Category: Pop

Album Reviews 23/02/16

Dudes, Eternal Is The Fruit (Dudes Music)

OK, so I wasn’t even aware there was any such thing as a “Scandirock scene,” which is no surprise, given that I’ve never been to any of those countries. But it’s a thing, at least to those people, and a little digging reveals Norwegian glam-punk band Turbonegro as a leading light of this nonsense, fronting their classic hit “All My Friends Are Dead” as the sound’s gold standard (it’s like Kiss meets Anthrax, but emo, and with blazey guitar solos). These guys (Dudes) are heavy into that band and, they claim, The Hives, but this is a different kind of spazz-rock, like AC/DC welded to Animal Boy-era Ramones. I mean, these guys really want their minions to break stuff, as they bring a sense of eastern-European folk-metal into the mix but leave a Hives element in there to make it more or less dishwasher-safe. American bands should really be doing this kind of thing, given the dystopian circumstances, let’s be real. A

Florencia & the Feeling, Birthday (self-released)

Pop-funk fusion with four-part harmonies, hints of jazz, and Latin roots is the skinny on this one, released by a five-piece band led by singer-guitarist Florencia Rusiñol, who was raised in East Tennessee by Argentine parents who “instilled in her a love of Latin American music from an early age.” Comparison bands include Vulfpeck, Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan, the latter of which is definitely the closest as far as what I heard; there’s a lot of gently tendered, lazy syncopation over which Rusiñol practices her vaguely Natalie Merchant-ish mid-range-soprano, to no really thrilling effect, not that it’s bad or anything. The rub is that these jumpy songs were written while Rusiñol was working through a nasty breakup, which results in an odd combination of lines like “I can erase your pictures from the internet but not from my head” being sung over phoned-in Spyro Gyra semi-jazz. Best case, they wind up opening for some 70-year-old superstar in Las Vegas, is what I think. B

Playlist

• Friday, Feb. 17, is on the way, and so is a plethora of new music albums, which I only mention because I’ve never used the word “plethora” in the multiple-award-winning column prior to today! In hot news, Dallas, Texas-based alternative rock bros Secret Machines are releasing their fifth studio LP, The Moth, The Lizard, And The Secret Machines, this week, and it will probably be big in the U.K., because that’s where they’re really popular, which explains why you’ve never heard of them. Actually they’re more of a progressive-ish rock band, not wildly technical but just enough to impress Kerrang! writers, you know, how bands like Marillion used to get popular for being sort of like Genesis, like, not really progressive but not fun bands like Slade and all those guys. But here I am droning on about something I know nothing about, because, like you, I know these guys exist but for all I know they play nursery rhymes on kazoos. So the task at hand is to try to find out what they sound like, and we’ll do that right now by surfin’ over to YouTube to give a listen to the band’s new single, “There’s No Starting Over.” It’s really slow and draggy, but somewhat interesting. OK, you know what this song is, it’s something that was inspired by M83 when these fellas went on tour with them. Like, the tune is epic in some ways and just awkward and weird in others, and the synth layers give it a good amount of heft. Matter of fact, after it gets going it’s pretty good, with some big vocal layers, some noisy percussion and such and so, but the bottom line is that it’s totally like M83, kind of “Kim and Jesse”-ish. Nothing wrong with that, other than the fact that a lot of writers who are much meaner than me will write it off as derivative. Anyway, OK, very good, moving on.

• One pop diva I’ve never really paid any attention to is P!nk, mostly because she makes me think of lady wrestlers. Her new album is Trustfall, her first since 2019’s Hurts 2B Human, but she’s apparently pretty busy all the time, doing non-diva stuff like writing music; for example, she wrote the songs “I Walk Alone” and “Lie to Me” for Cher’s 2013 album Closer to the Truth, which I didn’t know, did you? Anyway, her new single “Never Gonna Not Dance Again” sees her entering the out-of-ideas phase of her career; the tune is a half-formed bubblegum radio bit that everyone will think is Kesha probably, and the hook sucks. Other than that I love it.

