenty of musical enthusiasm, but it's of the irritating kind for 'Fender Rhodes, harps and the mysterious Omnichord - a kidney-shaped Suzuki synthesiser played by strumming a touchplate'. I don't know about you but I don't think kidney-shaped synthesisers are a substitute for original sounding music and I'm tired of watching guys on stage hitting a multicoloured kid's xylophone or toy drum like they've just turned the music world on its head.

'Harpsichord Treacle' aspires to being the bastard child of The Beach Boys and Lemon Jelly. The music is determinately sun-shiny and warm, 'sound oozing from your i-Pod like treacle from a Harpsichord with plenty of peace, love and harmonies going on. Sounds delicious eh?' This is a direct quote from the band's promotional material and since Miles Copeland and Dan Warden, the duo behind Superimposers, released the album on their own record label: it's a direct quote from the band. Sounds delicious? Sounds sticky to me and just a little bit creepy. If someone turned and sold me their album on the strength of its 'peace love and harmonies', I'd run screaming for the Black Sabbath.

Miles and Dan are well intentioned, eager to be laid back and to grin inanely through a haze of good vibes. The first track on the album, 'Anymore' is apparently 'Glen Campbell-esque'. It sounds like the incidental music to a 1950's Western, which is no slight since I love 1950's Westerns. The rest of the album seems more unified, given direction by the band's self-posed query, 'How do they get that authentic 60's sound?’ A more pertinent question would appear to me to be, why would they bother?

It's not an unfamiliar problem, but listening to the eleven tracks on this album is like wandering through a sort of Musical Madame Tussaud's. They get the 'authentic 60's sound' by creating phonic waxworks which bear a questionable similarity to elements of the Byrds, through Serge Gainsbourg, the Kinks, the Mamas and Papas; all with added reverb and digital trickery. There's plenty of harmonising and humming. Miles and Dan 'met in an English seaside town', but they harmonise and hum like they're the Beach boys, goofing around at Baja. Then there's the sampling, every-so-often a few truncated bars of string instrumentals, looped and re-appearing as the tracks meander aimlessly. The ghost of Lemon-jelly drips off of many of these songs but there just isn't the same subtlety or eclectic humour. Dan and Miles may be musically proficient, talented even (unlike the lap-top crowd), but that doesn't stop many of the songs coming across as empty vehicles; showcases for the musical effects they have at their mixing-desk-fingertips.

The band's name was born apparently of their love for superimposing their music on other peoples and vice versa. They'd be better of spending less time 'plugging in space echoes' and instilling some conviction into the music. Some of the songs are brilliantly accomplished musical pastiche. 'Autumn falls' and 'Twilight' expertly mix musical tributes with seductive orchestration, rippling behind the vocals. But in hackneyed lyrics like 'I will make it all better' and 'no one said it was easy', I hear the band's own subconscious telling them to push a little harder at the musical coal-face.

If I were to pick one waxwork, this album would resemble Doris Day; remastered, re-looped, re-engineered by their 'way-back machine'. It's not a great resemblance but it's kind of freakishly there.

#Music
#LG

5th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Cat Power

Jukebox

Matador Records

Following her recent mainstream success with The Greatest and her rollicking cover of Stuck Inside of Mobile on last year's I'm Not There soundtrack, Chan Marshall AKA Cat Power returns with a whole album of covers - something of a sequel to 2000's aptly titled The Covers Record.

This swirling unfocussed blur of technically prefect renditions ranges from the bonifide classics like New York, New York through Hank WIlliams' Rambling (Wo)man, Dylan's christian-era I Believe In You and even including a re-working of her own Metal Heart from the album Moon Pix. The backing band pulls together another list of legendary performers - including Spooner Oldham, Teenie Hodges and Larry McDonald, as well as more contempaorary players like Matt Sweeney and Jim White.

With Cat Power's appeal seemingly moving beyond music and into fashion and celebrity it all feels a bit like an indie version of X-Factor. Like someone at the Karaoke bar with a bit of talent, it's impressive but not as fun or impassioned as a group singalong to Freebird ...and certainly doesn't fulfill the promise of hear earlier records, or the power and subtlty of songs like Cross Bones Style. WIth the low-key ethic of earlier albums like You Are Free polished away into oblivion, Chan Marshall could well be heading towards a 200 night stint in Vegas, especially now that Celine Dion has called it a day.

Marshall often adds her own lyrics to covers - as Dylan would do and even Led Zeppelin would to to Dylan with In My Time Of Dying. While this can inject a more interesting twist, it only highlights what's wrong with this record. While covers have always been an integral part of Cat Power's repertoire - and undeniably part of her live presence - it's the original material that works best here. With Song For Bobby, she tells of meeting long-time idol Bob Dylan and it's that personal touch that gives the song something more than just being an interesting rendition.

Seeming little more than a minor diversion as Chan runs for President, this album might just tide you over until she gets back to the main event.

#Music
#CSF

30th Jan 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Harrisons

No Fighting In The War Room

Melodic

Clearly, the challenge to anyone reviewing (or listening to) The Harrisons' debut album will be to not think of the Arctic Monkeys. Thing is, it's spikey, indie guitar music with a bit of a dancefloor edge sung in a Sheffield accent and peppered with the Yorkshire flavoured lyrics. How's that NOT going to sound like the Arctic Monkeys?

Unfortunately this puts the Harrisons very much in the shadow of their more famous counterparts - however good the songs might be, they're just not as original or as tight as the AM's brand of New Yorkshire. Believe me, this is not merely lazy journalism - check it out for yourself and add your comments if you don't think it sounds like the Monkeys.

But where Alex Turner and co have brought a snappiness and progressive edge to their sound, the Harrisons fall on traditional indie songwriting and rhythms which end up being several stops short of original. I don't think this will hold them back too much - already established with the NME crowd and getting radio sessions, I'm sure they'll do okay, but if spikey indie pop is your thing you might be better off waiting for the next Young Knives album.

#Music
#HarrisPilton

7th Jan 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Extras

Christmas Special

Feature-length outing to finish off Ricky Gervais's second sitcom. Andy Millman's now a big enough star to be able to skip ahead of Hale & Pace at the Ivy, while Maggie's had enough of arsing about in showbiz and is working as a cleaner. Millman gets seduced by the idea of getting an agent who isn't hanging out with Barry from EastEnders all day, and then finds out fame isn't all it's cracked up to be?

