I know that this album has gotten a ton of press and critical praise and that it debuted at #2 on the Billboard charts this past week, but as I think it’s the best new album I’ve heard all year so far, I’m mentioning it anyway. In particular, lately I’ve been notcing that not only is WIN BUTLER channeling BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN throughout the course of this record, but furthermore IAN MCCULLOCH of ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN comes to mind here as well. In fact, this record reminds me a lot of the Bunnymen during their ‘80-’84 glory days. In particular, the booming, acoustic-guitar fueled sound and passionate singing bring to mind the joys of such anthems as “The Cutter” and “The Back of Love” from 1983’s Porcupine. What’s great about this album, however, is that despite these influences, it feels like it’s fresh and that they’re going new places, unlike many of the post-punk revival bands that have come about in recent years. Plus, the beautiful packaging of the deluxe edition looks really pretty on my coffee table.
Somewhere between 1991’s excellent Struck by Lightning and 2001’s dark Deepcut to Nowhere, this record shows Parker retreating from the rockin’ sound of 2005’s Songs of No Consequence and back towards the more acoustic-flavored, singer-songwriter territory that he’s favored over most of the last two decades. The upside here is that this may be the best sounding record of his entire career, not in terms of the songs, but in terms of the sound of the record itself. After a few listens, there are no immediate standouts, though the album is full of gems such as the extremely BOB DYLAN-esque and politically pertinent “Stick to the Plan” and the over eight-minute “The Other Side”, which may be the longest song GP has ever committed to tape. Other highlights include the opener “I Discovered America”, which details his first tour of the U.S. in 1976, and “England’s Latest Clown”, a song that appears to be about PETE DOHERTY. I don’t know how I’ll rate this record in GP’s vast canon, but it’s remarkable that he can make strong, compelling, challenging music year after year at the age of 56 when most of his contemporaries are either long out of music or sitting on their laurels. For my money, he’s the best songwriter of the last 30 years.
Mafioso (Not Rated)
This black and white Italian film from 1962 has been showing at one of the local art house theaters here because Rialto Pictures has recently released this film for the U.S. market. I didn’t know what to expect, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s about a man who grows up in Sicily, but leaves his humble upbringing for Milan, where he becomes a factory boss and gets married and has kids with a woman from that region of Italy. He comes home to visit his family for the first time in years with his wife and kids in tow. Of course, I can’t reveal what happens next, but let’s just say that things don’t go as planned. In many ways, this movie is a model for later mafia-themed movies such as The Godfather.
Although not quite as bad as some have been saying, this is definitely a disappointment. By using the great Stooges name, this album inevitably had some very big shoes to fill and, unfortunately, it doesn’t do the trick. Not that it’s all bad, though. Guitarist RON ASHETON’s licks are as sharp and distinctive as ever. But while the push-pull of bassist MIKE WATT and drummer SCOTT ASHETON (two great players who excel onstage with this lineup) is hard-hitting, it still feels a bit rote. It’s almost as if they were trying to sound as heavy and hard as possible in an attempt to prove that they can still rock. However, what makes this a mediocre effort is IGGY POP’s vocals, which sound totally phoned-in and uninspired. His lyrics aren’t much better, either. Whereas in the early ‘70s, the Stooges sounded gloriously dumb, now they just sound dumb period. Thus, this sounds more like a latter-day Iggy solo album than The Stooges. Despite all this, I’m still betting that they’ll be great live when they play here next month!
A great live document that has turned into a tribute to the late bassist ARTHUR KANE (who died several weeks after this concert was recorded), this shows the then newly reconstituted New York Dolls reuniting at the MORRISSEY-curated Meltdown festival back in 2004. The performances I saw them do afterwards (with former HANOI ROCKS bassist and lifelong Dolls fanatic SAMI YAFFA filling in for Kane), while generally good, didn’t attain the energy level found here. Perhaps that’s because this CD wisely cherry picks the best 15 songs out of the 21 or so that were played, omitting songs such as the puzzling cover of “Piece of My Heart” (why?) that I saw them play at Irving Plaza in 2005. In any case, though, this is a welcome and historically important addition to any Dolls collection.
Jefito blog
Something I Learned Today
No, not the great HUSKER DU song, but a great hardcore punk blog named after said song which features mp3s from many rare and out-of-print titles. This week, you can download a set of rarities from Husker Du here, appropriately enough.
Often overlooked and underrated in their catalog; I have a soft spot for this album because it’s the first Siouxsie album I ever heard. I don’t remember why I picked it out of the Columbia House catalog when I was 15. I’m pretty sure they had other Siouxsie titles at the time, but nevertheless, I’ve loved this album ever since. A companion piece to THE CURE’s also underrated masterpiece The Top and THE GLOVE’s Blue Sunshine (a one-off collaboration between The Cure’s ROBERT SMITH and The Banshees’ STEVE SEVERIN), Hyaena is the only Banshees album to feature Robert Smith on guitar. He replaced JOHN MCGEOCH (RIP), who left after three incredible records (including their landmark, 1981’s Juju), though Smith only lasted for one album before former CLOCK DVA guitarist JOHN CARRUTHERS joined the Banshees and they got more commercial with their next release, Tinderbox. Thus, this album is a one-off and represents a transition of sorts between their great early ‘80s period and their later work. Highlights include a great cover of THE BEATLES’ “Dear Prudence,” “Take Me Back,” the opulent opener “Dazzle” (complete with stunning orchestration), and the stunning finale, the eerie “Blow the House Down.”
Idiocracy (R)
This movie was basically left for dead by its studio, which is inexplicable since it was slated to be the follow-up to director MIKE JUDGE’s cult classic Office Space. Although DAVID HERMAN (who played the software programmer unfortunately named MICHAEL BOLTON in Office Space who looks a lot like my first cousin, oddly enough) returns, this movie features an entirely new cast otherwise. It stars LUKE WILSON and MAYA RUDOLPH as a low-level military employee and prostitute, respectively, who are sent 500 years into the future as part of a top-secret military experiment. They find a civilization so dumbed-down that they are by far the smartest people in the world. Instead of being funny, this satire turns out to be eerie in that the future it condemns has its seeds in the behavior patterns of the very present and is thus a vicious criticism of “red-state” America in the tradition of Judge’s subversive cartoon TV series (and later feature film) Beavis and Butthead and later King of the Hill.
I’m still feeling this one several months after its official release and about five months after its infamous internet leak. With every listen, more and more is revealed. JAMES MERCER is simply a magician with a melody in the same way that PADDY MCALOON (of PREFAB SPROUT) was in the mid-‘80s, though otherwise the Shins’ music bears no resemblance at all to that of Prefab Sprout. Instead, this is just a brighter-produced version of the territory they’ve covered on their first two albums with only THE CURE-like “Sea Legs” really breaking new ground. Still, I’ll take indie-pop gems such as “Phantom Limb,” “Turn on Me” and album highlight “Split Needles” in droves as long as they keep dishing them out album after album.