• According to this web thingie here, Anna B Savage is a London singer-songwriter whose songs are “stark, skeletal paintings of moods and reflection, using a palette of mainly voice and guitar. Most prominent is her voice — strong and sonorous, yet with a vulnerability that feels as if she’s in the same room as you.” What does this mean in actual words? Well, to me it means she’s more annoying and unintelligibly hyperbolic than Ani Difranco, meaning no, I don’t own any of her albums by choice. Her second album, in|FLUX, follows her 2021 debut, A Common Turn, and the title track is crummy Nintendo-techno with her creepy voice singing creepy words about sex. I really dislike it.

• And finally we have funny-looking Canadian folk-pop dude Ron Sexsmith, hawking his 17th full-length, The Vivian Line. In 2010, Paperny Entertainment made a documentary about this guy, called Love Shines, about his attempt to gain worldwide fame for an album that was produced by Bob Rock; apparently it didn’t work because this is the first I’ve heard of him. “Diamond Wave” is a good song, ’70s-radio-ish a la Jim Croce, something like that. It’s decent.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

At the Sofaplex 23/02/09

Shotgun Wedding (R)

Jennifer Lopez, Josh Duhamel.

Though she’s solidly in a supporting role, this movie gives a lot of the goofiness to Jennifer Coolidge, who plays Carol, mom to groom Tom (Duhamel).

Tom and Darcy (Lopez) have dragged their loved ones to a beach resort in the Philippines for the elaborate Insta-worthy wedding of Tom’s dreams. But standard wedding-movie difficulties — Darcy’s dad’s (Cheech Marin) preference for Darcy’s ex (Lenny Kravitz) over Tom, Carol’s insistence that Darcy wear her lump-of-whipped-cream-like wedding dress — have the couple bickering, leading to a fight right before they walk down the aisle that ends with Darcy throwing her engagement ring at Tom. Darcy stomps off to enjoy some Champagne and chips but Tom soon runs after her to tell her that all of their wedding guests have just been taken hostage by pirates. As the bad guys negotiate with Darcy’s wealthy dad for ransom money, Darcy and Tom work together — while also fighting about their relationship woes — to try to rescue their guests.

Shotgun Wedding is a perfectly OK lightweight, something-on-while-you-pay-bills watch, but with the talent involved it should have been better. There is a general liveliness that’s missing and the comedy all felt like sort of warmed over middling sitcom shtick. C Available on Amazon Prime Video.

You People (R)

Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Black-ish creator Kenya Barris directed and co-wrote (with Jonah Hill) this movie that is a little bit rom-com and a little bit social comedy with strong middling sitcom vibes.

Ezra (Hill), unhappy finance worker and in-his-element podcaster, does a meet-cute with stylist/movie costume designer Amira (Lauren London). They almost instantly take a shine to each other and are soon being cuddly together despite the difficulties friends (Ezra’s podcast partner Mo, played by comedian Sam Jay) and family (Amira’s brother Omar, played by Travis Bennett) predict that this Jewish man and Black woman will have as a couple. The difficulties start when Ezra meets Amira’s unimpressed parents, Akbar (Murphy) and Fatima (Nia Long), and when Amira meets Ezra’s culturally tone-deaf parents, Shelley (Louis-Dreyfus) and Arnold (David Duchovny).

A sitcom with this premise could have more room to be nuanced and specific in its observations; as a movie, a lot about the stuff happening here — the blending of families and cultures and the parental impulses toward acceptance or judgment — is shorthanded into broad caricature. What saves this movie from complete unlikability are the small moments between characters. Louis-Dreyfus brings something of a real person to her scenes, London and Hill have cute chemistry, Jay and Hill have a low-energy comedy bit “yes and” charm. I don’t know that I’m in a hurry to sit through this movie again, but in small bites, it rises above its basic setup. C Available on Netflix.

Ms. Demeanor, by Elinor Lipman

Ms. Demeanor, by Elinor Lipman (Harper, 304 pages)

I’ve never before finished a book and thought, “That was delightful,” but that’s the phrase that kept running through my mind as I transitioned from the fictional world of Ms. Demeanor to the bleak reality of New Hampshire in winter. It was a bright spot in a string of cold, gray days, and it’s a step up from the typical beach read romance, with a unique plot, witty writing and fun, well-developed characters.