In some ways, this works much better than the series, which seemed pretty myopic in its scope - effectively Gervais writing about getting The Office off the ground. Here, he steps back from the process to show that making it isn't that great either. Not really much of a revelation, perhaps, but there's just enough in the final rant against our worship of micro celebs to make it interesting. Along the way, they cram in more self-deprecating cameos from George Michael, Gordon Ramsey, Dean Gaffney, Lionel Blair, Clive Owen etc etc - which makes it feel like they hate themselves for not being able to resist getting all these people in the show.

Be interesting to see what he comes up with next, and it is admirable that he's been able to pull the plug on another pretty big show. Just hope it's not another TV show about TV; think we've had enough of those now thanks - even ITV's getting in on the mediacirclejerking next year with their sitcom (Moving Wallpaper) about the making of a soap (Echo Beach) that you then get to watch.

#TV
#chimp71

27th Dec 2007 - 4 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Richard Youngs

Autumn Response

Jagjaguwar

Sparse and simple, Richard Youngs is from the Elliot Smith school of minimal production, relying on lyrics and vocal power to win you over. Unfortunately his one studio trick of double-tracking his vocals on several songs make for difficult listening, and as a result Autumn Response album never really gets going.

Sticking to his Man + Guitar format, Youngs plays question and answer with himself, with very little change in pace or tempo.

17 minute epic Something Like Air brings the album to a close, but even here there's not much to recommend beyond the impressive length. It isn't Freebird though, just a very long variation on his other 8 songs...

#Music
#NM

6th Dec 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Libertines

Time For Heroes - The Best Of The Libertines

Rough Trade

I confess. The Libertines passed me by. I'm not sure if I was just not reading NME at the time, but they literally passed me by to the point where I couldn't tell you a single one of their songs. Their influence can (apparently) be seen in the more recent crop of British bands who seem to have taken the band's style and applied it to good music. I'm talking about the Arctic Monkeys and The View amongst others, who of course both have obvious roots and influences, but bring a bucketload of originality with it.

A quick iTunes search tells me that as far as new music goes, 2002-2004 was defined for me by Arcade Fire, Beastie Boys, Flaming Lips, Foo Fighters, Grandaddy, Interpol, John Frusciante, Kings of Leon, My Morning Jacket, Red Hot Chili Chili Peppers, Steven Malkmus and Weezer. In alphabetical order. Come to think of it, 2004 is barely a whisper away - but looking back at my list it is certainly dominated by American bands and The Libertines must have presented a tangible alternative to that.

The comeback of the English guitar band is certainly indisputible, with dance music being the most obvious loser, but coming at The Libertines now with hindsight but a distinct lack of sentimentality it's still hard for me to see what all the fuss is about. At least Oasis were huge, loutish, hotel-trashing superstars who would literally walk out of a US stadium tour waving their fingers. Can't Stand Me Now does come across as a melacholic anthem but the songs just seem to be mostly repetitive chorus, which could at least make for a singalong live. In this day and age, there's little excuse for poor production. But The Libertines just seem to make dull, derivative music with very little genuine impact. The band are clearly derivative of many British bands, but strangely the band they remind me of most is So-Cal punkers Seven Seconds. Go figure.

It's not saying much when a band has to cull a 'Best Of' from only two original albums and a few singles and it's saying even less when half those tracks still put themselves forward as skippable. Sorry, I honestly tried.

#Music
#CSF

29th Nov 2007 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Failure To Launch

(dir. Tom Dey)

A confusing blend of your typical Matthew McRomcomaughey movie mixed in with a bit of Dr Dolittle and even the Truman Show. Not as bad as Death Proof of course - but obviously a long way from Wooderson, man.

#Film
#CSF

29th Oct 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

To Rococo Rot

ABC123

Domino

Hey Marketing guys! When you're finished stamping on puppy-dogs minds or slapping ginger orphans or whatever you do during your lee-sure time, consider how cool you're going to look when you recommend this teutonic art-bleep as the soundtrack to your next german or swedish automotive commercial. You know, not as alienating as Aphex, not as sappy as Zero7. And there ends the recommendation. Not really a concept album but conceptual in it's, err, conception or something. This is the music you get when you make the shapes of Helvetica font letters on certain types of music software, and boy does it sound like it. I'm all for art and conceptual performance in music but this falls squarely between the planks of entertainment (right plank) and art (left plank) - plunging sadly into the basement of disinterest.

To Rococo Rot should know better. This is hardly typical of their recent output, and was probably a lot of fun to do, but friends - it just ends up as average sounding noodlectronica. So, come on you lot, back to your real instruments and key-changes. I mean, it's quite pretty and everything, but this so-called music of the future is sounding a bit dated now.

By the way, if you have a really shit car, you could always try driving whilst playing this to see if it fools your mind into thinking you're having a highly engineered autobahn type experience. Do let us know if this turns out to be the case.

#Music
#HarrisPilton

22nd Oct 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Siouxsie Sioux

Mantaray

Universal

From her early days as a groupie for the Sex Pistols - and the catalyst for the Bill Grundy TV meltdown - Siouxsie Sioux (and the Banshees or course) went on to become one of the most influential bands of the punk/post-punk era - cited as a major influence on bands from The Cure (Robert Smith played guitar with the Banshees for a bit) right up to LCD Soundsystem, who covered Slowdive in 2006.

Siouxsie herself went on to have success with The Creatures and in various other guises, and while this first solo album is being billed as a comeback, a quick look through the files suggests it's just getting a bigger marketing push than some of the other late-period entries.

After a fairly average start things pick up with Here Comes That Day,  but with the 'spooky' atmosphere of Loveless or the 'moody' delivery of If It Doesn't Kill You, the song writing offers very little of note - with Siouxsie's strong voice seeming dated and more suited to the stage, projecting literal narrative lyrics up to the seats at the back.

Drone Zone is one of the most aptly titled songs I have heard in a while, and no, the title's not ironic. They Follow You provides a brief glimmer of light, with a nice extended instrumental intro although that is quickly overshadowed by the album's low point - Heaven and Alchemy. The title says it all.

While some of the songs on the album sound updated in some ways, they sound incredibly out of touch and tired in others - making this an unfortunately forgettable album.

#Music
#CSF

7th Sep 2007 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

The Dragons

B.F.I.

Ninja Tune

You owe me a debt of gratitude.  In reviewing ‘BFI’, I have saved you from losing a precious forty-five minutes of your existence to the misery of phonic drivel. ‘BFI’, short for ‘Blue Forces Intelligence’ is an album by The Dragons, recorded in 1970 and released for the first time this month by Ninja Tune.

