Short reviews of pretty much whatever. Finally, you can discover if Frosted Flakes Gold has more social worth than Illmatic or Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare.
On the other hand, who likes a man in a tie? A man in a tie is always dumb. Look at that dumb idiot, working for the man! TV shows like Mad Men might try to trick you into thinking ties are cool, but you're supposed to hate every tool on that show (right?), so you just got tricked. By the year 2020 we will have reached Peak Tie and won't have any more ties, too bad.
This album is to dance music what Sonic Youth is to rock. I mean, it wants you to dance, but it doesn't want it to be pretty. It has a willful disregard for consonance and song structure and everything is way in the red, so TURN IT THE FUCK UP!
Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? is a ten part essay series by Steven Hyden featured on the A.V. Club. The essays look back at the 1990s in a historical and semi-autobiographical fashion, focusing primarily on the musical trends of the era. Moving from grunge's clash with hair metal to the rise of Brit-pop and rap rock and culminating with the emergence of Napster and the shameful debacle that was Woodstock 99. Reading the essays is like taking a plaid colored time machine back to the days of depression and dial-up internet. Well, not exactly, but the essays do make for a good read. And since I'm convinced that a 1990s revival will likely be the next big thing in popular youth culture, reading these essays has prepared me for the horrible, horrible times ahead.
I just think it's so precious that every band is way into EPs now. Too bad nobody buys physical albums anymore - the sizing of the packages used to be part of the charm. And this EP? Well, it's got a couple good songs on it I guess, but it sounds, I dunno, like a band I'm totally going to forget about in a year or so? But I'll probably forget about two beers I bought for $5 once, too, so the price makes it nice.
There's a great book out there called Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History Of Punk which chronicles the beginning of the punk scene on the east coast. We Got The Neutron Bomb makes for an excellent companion piece to Please Kill Me, as it chronicles, in a similar style, the rise of west coast punk. From the death days of glam rock to The Decline of Western Civilization, the book covers countless bands, zines, venues, trends, triumphs and tragedies. It's a good, quick read that gives you a greater picture of what the west coast punk scene was like in the late seventies and early eighties. And like any good book about music, it made me want to listen to more music, not just the classics in my collection but the stuff I'd never even heard of before.
Voluspa is an album by The Golden Filter, a band that falls into the genre known as "indie dance music that could probably be played in the background on Gossip Girl." I've been into this sort of music lately because, I don't know, mid life crisis? Anyway, it's got great beats and electronic production, but it's a little too dramatic to be called just a dance album. "Always Right" media outlet Pitchfork criticized the album because its songs lack traditional structure, but I thought that was pretty endearing. Anyway, if you like guitars don't buy it, but if you like a depressed modern version of ABBA then go right ahead.
This particular Jaws rip-off comes to us from the Land Down Under, having been made during Australia's insanely prolific (emphasis on the insane) era of ozploitation films. Razorback focuses on a gigantic wild boar with a penchant for eating people, be they toddlers or investigative journalists. What makes Razorback, and by extension most ozploitation movies, so entertaining is the sheer oddity of it all. Not just the oddity in the movie's premise, but the oddity in a world populated by unsettling characters, stark landscapes, bizarre animal species, technology that seems to straddle the divide between industrialization and steampunk, brutal violence, nudity, and popular music that all seems to sound like Men at Work. Australian cinema from the ozploitation era is truly a genre and an experience unto itself.
Though it can be said for many genres, horror is notorious for creating great posters and home video box art to compensate for and mask shitty movies. While the poster art for Cheerleader Camp smacks of a teen comedy sex romp mixed with horror elements, the movie itself is a uninspired, by-the-numbers slasher. It's Meatballs meets Sleepaway Camp meets boredom and a nearly thirty year old Leif Garrett playing a high school student. Despite attempts to use dream imagery and countless red herrings to hide the identity of the killer, it's not hard to figure out who's behind all the bloodshed. Gimme a "Meh."
For a long time I considered this to be my favorite Sonic Youth album, although in retrospect I think I was saying that just to avoid the obvious choice of Daydream Nation. Anyway, it's still a pretty great album, although if I had to characterize it, I'd call it... docile? Well, at least Macaulay Culkin was in one of their videos. Um.
You know what's an awesome movie? Groundhog Day. Aw, who am I kidding? You probably already knew that. Seriously though, Groundhog Day is pretty frickin' sweet. Definitely one of the all-time greatest Bill Murray movies. If you haven't seen it before or if it's been a while since you last saw it, do yourself a favor and go watch it ASAP.
Posts