Protagonist Jane Young, a spunky, sassy lawyer, is under house arrest for public indecency, having been caught on camera by her nosy neighbor as she was enjoying an intimate moment with a coworker on her semi-private rooftop.

This house arrest leads to Jane meeting an amusing cast of characters, including cute, age-appropriate Perry Salisbury, whom she learns from her doorman is also under house arrest, also for a white-collar crime. (I said it was a unique plot, not necessarily a believable one — regardless, a nice change from the average fictional meet-cute.) I like that Perry is just a normal dude. In many chick-lit-type novels, the male characters who end up with the female protagonist are often portrayed as pompous jerks who eventually show that they have a kinder, softer side worth loving, or as friendly next-door-neighbor types (as opposed to an actual neighbor, a la Perry, who is neither annoyingly friendly nor a pompous jerk). He’s a great foil to Jane, pretty chill and tolerant compared to her less relaxed, quicker-to-anger vibes.

Lipman’s minor characters are well-developed and quirky. There’s Mandy, another building dweller Jane introduces herself to, because why not, being stuck there for six months, and there are Dani and Krzysztof, whom Jane meets because of their relation to the old woman who called the cops on her. Even Perry’s parents are hilarious, his mom especially, being all posh and snotty but also likable somehow.

This book features a lot of relationships of convenience. Jane and Perry’s relationship is transactional at first, starting with food — Jane is trying her hand at making food from the 1800s and posting her cooking videos on TikTok, and she agrees to make meals for Perry as well, which gets her a bit of a paycheck and helps him curb his fast-food habit. That quickly transitions to a friends-with-benefits situation.

Dani and Krzysztof, meanwhile, are looking for green cards through any means necessary so they don’t get deported back to Poland. They ask Jane to hook Krzysztof up with anyone she knows who might want to get married, like perhaps her twin sister Jackleen, who is saved from the absurdity of even considering that plan because when Jane mentions it to Mandy — a quirky woman who apparently has no qualms with marrying someone, anyone, because her biological clock is ticking — Mandy jumps on the opportunity.

Some of Ms. Demeanor’s plot seems to go off the rails at times. For example, there’s a possible murder situation that isn’t really resolved — but that didn’t bother me at all because a resolution wasn’t really the point. The whole cooking on TikTok thing, which Jane is doing because for some unknown reason her sister has been asking her to for years, was kind of pointless. Jane cooking for Perry would have made just as much sense without that, though it may be more that I don’t understand how people use TikTok. Like, she’s making very old-school foods while complaining about her current house-arrest situation — why would anyone care? But my teenage kids tell me it’s normal to follow random people doing random things. My daughter was just watching a total stranger getting ready for a first date while talking about the guy’s red flags. So, there’s that.

The easy, witty writing made me want to keep reading no matter which storyline Lipman was on. Plus, it’s a quick read with those deliberately short chapters that make a book hard to put down (just one more chapter, I thought many times). I think the readability is one of the reasons it’s so delightful. Sure, there’s no going back to read over gems of sentences; this isn’t Shakespeare by any stretch of the imagination. It’s fast-paced and fun and at no point trying to be a contender for a Pulitzer Prize. So if you’re looking for serious, this isn’t it. B

Album Reviews 23/02/09

Nervous Eaters, Monsters + Angels (Wicked Cool Records)

If you’re old enough to have been part of the Boston rock scene when the success of The Cars lured in all the drugged-out saps, um, I mean record company reps to check out every band in the city, or even if you just listened to a lot of WBCN FM back then, there was no way to avoid this local band’s most popular hit, “Loretta” (you know, the one that went “when I talk to Loretta, cool slacks and sweater”). This Steve Cataldo-led roots-punk quartet nailed down a major label deal with Elektra Records in 1980, and that was about it; the LP was widely dissed as “not very punk for a punk record,” but in retrospect, the New York Dolls’ vibe was roughly in the same ballpark. Anyhow, this album is their first record since a 1986 EP, and the push single seems to be “Hop Sing Said,” a mellow-ish mid-tempo tune that’s kind of Dinosaur Jr.-ish. “Wild Eyes” recalls early Stones, “Superman’s Hands” is oldschool jangle-pop; “Last Chance” is pure ’80s radio-bubblegum. At worst, the songs are good and it sounds like they had fun doing this. A