The pre-release hype describes the ‘Great Story’ that lies behind the album’s creation: The three brothers Dragon, (Doug, Daryl and Dennis) are unveiled as a trio of tripped-up surfer-dudes living in Malibu and working furiously after-hours to record their ‘psychedelic soul/ rock masterpiece’.  I mean that says is all doesn’t it.  If you weren’t getting the heebie-jeebies from the album title, then surely the proposal of a ‘psychedelic soul/ rock masterpiece’ sends you screaming for your Spinal Tap box set.

Anyhow, these ‘multi-instrumentalist sons of a symphony conductor and an opera singer’, have a great deal of trouble selling their album to a label.  Which is strange really since you’d have thought an album as morale-crushingly average as this would have found a use in some Vietnam-era Abu Ghraib, destroying the resistance of its Viet Cong inmates.

The three DD’s get disillusioned because all these straight record execs, keep telling them their ‘spacey and weird, but also funky’ album is utter crap. They lope off into session work and, if you believe the myth, they all go on to be in the Beach Boys backing band.  And  ‘you can kind of hear that in their own sound’, as the press would have you believe. Yeah, ‘kind of’ being crucial to how you interpret that statement.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong and maybe it’s the reason that Brian Wilson has spent a good chunk of his life monumentally depressed, off his face on psychotropic drugs and hearing voices in his head.  All of them presumably repeating, ‘Hey Brian, isn’t it strange how you can hear that way-out Dragons sound behind some of the most inspired and uplifting masterpieces of the Beach Boys?!  Kind of’.

37 years later and the source of all this horror, the BFI master-tapes, lie quietly pulsating in rightful oblivion in the basement of Dennis Dragon’s home.  Hidden, that is, until the day that Kev of DJ Food gives him a call and, ‘being a fan of all possible food-based puns’, asks if he can include the track ‘Food for my soul’, on a future ‘Solid Steel’ mix for Ninja tunes.  And there you have it, as if at the opening of the musical Ark of the Covenant, we must look away from the eruption of screaming demons and evil sonic harpies pouring forth from the speakers.  All because of a love of food-based puns. 

‘BFI’, represents everything that went wrong musically in the late sixties and seventies; bloated ambition, walls of over-layered instrumentals, swelling chorals and pretentiousness disguised as a trippy careless, ease.  The album reeks of musical shop-lifting with its cod-Doors allusions and could have done with a strong editorial hand in order to stop other parts sounding like a BBC sound effects tape; ‘Doctor Who/ 60’s psychedelica’.  If you press me I’ll say the first two songs lead you into a false sense of security, and ‘Mercy Call’, the ninth track, does serve its purpose by providing some relief from the misery.  However, other than that, the rest sounds like a struggle between Count Dracula and Austin Powers, wrestling for control of the Hammond organ.

Sifting through the compressed layers of dire lyrics on ‘BFI’ produces a few gems, but none shares the pertinence of; "I can’t believe that hate is real".  Well Dragons, it is - and you too, reader, can share in this mind blowing revelation by popping on The Dragons and sampling a little of this ‘lost classic of psych-whimsy, Westcoast sexiness and serious musical chops’.

#Music
#LG

13th Aug 2007 - 5 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Alias

Collected Remixes

Anticon

Is this the sound of an underground label on the turn? I doubt it judging by the quality Anticon releases that flank this one but you really have to wonder what place this collection of easy listening remixes has either on this label or on the discography of an artist with the pedigree of Alias. Together with people like Sole and Dose One,  Brendon Whitney was among the first wave of artists to launch the Anticon assault and with his work on the Deep Puddle Dynamics project and his debut The Other Side Of The Looking Glass Alias established himself as main player in this pioneering collective.

Which makes this release all the more curious. It's not bad at all, in fact many of these tracks in their own right are pretty solid but put them in a context such as this and boredom soon sets in. This is a pretty varied cast featuring the likes of Lunz, Sixtoo and Lali Puna and yet it all sounds like a substandard Alias record. All distinctive characteristics of the original songs seem to have been ironed out in favor of the presiding bass heavy, synth beat that Alias is all about at the moment.

Some standout moments are Why?'s inclusion on the 13 & God remix, lush atmospherics on Lucky Pierre's Crush and the song of the album has to go to Sixtoo's Karmic Retribution/Funny Sticks with it's booming beat and apocalyptic grandiosity.  But these are the songs I would have expected to shine as the originals are so good and a part from that it's all pretty forgettable. I normally recoil from remix albums for the opposite reason, that they are too fragmented, so I guess that's one distinctive feature about this record.

#Music
#HHG

20th Jun 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Dave Derby

...And The Norfolk Downs

Reveal Records

Being a paid up member of both fraternities I see certain similarities between the lot of a music fan and a singleton on the dating scene. Having fallen head over heels before both are ever optimistically on a quest for new loves. Each new date or act that comes by could be 'the one' but even if not hopefully there will be some fun to be had along the way. And all singletons know that to find the 'one' it is necessary to kiss a few frogs or spend a few nights on mattresses rendered uncomfortable by the strategic placement of a rock hard pea. Listening to Dave Derby reminded me of blind dates, and in particular ones that were not very successful. Dave Derby is not a prince dressed up as a frog, he's just a frog.

As with any blind date the agreement to listen to Dave was undertaken in good faith. Aside from getting the gender wrong in this case I decided to proceed on the basis that the match making skills of the Chimpomatic machine have served me well in the past. The prospects of a suitable hook up were not harmed by pre-date reports that Dave Derby was akin to Ryan Adams, a man who's music is often hit and miss but can verge on the sublime when it hit mode. The date had a promising start too. The introductory seconds of opener 'Come on Come on' echoed Neil Young's 'Out on the weekend' - the beguiling introduction to his classic album Harvest. The initial mood lulled me into believing that maybe Dave Derby could be the one, it had something of the sweet melancholy of Beck's Seachange about it - promising as this was one of my more recent loves. So like a date, where the mood is right, the introduction reliable, the venue cool and the company looking good I was confident this could be a night to saviour. That is until Dave opened his mouth.

