May 3, 2008
I’m going to bed in Hollywood tonight.
With any luck I’ll be going to bed in Laramie, WY tomorrow night. My car is packed with everything I’m not leaving behind, and I should be in VA by late Wednesday night, with any luck.
I’ll be blogging and e-mailing from the road (while taking breaks from driving, obviously), so feel free to contact me at matt at killmoms (dot) com, or by texting. You can also reach me by cell whenever I have service. I make no guarantees while I’m still west of the Mississippi.
Filed by matt at May 3rd, 2008 under Life
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March 27, 2008
While nothing has hit me hard enough to justify a full review since Boxer, I have been listening to several other albums in the last few weeks that deserve mention.
- The Hush Sound - Goodbye Blues – Precious indie-pop kids grow up a bit and release a stronger, more forward album that maintains the infectious piano-driven pop/rock hooks of their previous efforts. Greta in particular has grown into a vocal force, shedding the sweet/girlish sound for one that’s richer, more mature, and all-around more appealing. Lots of great stuff here. Particular favorites: “Honey,” “Medicine Man,” “Hurricane,” and “Molasses.”
- The Long Winters - Putting the Days to Bed – I know, not a new one, I’m just very very late to the party. There’s lyrical (and musical) meat on these bones, to say the least, if you can get past John Roderick’s unique vocal stylings. Particular favorites: “Pushover,” “Teaspoon,” “The Sky is Open,” and “Clouds.”
- Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd. – Unexpectedly (and wildly) successful loud electric-cabaret indie rock band uses their sophomore album to reinvent their sound, to the alternating chagrin and exultation of their fans and critics everywhere. But don’t let the shameless Beatles/Kinks/Beach Boys-aping deceive you—they are, in fact, “still the same band” with the same winking, self-referential and self-aware lyrics and penchant for crafting hooks they displayed on A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. Particular favorites: “Nine in the Afternoon,” “Do You Know What I’m Seeing?” and “When the Day Met the Night.”
- Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I - IV – Trent Reznor gives the music industry the middle finger in a manner even more daring (and apparently successful) than Radiohead by releasing his 4 EP set in a number of digital and physical formats, including full lossless-quality downloads. While the material itself is uneven (ranges from forgettable to pretty kickass), the release is notable for sheer ballsiness alone. If you’re a fan of Reznor’s knob-twiddling, it’s certainly worth the $5 for a set of high quality MP3s or lossless FLAC files (and a fucking awesome accompanying PDF booklet—art direction and typography are top-notch).
Also, I’ve completed the vinyl portion of my Sigur Rós collection.
Filed by matt at March 27th, 2008 under Life, Music
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March 3, 2008
When we were born, we were blank slates. We yearned for essentials—food, sleep, care. The extent of our dreams was limited only by what we didn’t know, and in our sponge-like state we soaked up everything around us. Being an adult was a goal that, like everything else, we acquired. By the time we knew how to give it a voice, the desire to be “grown-up” had little to do with being older or larger or more capable beings. It was about freedom: the freedom to stay up late, to watch as much TV as we wanted, to eat candy all the time, to buy whatever we desired. To satiate our desires. To consume. In our first three or four years we were molded into future consumers by a consumption society, the dream of adulthood tarnished at the outset.
It is this theme—the disillusionment with modern adulthood and all its trappings—that is central to The National’s fantastic 2007 album Boxer. Where Ween was willing to laugh about it in “Your Party,” Boxer serves as the comedown that reminds us that no, it’s really like that. Frontman Matt Berninger crafts a lyrical landscape that is crushingly honest and delivers it in a resigned baritone set against a backdrop of staccato guitar, bass, piano and relentless percussion whose velocity belies the album’s morose outlook.
In fact, nearly every aspect of this album seems to evoke the schizophrenic contrast of “full-but-empty” lives. The music alternates between optimistic, positive harmony and slight dissonance while the lyrics remain brooding. This contrast is summed up in the first two tracks. The positive, piano-driven hook of “Fake Empire” suggests a fist-pumping sing-along while Berninger delivers resigned pleas: “Turn the light out, say goodnight / No thinking for a little while / Let’s not try to figure out everything at once.” Then, after a lush outro featuring a chorus of brass, the band turns menacing on the off-kilter “Mistaken for Strangers,” and the lyrics turn nigh-accusatory: “Well you wouldn’t want an angel watching over / Surprise surprise, they wouldn’t want to watch / Another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults.”
Even the album’s positive moments pull no punches—Berninger acknowledges that we can find happiness despite its sources’ transience. On the testament-to-modern-love “Apartment Story” he sings “So worry not / All things are well / We’ll be alright / We have our looks and perfume on.” Yet this same materialism is bemoaned two cuts later when we find two struggling lovers “Here, here in the guest room / Where we throw money at each other and cry ‘Oh my!’” Even our pursuit of happiness sometimes devolves into living vicariously through the (assumedly exaggerated) happiness of others, as on “Green Gloves:” “Get inside their clothes / With my green gloves / Watch their videos, in their chairs.”