ASCO, “Lacrimosa” (CAOS Records)

You know, it’s a wonder these Beatport-begging techno DJs get any press outside of 5 Magazine, Traxsource and whatnot. I say that because there’s always very little information to be found about them, which would be fine with me if all the artists wanted to remain anonymous or semi-anonymous, but I don’t think they all do. That goes double for this guy, the search for whose biography wore me out after 10 minutes and now I don’t care anymore: Ooh, you’re such an edgelord, whoever you are! But that’s not to detract from this guy’s music, don’t get me wrong. He’s been cruising along quite well over the last few months with a couple of neo-disco tracks (“Born Slippy” and “Fortuna”), and now this, a future-rave-style rendition of one of the most famous classical choir pieces in history, a part of the Dies Irae sequence in the Roman Catholic requiem mass. A real orchestra and choir help out here; it’s half orchestral and half buzzy-beetle-noise-electro, with no recognizable drop. Not my kind of jam but times have, unfortunately, changed. A

Playlist

• We’ll see a whole bunch of hot new rock ’n’ roll albums hit the streets on Feb. 10, as we draw ever closer to kissing this winter goodbye, can you even believe how fast it’s gone? And look, bonus, it’s a new album from acid-dropping loons Brian Jonestown Massacre, called The Future Is Your Past. I’m actually pretty happy about that. I think the last music I heard from these guys was either 2016’s Third World Pyramid or more probably 2010’s Who Killed Sgt Pepper, but it’s all good. The band is still led by Anton Newcombe, whose hobbies include hiring/firing every musician he meets and making the Dandy Warhols feel uncomfortable, and this is his, um, I mean the band’s, 20th album, a milestone no one would ever have predicted. You never know what you’ll hear from this band; usually it’s noisy neo-psychedelica, and a quick run-through of the album’s title track is pretty much what you’d expect: slow, dank, jangly early-’60s acid-rock, sort of like Donovan, that kind of thing. At least there’s normal-ish singing on this tune, and there you go, that’s about it for the 411 on this one, because Anton couldn’t care less if he made any money from his music, and that’s why he’s rich.

• Hey, man, what is this, an aughts-indie revival? Look there, gang, it’s New Jersey-based indie rockers Yo La Tengo, with their new album This Stupid World! I’ve owned a few Yo La Tengo albums over the years and have never really listened to any of them more than once; there’s synergy going on right now in this column, because this band uses roughly the same basic ingredients as Brian Jonestown Massacre — noise-pop, shoegaze, etc. — but the output is usually boring. At this writing the latest teaser tune is “Aselestine,” a lazy, sort-of-folk-ish song that’s sort of like Wilco meets Guster. I know, I probably should have posted a trigger warning before saying such a thing, but anyway, there you have it.

• Dutch dream-pop lady Annelotte de Graaf goes by the stage name Amber Arcades, and she’ll be releasing her fourth album, Barefoot On Diamond Road, in just a few hours! Interestingly, she holds a master’s degree in law, and worked as an assistant for war crimes tribunals at the United Nations; as of 2016 she held a position “assessing the claims of refugees granted asylum in the Netherlands who are seeking to have their families brought over.” The single, “Just Like Me,” is a weird little minimal techno joint that sounds like Aimee Mann after listening to way too much Aphex Twin.

• We’ll bag it for the week with the latest from Kelela! She is a former telemarketer from Washington, D.C., who got a spiffy record contract from the ever-trippy Warp Records, so she is now an alternative-R&B singer with a second album, Raven, out this week! She first hit the sort-of-big-time with 2005’s Hallucinogen, an EP that goes over all the disturby nonsense that happens during the beginning, middle and end stages of a relationship, except it’s all in reverse chronological order. Anyhow, this new album, which I’m required by law to take seriously because it’s on Warp Records, of course, is, artistically, intended as “a reaction to feeling alone as a black femme working within dance music,” which, granted, is probably pretty difficult, I mean, just look at what Steve Aoki gets away with just because he’s a white male. Whatever, she might get more love for this album if the rest of the songs aren’t like the title track, which is basically afterparty glitch-tech improv that makes no sense, but no one likes good music anymore, so who knows.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

The Thing in the Snow, by Sean Adams

The Thing in the Snow, by Sean Adams (268 pages, William Morrow)

In the windswept snow-packed emptiness of a place so remote it can only be accessed by helicopter is the Northern Institute, an abandoned research facility. Its staff has suddenly left under mysterious circumstances, requiring the employment of three caretakers tasked with keeping the six-story building functional.