The problem with Dave Derby is that his voice is rather middle of the road and consequently boring - after a while it becomes something of an endless drone. It is the musical equivalent of glazing over the eyes and hearing almost nothing said by your dinner companion. Even when the effort is made to tune it to what is actually being spoken the lyrical rhymes are lazily predictable ("baby what am I gonna do, I just don't know how I'll get over you"). Though he tries to be edgy and left-field the prevailing sense is of a sentimentality typified by 'You Got to Go' that would be a little to syrupy for Jack Johnson or even the Lighthouse Family. It all just reminded me of a date with no passion or spark. OK, so love may not be on the agenda but a little adventure wouldn't go a miss. If only I had thought to arrange a call from a friend giving me an 'escape early' get out clause from this bad date.

After a full listen to '...And the Norfolk Downs' I assessed the album as one does after a bad date. Maybe the problem wasn't with them, maybe it was me, perhaps I was in the wrong frame of mind, or maybe I just didn't give them a fair crack of the whip? After all it would be harsh to say Dave Derby was entirely without charm. The drumming on songs like 'Albuquerque' has a languid almost lazily hypnotic feel. The hammond organ on 'Baby' briefly does its best to brighten things up. And occasionally, such as on 'My Back Issues', Dave is canny enough to know that he wants to sound like Willy Mason even if he doesn't quite know how to. So being the fair minded type I am I gave Dave another chance, and, in the interests of reviewing accurately, a few more chances too. But as with dates, I should've trusted my gut instinct rather than give into eternal optimism. Dave Derby is still a frog and won't turn into a prince no matter how many times you kiss or listen to him.

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7th May 2007 - 4 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Low

Drums And Guns

Sup Pop

Things We Lost In The Fire was an exquisite piece of work that managed to wrap you in its melancholy, taking you deeper into its hopeless warmth and only allowing you up for air to keep you alive. 2005's The Great Destroyer saw the band take a whiplash turn of direction as they showed us that all this brooding and threatening that we had persevered with was about to pay off. They flexed their muscles and the result was awesome. So where to after this turn? The Great Destroyer was such a bold move for a band with such a distinctive back catalogue that there was no going back from it. Drums And Guns unfortunately shows Low trying to.

This starts off very slow indeed, but through Belarus Low manage to maintain a certain tension, or air of expectation. It ticks over nicely, but in classic Low style goes nowhere - and leaves you wanting more. This is to their credit, as in the past they have expertly held your attention through miles of empty, lonely terrain but as Breaker creeps in with it's subtle electronic tip toes and itself goes nowhere you start to wonder whether you have the patience for another long and desolate journey. This seems like an album of sketches, rather than finished ideas. Few of the songs have any kind of resolution and when they do, as in Your Poison, they tail off after barely a minute - while Hatchet is entirely based around a very questionable concept of "Let's bury the hatchet like The Beatles and The Stones."

The glimmers of light throughout this record are the introduction of a more electronic sound. It gives the vast sonic landscapes some definition. Always Fade has an organic, sampled beat that mirrors the muddy textures they used to create with the guitar and Breaker adopts a totally different minimal sound that supports the vocals very well.

This is by no means a bad album, but for a band from whom we expect greatness it is disappointing. They seem to be reconsidering their brave move, but finding that it took them so far away from their original position they are struggling to get back. Since I first heard this band I have been so impressed with their confidence and conviction. They were always a band that knew exactly what they were doing and when playing live they displayed a command of their audience that throughout their marathon, barren performances you could have heard a pin drop. This conviction seems to have dwindled slightly here and I can't fight the feeling of restlessness that creeps in during this record. I am in no way suggesting that I'm getting off the Low Train, but I might read my book for a while until the view changes.

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19th Apr 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Dukes Of Hazzard

(dir. Jay Chandrasekhar)

Warner Bros

Notably mainly for it's ZZ Top sound-tracked car chase and Luke Duke's Zeppelin T-shirt, this mindless entertainment is watchable enough ...especially if you happen to be flying long haul. "Appalachian Americans if you please".

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23rd Feb 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

The Illusionist

(dir.Neil Burger)

Ed Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel and Rufus Sewell in this turn-of-the-century tricksy magician drama.

Norton's got the skills to pay the Viennese bills here, wowing Crown Prince Sewell and his fiancee Biel with his onstage wizardry, while court cop Giamatti tries to figure out how he's doing everything. Biel turns out to be Norton's long-lost childhood squeeze; hey-presto, the magic's still there.

Looks a lot like The Prestige, but it's less of a cheat than that turned out to be, although the whole "nothing is what it seems" line doesn't really hold up, as it's all ultimately predictable and the "woah, is that what's just happened?!!" ending they're going for is so obvious that you're left wondering why Officer Giamatti's such a doofus and the only person in the room who hasn't seen it all coming.

That said, their combined charisma just about carries it along; more a dvd than a cinema outing probably.

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21st Feb 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Air

Pocket Symphony

Astralwerks

New Air, following their template of breathy vocals singing things like "the angels cry to see your photograph" over dirt-free production from Nigel Godrich.

Another one of those albums that's ok, but nowhere near as good as Moon Safari - it's like they could really do w having someone take away all the studio toys and make them put it back together in a bedroom or something - the ambient slickness veers far too closely to dinner party muzak than the elegant pop they first gave us. They've lost the freshness that made tracks like All I Need (and the even better Super Discount remix Soldissimo) so great.

Jarvis Cocker's on One Hell Of A Party (he lives in Paris now, they must have bumped into him at the local boulangerie), and just to really bring the whole thing down a few stars, the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon shows up as well.

All a bit Jean Michel J'air, really.

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9th Jan 2007 - 5 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Crash

(dir. Paul Haggis)

Paul Haggis' stylish directorial debut manages the astonishing task of condensing the sprawl of LA into a movie-studio sized hamlet, where every cast member's life is intertwined with the others. Pulls the heartstrings, but is essentially empty.

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24th Oct 2006 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Ladyfinger (NE)

Heavy Hands

If the title of this Omaha based four piece suggests slender beauty then think again. The album title Heavy Hands gives more of a clue to what these boys are up to. The general MO here is to fuck you in the ears and these four horsemen of the rock apocalypse do a pretty thorough job.

Following in the dark, well trodden footsteps of bands like Motorhead Heavy Hands never lets up and is not too dissimilar to being punched in the head for just over half an hour. This is not a complaint though, they deal a quality blow to the head. They are on tour with The Bronx this month and should warm the crowd up pretty well with their rock broth of pounding drums, nose bleed riffs and primal vocals. If you've got the balls for it but wouldn't mind those balls getting a damn good bruising then let Ladyfinger lay on their Heavy Hands.