Sonically the band falls into somewhat familiar territory, evoking bands like Interpol and Bloc Party while adding their own distinctive touches, primarily piano and brass. The aforementioned “Fake Empire,” “Apartment Story” and “Guest Room” maintain driving, positive momentum. On their darker tracks (”Mistaken for Strangers” and “Squalor Victoria” especially), the percussion comes to the forefront, pushing along bent chords and uncomfortable progressions. For most of its length, though, the music serves as a bed for the record’s potent lyrical themes rather than vice versa.
Berninger’s world—and by extension, ours—is a place that has trained us how to fuck up our lives, how to attempt self-reliance despite our own unreliability. It’s our adulthood, devoid of the meaning we assumed would be there when we arrived. Boxer is an album that documents, even in our warmest moments, our dismay at its absence.
Filed by matt at March 3rd, 2008 under Music
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February 6, 2008
So I was watching this really terrible movie, and while the credits were rolling this song came on, and I went “Boy that sounds a lot like Camera Obscura” and then they got down to the “here’s the music we used in our movie and its credits” section and sure enough, it was by Camera Obscura and I was like “I am so awesome.”
That story sounded better in my head.
Filed by matt at February 6th, 2008 under Life, Music
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January 28, 2008
I miss Northern Virginia. And now, anytime I listen to music from my past or that reminds me of my friends, every time I look at relics of my time spent there, I miss it a little more. That suburban wasteland seems more appealing than this urban one. I’m starting to get nostalgic over things no nearly-24-year-old guy ought to yearn for.
It all strengthens my feeling that I’m in the wrong place, and I might be re-crossing the country sooner than I ever thought.
Filed by matt at January 28th, 2008 under Life
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December 24, 2007
Found out my high-school friend Reneé is sick—like seriously, doctor-bafflingly sick—today. If there were any justice in the world, she wouldn’t be sick. I, a much shittier human being than she, would be sick. At least I’d deserve it.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Filed by matt at December 24th, 2007 under Life
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December 15, 2007
I’d been nervous about the film adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s great sci-fi/fantasy epic The Golden Compass ever since I’d seen an “in development” trailer for it at work about a year ago. I tried to psych myself up going into the theater this past Sunday, but I still had niggling doubts. The book is a pretty sprawling work that covers a lot of territory between its two covers, and to turn it into a film seemed to me a pretty dangerous task. Still, I hoped.
That hope was unfounded. Simply put, The Golden Compass fails on pretty much every level as a film. It is a work that lacks all the drama, narrative thrust and significance of the original work. Instead of presenting a story and characters one is inclined to care about, actors flit across the screen leaving little to no impact. Each plot point leads to another but the movie fails to give any of them dramatic weight, and so we are left with two excruciatingly painful hours of cinema.
It seems clear to me at this point that New Line is searching about frantically for fantasy epics to fill the giant-sized shoes of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and this film (like The Chronicles of Narnia before it) is just the latest story to fall prey to this misguided quest. No one at New Line seems to be able to discern that the reason for LotR’s success was Peter Jackson. That trilogy worked because Jackson had a single, uncompromising vision and an intense passion for the material. Everything that followed—the nearly perfect script, the exceptional cast and their performances, the fantastic art direction, Howard Shore’s brilliant score—were a result of Jackson’s relentless pursuit of perfection.
In contrast, The Golden Compass stands little to no chance of success. The script was originally written by British (that’s American!, Ed.) playwright Tom Stoppard, but was scrapped and re-written by director Chris Weitz, who manages to strip all the depth and significance out of the original work and replace it with dialogue and pacing that insults the viewer’s intelligence. Particularly painful is a segment in which Lord Asriel mentions out loud the threat of bandits in the area in which he’s traveling, and then almost immediately is attacked by bandits. It is fair to say that a LOT happens in the novel, but part of the process of adapting a novel is knowing how to condense it and get the important information across in a dramatic manner. Instead, the treatment here tries to cram as much as possible into two hours, and the viewer suffers for it. The whole tale feels rushed and over-explained.
When a great director and great cast combine their talents, sometimes a lackluster script can be saved from being a bad movie. Unfortunately, Weitz lacks the talent to shape the considerable raw acting prowess of his cast into characters that anyone would be particularly inclined to care about, and the cast is hampered by the aforementioned problematic script. Particularly maddening is the movie’s main character Lyra, played by first-time actress Dakota Blue Richards. While she isn’t cloyingly sweet or annoying as many child actors can be, neither is she particularly engaging. I never got the sense that she really felt strongly about anyone or anything else in the movie. She simply didn’t convey any of the fierce intelligence or rebellious nature so integral to the character. Nicole Kidman, an actress more than capable of great performances, fails to particularly intimidate in the way Miss Coulter should. Daniel Craig fails to convey any of the regal bearing or concealed affection for Lyra that Asriel should possess. And the computer-generated dæmons, especially Pantalaimon, are stripped of any of their redeeming characteristics by a script that treats them largely as cute sidekicks rather than manifestations of the characters’ souls.