Sound like your job? No? Keep reading. It will.

The light-hearted novel is a satirical take on the modern workplace, from the mind-numbing and largely unimportant tasks that can disproportionately consume a workweek, to the multitiered and often useless health plans offered by large employers, to mediocre supervisors obsessed with maintaining control.

The supervisor here goes by one name, presumably his surname, Hart. Like his two-person team, Gibbs and Cline, he seems to have come to his job with little information; he doesn’t even have a good sense of where he is, having fallen asleep during the helicopter ride.

All Hart knows is that provisions and instructions will be delivered once a week by helicopter, and that while the work is simple, he has a protocol to follow, and follow it he will, even though he often feels disrespected by underlings who aren’t appreciative enough that he provides them coffee and the opportunity for “light socializing” each morning before getting down to work.

Calling their tasks “work,” however, is a stretch. It is more like busy work — things given a person to do only so they have something to do. One week, for example, they are tasked with sitting in all the chairs in the building, ostensibly to test their structural integrity; another week, they measure the flatness of the tables by seeing if golf balls roll across them. The work is so boring, as are the surroundings, that Hart has trouble keeping up with the passage of time; he doesn’t know how long he has been there or what holidays have passed. The only remotely interesting thing that happens is when one morning Cline looks outside the window on a particularly windy day and spots it: “the thing in the snow.”

It’s unclear what the thing is as, like everything else, it’s covered with snow. But Hart, Gibbes and Cline all agree that it hadn’t been there before. And because of some mysterious “snow sickness” that had befallen former employees at the facility, they have been instructed not to go outside. So they have no way to check it out.

There is only one other person on the premises: Gilroy, a researcher who was part of the previous team and for reasons unknown got left behind to continue working on some project regarding “the cold.”

“Condescending, pretentious, and often outright batty, he’s the kind of person who eschews empathy with such vigor that distaste is not just warranted, it is the correct evolutionary response,” is how Hart, the narrator, describes him. Gilroy knows nothing about the thing in the snow, either.

Nor does the “health specialist” who arrives to administer the team’s regularly scheduled checkups (and haircuts) later. In one of the more hilarious sequences of the books, the health specialist informs them that they are all on the “basic” health care plan, as opposed to the premium or platinum. The eye chart, therefore, only contains five letters, whereas the premium plan has 15 and the platinum plan the whole alphabet. Also, “The thermometer’s readings come only in multiples of three, but we have the option to upgrade to the premium option of whole numbers or the platinum level, which includes decimals.”

But that is just a comic aside. The mystery before our caretakers, of course, is what the thing in the snow is, and how they can find out.

The limitations of the characters and their surroundings necessarily immerse the reader into the blandness of their days; we’re redeemed only by Hart’s occasional dry wit and sardonic observations. But then there are small, strange mysteries that unfold, like cryptic messages Hart and Cline find written under tables. It’s as if the most trivial dialogue from the Tom Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was inserted into the TV series Lost.

Meanwhile, because the Northern Institute was a thriving research facility at one time, surely it’s possible that the caretakers are themselves being studied as they numbly perform the assigned rituals this week. Maybe the thing in the snow is a test of their compliance? Or is it something more sinister?

It would be wrong to classify The Thing in the Snow as a mystery or a thriller; it’s much too sly for that, and the author, unlike his narrator, doesn’t seem to be taking any of this too seriously, even when he’s skewering the modern workplace.