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23rd Oct 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

Mr Hudson + The Library

The Bread + Roses EP

It's often an interesting idea to combine hip-hop beats with more traditional vocals. It's also often a bit bland when it happens. Only the remix of the title track Bread + Roses, with more edgy beats and distorted vocals, is really of interest here.

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23rd Oct 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

New Rhodes

Songs From The Lodge

"Tonight Matthew (or Cat), I'm going to be Morrisey" is something New Rhodes singer James Williams might say, were he appearing in the final of Stars in their Eyes. He'd win it too, so good is his impression.

The songs zip along pleasantly enough and will presumably have the indie teens shaking the clubs, as well as the 30 somethings who still yearn for those indie teen years - jiving after the dinner parties. But having all songs sound like potential singles; chart-bothering singalongs loses points in my book. After a while, you want to grab the band and shake them 'Do something naughty!! Spit on the floor. Steal a Magazine. Anything!' However, when they do: "When you look in the mirror tell me what you see, because all I see is a useless, worthless piece of shit" (Cowardice), you feel a bit guilty that you made them do it. The style of Morrissey's singing, present; the wit of his lyrics, absent.

They are technically well put together songs, if slightly forgettable. I expect they'll get themselves quite a sizable following and they are certainly inoffensive enough to do so. But if your natural leaning is towards something with a touch more hair on its balls, this isn't going to do it for you.

Watch the video for "History of Britain" here.

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20th Oct 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

Robin Hood

Episode One

Aiming to fill that Doctor Who teatime gap on Saturday evenings comes the latest incarnation of Robin Hood. More Robin Hoodie than man in tights, leaving out all that mystical "ooh it's the power of the trees" stuff that the Michael "the hooded one" Praed 80s version and swapping it for what passes for rollicking japes in 2006.

Undemanding fun mostly, bit slow, and still like the cartoon one the best, but could pick up. Keith Allen makes an OK Sheriff of Nottingham, camping it up while chewing down on large hunks of meat as Robin gathers his boyband of merry men and starts foiling his unreasonable tax demands etc. Marian's fiesty, everyone else seems to be happy to crack medieval jokes and run around in the forest. All looks like quite a laugh hanging out there; not sure what they're going to do when winter comes…

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4th Oct 2006 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

DJ Shadow

The Outsider

Shadows inspired first album Entroducing has dated, his second The Private Press hasn't. His third, The Outsider is less likely to even get off the ground.

Shadow has indulged in some of his own musical preferences here with the majority of the first half of the album as straight hiphop with guest rappers. Unfortunately on the whole the quality of these initial tracks is poor. The rapping, both lyrically and stylistically, as well as the beats, sound like something from a Busta Ryhmes b-sides album. A case in point being Keep Em Close (featuring Nump!), with chorus lyrics "keep your friends close but those that you want to rob, keep them closer"

One of the most appealing aspects of Shadow as an artist was his commitment to producing hiphop that shied away from this kind of predictable bragadosery nonsense. Its a shame he has included this too many times on this album. Much of the rapping sounds like it was recorded in one day as a freestyle with no preparation. Set against Shadows reputation for attention to detail this just doesn't work. Enuff featuring Q-Tip and Lateef exemplify this most glaringly.

Having said all this the second half of the album largely moves back to the innovation and eclecticism of samples, beats and instrumentation upon which Shadow made his name. The guitar on the New Orleans inspired Brocken Levee Blues, and the drumbeats on Artifiact really shake the listener out of the monotony that the first tracks slip them into. Unfortunately for this album I suspect it will be a case of too little too late.

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18th Sep 2006 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Miami Vice

(dir. Michael Mann)

Following the ratting-out of some FBI agents, Miami Detectives Crockett and Tubbs head deep (deep) undercover to trap the drug traffickers who are responsible. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx assume the mantle handed down from the classic 80's TV show but, as you've no doubt read elsewhere, this movie bears very little resemblence to that. The focus here was supposed to be realism and action - both of which are delivered in fits and spurts.

The setting and photography of the movie is often superb, such as a night-time shot across the bows of two speedboats heading up a river, or the afterburners lighting up on Crockett's Ferrari as it speeds down a night lit highway. However, the contrast between the intensely grainy night scenes (often shot with mostly 'available' light) and the crystal clear daylight scenes is often jarring.

All of these things could go unnoticed in the movie if at least the script or the acting held things together - but here they are the two weakest areas. There is not a single great performance in the movie to match even Tom Cruise's over-the-top outing in Collateral. Foxx and Farrell (surely they should start an ice cream company?) are both just playing their own movie-star persona - and add little depth or emotion to what could easily have been classic roles.

The script is so thin that I found myself looking for twists, turns and red herrings where there simply were none. There's no subtext here - just straight-up 'text'. The multiple 'love' scenes, (generally with Audioslave accompaniment) were enough to make anyone puke and, while the action scenes are handled well, there's not much that we haven't seen before - most notably in Michael Mann's own films (the shootout in Heat, the nightclub killing in Collateral).

This movie had all (or most) of the necessary ingredients, but just couldn't get the mix right to bake up something special. So disappointing.

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29th Aug 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

She Wants Revenge

She Wants Revenge

If Interpol model themselves on Joy Division, then these guys are more like Human League. It's not bad, but the parody wears thin quite quickly - leaving a pretty empty listen behind.

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29th Aug 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

Absentee

Schmotime

I have made it my mission lately to source bands who's lyrics go deeper than the obvious and could stand alone without the music to disguise their shallowness. So I was excited at the prospect of the first full length release from this promising British indie quintet. Their mini album Donkey Stock. released in 2005, was an unexpected gem and although Schmotime expands on a lot of the good points about Donkey, it ultimately fails to impress. And this annoys the hell out of me. It really has the makings of a great piece of work. Singer Dan Michaelson has a voice steeped in Tom Waits / Tindersticks tradition and lyrics that can often match the wit and tragic irony of Morrissey.

The element that lets the whole thing down is the music. Absentee's main manifesto, I would imagine, is that they make tragic melancholic songs about lost love and wasted life but set them to ironically jolly music. Whenever Morrissey or The Smiths tried this, in my opinion, it didn't work and it doesn't work here. Like Girlfriend In A Coma, songs like We Should Never Have Children see exceptional lyrics being lost in the weak, upbeat musical accompaniments. It hurts to hear lyrics like "darling we should never have children, they'd be one in a million ugly swine," go unappreciated. He then goes on to point out, with profound observation, the dangers of what would later become "A burning family tree, generations of falling leaves." In the excellently titled Truth Is Stranger Than Fishin he starts off, "One hundred fisherman set sail with rods out but only hooking tail." Here Michaelson uses the sea and the shore as metaphor for their distanced bodies and cuttingly points out, "besides I prefer slightly firmer lands." This metaphor for his lovers body as territory is continued in what is another brilliantly titled song, Something To Bang. In it he states, "I'm tired of being a man, always farming your land."