After all this, even the best computer-generated effects out there can’t save this train wreck. The visuals in the film are striking, although don’t mesh entirely with my mind’s vision of Lyra’s Oxford (though what film CAN match one’s own imagination?). Worse yet, every painful minute of the film seems to be scored, and scored badly. A good film score serves to provide emotional cues and add dramatic weight to the narrative arc of the film. This score merely distracts and draws attention to itself by being terribly banal. And to cap it all off, the film ends with no sense of resolution whatsoever—you can almost hear New Line marketing drones hiding behind the massive CG bulk of Iorek saying “Stay tuned for The Golden Compass II: Electric Boogaloo!”
I’ve been working on this review for an hour and could go on, but I’m all bitched out. There is no reason you should go see The Golden Compass—it’s a wholesale failure as a movie. If you’re unfamiliar with the books but are intrigued by the story’s premise or the controversy it has stirred up, I’d strongly encourage you to read the books instead. Being targeted towards pre-teens/teens they’re certainly an easy, but rewarding, read.
In other news: I’m re-reading Drew Weing’s excellent The Journal Comic. It’s a great diary strip whose simplicity and frankness really resonates with me. I’m thinking about buying it in dead-tree format (along with some of Drew and Elanor’s other shorter works).
Filed by matt at December 15th, 2007 under Movies, Web
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December 9, 2007
Two big ones: Andrew Bird and Juno.
Andrew Bird: Saw him play live at the Orpheum on Friday night. I actually almost missed the show. I got distracted talking to friends and didn’t remember until an alarm went off on my iPhone (inexplicably) at 8—when the show was starting. In any event I booked it to the Metro and rode into downtown for a measly buck twenty-five and made it there just after 9 PM. I was in my seat just a few minutes before Bird came on stage.
Being a middling fan of his latest album, Armchair Apocrypha, I wasn’t sure about the show going in. But the highs were high enough that I figured he’d be worth a shot. I’m happy to report that he exceeded expectations—his performance was incredibly fun. He began solo, building up loops using his violin until he had a veritable string section backing him. Then he brought out his band, Dosh on drums/keyboards/loops, and Jeremy on guitar/backup vocals, and proceeded to blaze through a good selection of tunes from his catalog. The live renditions of “Fiery Crash” and “Heretics” were especially inspired. Definitely want to check out his last album.
Juno: God, what can I say about this movie that hasn’t already been said? It’s an excellent film, one of my favorites in recent memory, better and more sensitive by far than the last two comedies I’ve seen. Michael Cera and Jason Bateman are endearing as usual, but it is Ellen Paige’s heartfelt and nuanced performance that really impresses. She portrays young Juno with alternating spunk, self-confidence, wry humor, and vulnerability. The dialogue is pitch-perfect, realistic but clever. All in all it’s a fantastically constructed movie and I would pay to see it again (and might).
That just leaves The Golden Compass for tonight.
Filed by matt at December 9th, 2007 under Concert, Movies, Music
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December 5, 2007
I’ll be honest—last year didn’t feel like Christmas. Maybe it was the warmer climate, the palm trees, or the lack of any decoration in the apartment. Even my single Christmas Eve trip to the church up the street didn’t bring the feeling around. I didn’t go home, so I didn’t have family around. All in all it was the first un-Christmas-like Christmas I’ve ever had.
I didn’t miss it exactly, except in that “I’m far away in a new town and something at least a little familiar would be nice” kind of way. The funny thing is, even with a full year under my belt in L.A., that feeling creeps back as December rolls around. Rian and I have a little 2-foot tall tree with fiber-optic light strands in it, but that’s about as much Christmas as is going on in our apartment.
Just this morning I was talking with my co-workers about the tree back home—that it’s artificial, how we keep the lights on when we pack it up so we don’t have to re-string it, and decorate it every year from our boxes of ornaments. Maybe, in my head, I haven’t really moved out. I’m still just on a long vacation away from Virginia and someday I’ll go back.
It was with that feeling firmly in mind that I sat down yesterday to write my first Christmas letter. It’s hard to encapsulate a whole year spent in relative isolation, far from everything and everyone familiar, in one page of words on fancy paper. And as it stands, I’m not sure I’m happy with it. It’s a list of big events, certainly—job, car, apartment—but I want to try and capture the more subtle things from this year. How important, in the long run, are those “big” things? Those aren’t the story of my life. I hope my existence can’t be summed up by an 11-year-old convertible with bad brakes.
So tonight I’ll be putting on the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s soundtrack to “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and sitting down again to collect my thoughts and start a new Christmas letter—one that I hope more accurately captures my experience of 2007.
Filed by matt at December 5th, 2007 under Life
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November 10, 2007
I am more than a bit frustrated that my peers look like adults while I am stuck perpetually looking like an 18-year-old.
Filed by matt at November 10th, 2007 under Angst
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