What he does take seriously is the cold. A resident of Des Moines, Adams is as acquainted with the miseries of cold as New Englanders are. When at one point the characters are asked if they’d rather have a pay raise or the temperature in the building elevated a few degrees, they opt for the warmth, which is entirely plausible this time of year. The book is droll like that and doesn’t ask much of the reader but to come along for the ride — under a blanket, of course. It’s a pleasant distraction for a couple of winter evenings. B

At the Sofaplex 23/02/02

All Quiet on the Western Front (R)

A group of very eager, very naive school boys sign up to join the German army a few years into World War I in this most recent, German-language adaptation of the novel by Erich Maria Remarque. Paul (Felix Kammerer) and his buddies sport goofy grins as they listen to a local official charge them up, all fatherland this and manhood that. When Paul finds another man’s name on the uniform he’s handed, he accepts the army official’s story that it probably just didn’t fit that guy — even though we’ve seen, in one of the movie’s best sequences, that uniform go being worn by a young German soldier when he’s sent over the top of the trench to the laundry where his blood is cleaned out and the factory where bullet holes are patched up.

It’s telling to watch all the older soldiers just sort of “yep” with their eyes as these eager new soldiers get to the Western front, cheering and ready to shoot their French enemies. After about 24 hours — of mud, of shelling, of collecting the dog tags of freshly killed comrades — Paul seems to let go of his childhood ideas of military glory and adventure.

We catch up with him 18 months later as he and the friends he has left are just surviving in roughly the same spot where they’ve been dug in for years. Intercut with this are scenes of German officials (including one played by Daniel Brühl) trying to negotiate an armistice over the objections of the military.

This movie — nominated for Oscars for Best Picture as well as extremely well-deserved cinematography and score nods, International Feature Film, Makeup & Hairstyling, Adapted Screenplay, Visual Effects, Sound and Production Design — really does wow with its visuals. The trench warfare is an impressive blend of absolute horror and surprising beauty, particularly in the long shots of the forests and fields around the battlefield. The score is impressive too — there’s a kind of machine-like quality that helps underline the idea of the soldiers as just raw materials for industrial-scale killing.

I think the movie’s greatest strength — that it takes the time to show us the nature and the small details surrounding these men at war — can also be a weakness in that it leads the movie to underline and repeat itself on the futility of what’s happening. At two hours and 27 minutes, this movie could have afforded to slice some scenes and still get its message across. B+ Available on Netflix, where you can watch it in German with subtitles or with English dubbing.

Triangle of Sadness (R)

Woody Harrelson, Harris Dickinson.

Director and writer Ruben Ostlund, also known for The Square and Force Majeure, presents this satire of wealth, class and status with just a bit of gender roles and colonialism thrown in. It’s a lot. It’s a whole college freshmen discussion about “the system.” It can charm in moments but also wear on you. And there’s an extended puke and poo situation that is — well “on the nose” feels like a very “ew” way to describe it.

The movie takes a while to get going as we see models Carl (Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean) and their relationship, which is at least 50 percent about building their social media presence. They go on a cruise — influencer perks — where all of their fellow guests are fabulously wealthy, sorta nuts and some kind of a caricature, such as the polite British couple named Winston (Oliver Ford Davies) and Clementine (Amanda Walker) who used to manufacture land mines but now focus on hand grenades. The crew, managed by Paula (Vicki Berlin), has been told to smile through all the insanity in hope of a big tip. But perhaps they should have “no, ma’am-ed” a request by Vera (Sunnyi Melles), wife of Russian fertilizer magnate Dimitry (Zlatko Buric), for all of the crew members, including the kitchen staff preparing the raw seafood, to go for a swim.

At one point, the ship’s oft-drunk captain (Harrelson) and Dimitry trade quotes about communism — the captain presenting himself as sort of a half-hearted Marxist and Dimitry as a capitalist. It’s cute, they have a chummy conversation as the guests puke and the ship is cast about on the waves; it’s also, you know, “yeah, OK, movie.”

And that for me was the movie — cute moments, some fun performances and a whole lot of “OK, calm down.” I get how this can be a better-than-OK viewing experience (except for the puking) but for me this wouldn’t have added up to Best Picture, Best Director and Original Screenplay Oscar nominations. BAvailable for rent or purchase.

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