Even as I write these lyrics down their genius makes me wonder if I have got this band wrong and that I should persevere more, but I have really tried and as much as it pains me I just don't buy it.

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17th Aug 2006 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

The Notorious Betty Page

(dir. Mary Harron)

The bog-standard approach of this film barely lifts it above the standard of a Biography Channel profile - giving us no real insight into the history of this iconic model. Nice posters though.

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15th Aug 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Occasion

Cannery Hours

Solid offering from this New York band but they make no attempt to disguise the massive Pink Floyd influence.

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14th Aug 2006 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Peter, Bjorn & John

Writer's Block

Writers Block is the third album from this Swedish power-pop trio and its summer release could brighten up many a cheery bbq or dinner party. Young Folks is the obvious single here; it's a jovial little number featuring Concretes vocalist Victoria Bergsman. Somehow it manages, by the skin of its teeth, to remain on the right side of cheesy-we're-as-happy-as-The Magic Numbers-pop, but treads a very fine line. The whole album tends to tread this path, never crossing the line but coming dangerously close on occasions.

Up Against The Wall starts off this way but then seems to drift off into almost New Order territory with the last 4 minutes taken up by a glorious beat/guitar instrumental. This really picks the album up only to be dashed by the appalling Paris 2004. I would like to amend my earlier statement about how they never quite cross the line into Magic Numbers stomach churning happiness. They cross it here with the chorus "I'm all about you, you're all about me, we're all about each other." Thankfully this doesn't herald a halftime descent into puke, and we resume proceedings with The Cure-sounding Lets Call It Off and the even more Cure sounding The Chills. This obvious influence is not a criticism and it works very well creating 2 of the more interesting tracks on the album.

This isn't a bad piece of work. It's one of those records that demonstrate such clear influences but as those influences come from great sources it tends to work. But at the end of the day, the fact that they are so glaringly obvious is their ultimate undoing.

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10th Aug 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

Sufjan Stevens

The Avalanche

This was billed as a collection of out-takes and demos from the 2005's critically acclaimed Illinois album. Having announced his plan to make a record about each of the US states, Sufjan Stevens became the hardest working man in the music industry. Not only are there loads of states, but each album he makes is twice as long as your average record. So what does he do? He makes more albums in between. Like Illinois wasn't long enough that it has yielded enough extra's to make another album - and The Avalanche weighs in at 1.2 hours.

I was quite excited about this album as I am a big fan of Mr. Stevens but have to admit I am quite disappointed and for very baffling reasons. My main complaint, and this is where it becomes baffling, is that this record contains too many new songs and not enough rehashed old ones. I told you it was strange. What I mean by this is that in recent years Sufjan Stevens' sound, though brilliant, has become very polished involving a myriad of instruments and backing singers to create a very complex and layered sound. So what I wanted from this release was the same songs pared down to their bare essentials, his rough sketches before he drafted in the horn section. And the best moment on this record is when just that happens. There is a beautiful rendition of the best Illinois offering 'Chicago' early on, but then he goes on to include 2 more renditions of the same song and none of them are as good as the afore mentioned versions. By the end of the album you are quite bored of 'Chicago'.

I know I sound ungrateful and any other band that put out an album of new songs that were this good would get a glowing review, but with Sufjan Stevens I want less. He puts out so many great songs that he is in danger of saturating the market. This album is no exception. 'Saul Below' is a beautiful, melancholic gem and 'Pittsfield' is simply heartbreaking. Here Sufjan lets us into his troubled past through a dialogue with his less than perfect father. "I can talk back to you now, I know, from a few things that I learnt from this TV show." It's as if he is assuming the role of himself as a child but with the gift of hindsight. It is uplifting but in the saddest of ways. Only Sufjan can make my heart break like this, but he does it so often and it's becoming a problem, my broken heart needs to protect itself and is in danger of becoming immune. I had it playing at home as I was writing this review and my girlfriend said, "sometimes the stuff you listen to can be a bit wet." Of course I scoffed at this and told her she was wrong, but then secretly found myself agreeing with her. Sorry Sufjan but I just don't think the world needs this album.

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11th Jul 2006 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Morrissey

London Palladium

Due in part to my near death experience during the last Morrissey gig at Alexandra Palace two weeks ago I felt a bit cheated and wanted to see him properly in a smaller, more intimate and civilised environment. The Palladium fits this description perfectly and was a specific request by the man himself as a venue to perform the last 3 shows of his tour.

It all started off so well. Our seats were in the Royal Circle and we had a perfect view. As is customary on this tour a version of You'll Never Walk Alone is played at top volume to signal the imminent start to the proceedings. Hands were already in the air and I could barely contain my excitement. As expected, the reception was rapturous and the show kicked off in style. A few songs later came the riff heavy How Soon Is Now, which was greeted with utter delight and simply rocked. Morrissey seemed to be really enjoying himself - indulging in plenty of banter about how Radio 1 refuse to play his single and that The Palladium felt like home to him as he played here 20 years ago. However, it soon became evident that he was experiencing some difficulty with his earpiece and started to not finish songs, saying how terrible the sound was - despite us telling him it sounded fine. At one point he even asked the crowd "please someone, say something encouraging." The sound problems really seemed to be rocking his confidence and it soon appeared like he was just going through the motions and wanted to get off the stage as soon as possible. As a result he decided not to come back on for the encore and the disgruntled crowd booed as they left the venue.

Despite the great start and an excitement that is rarely found at live performances I left with a deep feeling of disappointment. The sound problems were clearly not his fault and were a cause of some distress to him but I would have thought a performer of his magnitude and experience could overcome this and not give the audience the impression that he was bored and we weren't doing enough to entertain him. After what I thought was a fantastic version of Life Is A Pigsty he asked us why we were clapping. I thought the sound was fine. Vocals are often an element that can get lost at rock gigs but his voice is always so clear and this was no exception. The crowd's excitement was killed by the obvious look of frustration and anguish coming from the man we had paid a lot of money to see. I guess he can just chalk it up as a bad day at work, but for the two fans I spoke to in the pub afterwards who had paid £190 per ticket it was a disaster. I haven't given it a rock bottom rating as the first 45 minutes were awesome and the venue was fantastic. I also have a new favourite track; Ganglord. This B-side to the new single is a classic in waiting.

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15th May 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

Green Street

(dir. Lexi Alexander)

Or what Frodo did next. Tired of mixing it with Orcs and the like, it turns out he decided to test his skills against an altogether different fighting challenge; the football hooligans of England.

Promising journalist Matt (Elijah Wood) gets set-up and thrown out of Harvard, so he heads to London to catch up with his sister. Thanks to her brother-in-law, he wastes no time getting in with a West Ham ‘firm’ and into a series of pitched battles with rival supporters. When I say he wastes no time, literally on the same day he sets foot in Heathrow he later has his teeth knocked out by a Birmingham City thug.

It’s an interesting idea, what attracts young men to the world of football violence, but I’m sure it has been done better elsewhere. The shoe-horning of an American tourist into the story doesn’t sit comfortably, it feels that the desire to get a Hollywood name on-board comes at the expense of deeper analysis into the minds of the gang members.

The supporting chavs are believable with special mentions to Mark E. Smith lookalike ‘Bovver’ and Geoff Bell, who gives another fine display of London menace (as previously seen in The Business). However, the film is let down by the casting of the leads. Considering he has a psychotic aversion to ‘Yanks and Foreigners’ the leader of the gang talks like a South African Tim Westwood and Elijah Wood looks as lost as, well, as an American trying to understand the offside rule.

Certainly not a date movie and probably more suited to a well-scripted TV drama, it’s better than a kick in the teeth and there are certainly plenty of those in the 90 odd minutes.

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28th Apr 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Business

(dir. Nick Love)

If Goodfellas was a painting it would be a Masterpiece. Now, imagine you reduced that painting to a line drawing and invited a load of 6 year old Peckham school kids to colour it in with their crayons. Chances are you’ll end up with The Business. With it’s rise and fall of a gangster story, voiceover and freeze frames, it throws much more than a cheeky wink in the direction of Scorsese’s classic.

Back in the Thatcher years, scoundrel Frankie gets in a bit of trouble with the law and heads to Spain’s Costa del Crime to lay low for a while. On arrival he quickly aquaints himself with the neighbourhood villains and embarks on a sun-filled life of birds, drugs and crime. As he makes his way up the ladder, our man Frankie wears a permanently confused expression; whether taking his 6th line of coke of the morning, having a shotgun pointed at him or being explicitly propositioned by the pretty femme fatale he constantly looks as if he is trying to make sense of Hebrew. It’s somewhat suprising therefore that Frankie eventually becomes Mr. Big, with a direct link to Colombia. The 80’s were indeed ker-ayzee! He’s surrounded by equally wooden pastiches of Sarf Landan gangsters, so much so that I was expecting Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse to turn up and launch into a routine “You Slag!” “You Muppet!” “You Slag!”etc, etc.

The attention to detail with the costumes and music is a nice touch, and to be fair ginger-haired gangster Sammy does come across as properly hard. But this is a bad film. So bad, that it is completely watchable, if you know what I mean. Luvverly!

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26th Apr 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

Ocean's 12

(dir. Steven Soderbergh)

After bad guy Andy Garcia tracks down the crew who robbed his casino in Ocean's 11, Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and pals (plus one extra person - get it?) stage a series of robberies to raise the money to pay off Garcia. Problems come in the shape of a French master cat burglar (Vincent Cassell), who revels in beating Clooney's gang to the punch, and an Interpol agent how had a fling with the cheeky Brad Pitt (surprisingly likeable here).

The film is very stylishly done, shrugging off the glossy style that you would expect for so many huge names and instead using a low-key European-looking documentary style (a bit like the excellent Bourne Identity), with editing and simple trickery to keep the pace moving. Straight off the bat however, the script is so engrossed in its own cleverness that it is instantly hard to follow. Little attention is given to setting up the characters - which is fine for Clooney, Brad Pitt, maybe Matt Damon - but the rest of the supporting gang were not that memorable in episode 1 (or 11). A potential clever twist with Bruce Willis where Julia Roberts' character is mistaken for actress Julia Roberts is so smugly done that the actors practically wink at the camera...

It's watchable, but unless you're flying long haul don't bother.

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24th Apr 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

My Latest Novel

Wolves

I first found out about this band sometime last year as I was recovering from post Arcade Fire blues and was searching the musical horizons for anything that might be on the way to satisfy my creative cravings that Funeral had just ignited. Their first single Sister Sneaker Sister Soul gave me a bit of hope. I then saw them support Sufjan Stevens and took their average performance as a warning that this was not where my next fix was going to come from. Then came Wolves, the debut album, and with it the death of all my hopes. It made me feel slightly embarrassed that I ever looked their way for what I craved.

It’s not that Wolves is a bad album, far from it, it’s better than a lot of stuff out at the moment. It’s just that it takes itself so damn seriously. If Wolves was one of my friends I think I would try to avoid them and make up some lame excuse every time they invited me out for a drink. They would constantly and predictably remind me of how bad McDonalds was as I stuffed a Big Mac and fries down my throat and would probably never buy a round.

But this purchase wasn’t a total disaster, due to Fopp's ‘Suck It And See’ policy I was able to exchange it for the new Morrissey offering which made me think that My Latest Novel need a lesson from The Pope Of Mope himself on how to take yourself seriously with your tongue firmly in your cheek.

Thank God Clap Your Hands came along and I got my fix in the end.

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5th Apr 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

V For Vendetta

(dir. James McTeigue)

Another film mining the genius of Alan Moore. And yet again, it misses the mark and makes you want to read the comic again (or should - if you haven't read it already, it's still worth a look).

This isn't as bad as the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Hellblazer (haven't got round to From Hell yet). Despite a wandering Brit accent, Natalie Portman is basically ok throughout, and Hugo Weaving does a pretty interesting job behind V's mask - thankfully they resist the urge to take it off, Judge Dredd style. As it's copied from a drawing, this is actually one of the better things about the adaptation - it really looks like him.

The main problem is the muddled updating of what was basically a very time-specific attack on Thatcher's Britain. Ian Hurt works as a ranting British fascist, but it somehow seems too easy in a pantomime villain way - the evil dictators we've ended up with in real life smile a lot more.

Having a terrorist as the hero of a mainstream film is obviously going to be "shocking" for the Fox-watching demographic in the states, but the morality is still fairly clear-cut here - he's fighting an evil totalitarian Britain that's anti-gay, anti-Muslim, even anti-film, so it's not too much of a stretch to get us on his side.

The trailer makes it look like it's going to ramp up the Wachiowski-style action, but there's actually not that much - it's a much more static outing than the Matrix (although the philosphy floats closely to that level of debate at times).

Having had a quick scan of the comic again, I'm not sure it's one of my favourite Moore works any more - loved it at the time, but was never that into the art for some reason, and he's done so much that's better since - and admits as much in the accompanying essay. Watchmen's still the obvious work of unparalleled class, but his recent stuff for ABC has been great too - Top Ten, Promethea and Tom Strong especially.

It's also worth noting that Moore's been hardcore about his insistence that his name isn't anywhere on the film. Check his wiki entry for a lowdown on the on-going feud. He doesn't even get paid for having his work bastardised.

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8th Mar 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

Patti Smith's Meltdown: Songs of Experience

Royal Festival Hall, London

From the announcement of Patti Smith’s meltdown line-up this always seemed like one of the clear highlights. Jeff Beck, Flea, Tom Verlaine, John Frusciante and others joining Patti Smith for an evening of music celebrating Jimi Hendrix. John Frusciante does Hendrix? That sounds awesome, dude! Things started to go wrong shortly after that when Frusciante announced that he was not going to be able to make it, due to recording work on the new RHCP album.

The gig kicked off with Patti Smith and her band doing Are You Experienced? A pretty good start, but surely it would get better as more stars came on stage…. but then Patti Smith left the stage and the next act came on. Surely the logical format for an evening like this was Patti Singing with an ever changing line up of superstar backing band?!… but no, each act came on, did one or two songs and then left. There were some collaborations, like Robyn Hitchcock and Johnny Marr doing May This Be Love, but generally it was a stilted, atmosphere-free evening while people trudged on and off stage and roadies wired up new equipment.

No one really came close to hitting the high expectations: Squarepusher started OK, before twiddling and feedbacking his way into his usual freak-out-jazz-solo. Flea was a highpoint, with looping pedals repeating his parts while he built up to a trumpet final, and Jeff Beck was pretty good at matching Hendrix’s skill…. but essentially it was all a bit like watching a busker do a cover of Purple Haze by playing it on a washboard. The closest to getting the freak-out vibe of Hendrix’s playing were Finnish duo Kimmo Pohjonen and drummer Sami Kuoppamaki, who rocked out their accordian/drumkit tracks in true freak out style.

Things did end up in a kind-of jam finale, with Patti Smith back on stage, with Jeff Beck, Flea and Tom Verlaine… but Patti’s emotional recital was undermined by the fact she was reading the lyrics, and guitar-doofus Verlaine was busy tuning up as usual.

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5th Jul 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet

Oasis

Don't Believe The Truth

This record sounds just about what you'd expect. It isn't crap, and for all you can tell it might well be "the best thing we've done since Definitely Maybe," but it's just sounds like old news. Led Zeppelin could re-form and make "the best record since Physical Graffiti," but it probably wouldn't work. Hiring Richard Fearless to produce was maybe a good idea. Sacking him probably wasn't. Most appropriate song title - "Keeping the Dream Alive".

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25th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet

Foo Fighters

There Is Nothing Left To Lose

I've been looking forward to the new Foo Fighters album due this summer, so thought I'd revisit this one - seeing how I never really got into it. Boy is it dull. It just never really gets going, and after the unpredictable goodness of Foo Fighters and The Colour and the Shape it's a real let down.

Learn to Fly is OK in a radio-friendly-single kind of way, and Generator is kind of post-Everlong, but generally the album is just pitched at the same solid level aaallll the waaay through. No fun. One by One was a proper return to form, so I'm still keeping fingers crossed on album 5.

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23rd May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Negotiator

(dir. F. Gary Gray)

When a rogue Police negotiator (Sam Jackson) goes off the rails to prove he is being set up, the Police call in another top negotiator (Kevin Spacey) to negotiate with the negotiator.

Not bad action/drama. About as tricky as it was to write the synopsis, but still somehow managing to be predictable.

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25th Jan 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet

Happy, Texas

(dir. Mark Illsley)

Two bumbling convicts escape from prison and upon arriving in Happy, Texas are mistaken for a couple of gay pagent organisers. Slowly however their presence in the town begins to affect different people in different ways...

I don't even know why I watched this, or in fact why I taped in to begin with.... but it was allright. Kind of reminded me of the kind of movie I would have got out from Star Video in 1987, in a License to Drive kind of way. It was moderately amusing, I like Steve Zahn, Jeremy Northam, Illeana Douglas and of course William H. Macy. It wasn't too long either.

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29th Jul 2004 - Add Comment - Tweet

Pearl Harbor

(dir. Michael Bay)

Two childhood friends and a plucky young nurse are drawn into the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, which drew America into World War II. Starring a big list of names: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Jon Voight, Dan Ackroyd, Tom Sizemore and others.

Apparently this was the most expensive movie made at the time, costing a whopping $140+ million. It certainly looks good, with great cinematography and effects. Unfortunately that doesn't compensate for the terrible script and dire direction.... and Affleck and Hartnett are certainly lacking that Han Solo/Luke Skywalker chemistry.

Boy, do I have a problem with Ben Affleck.... how did he become such a star?
"Just get me up in a plane!"

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3rd May 2004 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Core

(dir. Jon Amiel)

The core of the earth has stopped revolving. A crew of experts/astronaut types are recruited to fly a nuclear powered train type-thing with laser headlights into the centre of the earth to set off some nukes, kick start the earth and save 6 billion people.

Total action by numbers movie that can be best summed up as Armageddon vs. Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. The only problem with that is no Bruce Willis. Or Steve Buscemi. Instead we have Aaron Eckhart (that dude from Erin Brockovich) and Hilary Swank. Not that that means its actually any worse, just that it makes you wonder who would put $50 or $80 Million into it. And in fact that's part of the problem. Movies like this need $100M, not $50M, for stars and hype and publicity - to generate enough interest to cover the gaps in the plot and the execution.

It's not unwatchable however. Add a few unbelievably heroic personal sacrifices, a pinch of Hollywood luck and 135 minutes of your day have drifted by easily enough.

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1st Oct 2003 - Add Comment - Tweet