Distant vocals offset the disco-light, lounge-ready beat, lightly resembling a track from the recent Destroyer album, but obscured and drowning in melancholia. It's still decadent and glittering, a bit like and episode of The Love Boat but done as sudsy melodrama. Here's the video:
song of the day - wednesday
Small Black "Despicable Dogs (Washed Out Remix)"
Great opening bands are one of my favorite things. When I saw No Age at Music Hall of Williamsburg last fall, I wasn't too impressed with the headliner (all noise, no nuance), but openers Soft Circle and Small Black were really great. I knew nothing about either beforehand, so it was a great surprise. Small Black (a pleasantly motley band of locals) has the killer 80s sound that I just can't get enough of. Last year they released both a self-titled EP and the full-length Chains, both of which I highly recommend picking up. This track reinterprets the EP's most appealing track through the eyes of electro artists Washed Out (if you haven't given their EP Life of Leisure a listen, do so now):
song of the day - tuesday
Beach Fossils, "What a Pleasure"
Last summer I played Beach Fossils' self-titled debut on an endless loop. Dreamy, drifting lilts with just the right amount of summertime twang. Their new EP shows encouraging growth. They've moved beyond the beach bum aesthetic and now show a deeper, hazier sound that closely resembles label-mates (and the totally awesome) Wild Nothing. Here's the title track off the new album:
song of the day - monday
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, "Alisa"
I've been a bit of a fanatic for Ariel Pink since hearing Before Today, his killer album from last year. That one features "Round and Round", a hypnotic track that is currently my ring tone. His whole body of work is quite strong, particularly 2006's House Arrest. I've learned that they will soon re-press it on vinyl, and given that it's a grainy, sample-heavy sound, that will be a sublime must-have. Here's today's track, "Alisa", performed live (and quite well), below:
song of the day - sunday
A Gap Between, "Neon Signs"
Heavy synth beats propel this sudsy bit of nostalgia. It's like a nightclub scene from any 80s film (Fright Night actually comes to mind) - and that's a serious compliment. Click here to visit the band's Soundcloud page to give it a listen.
(Pictured above: A gay club in Cape Town, the name of which I can't recall. A room bedecked with disco balls felt appropriate for the song)
song of the day -- saturday
Memoryhouse, "When You Sleep"
My love for these guys' debut EP The Years, which was released last year, is well-documented. So I was intrigued when I heard they had done a live cover of this track from My Bloody Valentine (my favorite band). Memoryhouse is among the few bands that possesses the requisite dreamy haze necessary to cover those legendary shoegazers. Here's video of Memoryhouse performing the cover at Mercury Lounge last year:
song of the day
Toro y Moi, "New Beat"
The first song off their new album Underneath the Pine(s) is a seductive, upbeat disco send-up. Dripping with retro synth and a champagne dream-soaked vibe it's a dance track that even guys who don't dance (me) can get behind. I recommend checking them out at Music Hall of Williamsburg on April 10. Here's the video:
the year that was ...
Where did the lazy, cozy, red-wine-soaked winters of yore go? So far this has been a frantic, angry-badger-faced season for me, which means I've only now caught up on last year's films. Here's my list of 2010's best:1. Winter's Bone
Call it Ozark noir. Jennifer Lawrence stars as a ceaselessly determined teenager who must hunt down her meth-cooking father to keep her family together. As she portrays this search through backwoods Appalachia, writer/director Debra Granik captures her subject and setting with a documentarian's eye. It's atmospheric, moody, and riveting. Lawrence, who played a similarly precocious and world-weary teenager in The Burning Plain, makes her character's pluck endearing and believable, while Dale Dickey and John Hawkes offer indelible portraits of not-entirely-unsympathetic figures entangled in the meth business.
2. Black Swan
Sure, I can handily buy all the "it's about the artistic process" arguments, but for me, this is a blood-soaked psychological thriller, as gleefully over the top as Carrie or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. Darren Aronofsky has never been one for subtlety, and thank goodness. Natalie Portman has never been better as a ballerina losing grips on reality (she relishes the stage like Elizabeth Berkeley did the stripper pole in Showgirls ... that's not a knock). Barbara Hershey and Vincent Cassel haven't gotten the praise they deserve as Portman's manipulative mother and director, respectively.
3. Somewhere
Sometimes I think about what it must be like to be Sofia Coppola.
"But Daddy, I want to make a costume drama!"
"When I was in the front row at the Anna Sui show ..."
"I loved that song 1901, off my husband's last album."
It's easy to hate on Coppola, but perhaps that's because we all wish we were hollywood progeny, fashion icons, and indie rock wives. Also, that we could write delicate, minimalist screenplays and bring them to the screen with grace and visual splendor. That's just what Coppola's done with Somewhere, her best film since Lost in Translation (the less said about Marie Antoinette the better). It's easily her most minimal, defined by dialogue-less scenes, a rudderless narrative flow, and relationships are implied rather than stated. I love the ambiguity as well as apathy for traditional narrative propulsion. Stephen Dorff stars as a disenchanted hollywood star living in the famed, decadent Chateau Marmont. Elle Fanning (she of the Dakota Fannings) is his charming, precocious daughter. They interact, disconnect, go to Milan. Their relationship -- and Dorff's lack of relationships with everyone -- feels quintessentially LA. It reminds me of the line from Less Than Zero, "People are afraid to merge."
4. White Material
I've written about Claire Denis' brilliant examination of post-colonialism before, so I'll keep it brief. Isabelle Huppert (always great) is the steely operator of a coffee farm in a crumbling African nation. It's abstract, non-traditional, haunting.
5. I Am Love
It had me at hello. A snow-blanketed Milan, John Adams' lavish score, and vintage credits. A fitting start to an opulent send-up to old style melodrama. Tilda Swinton (who else?) stars as a the matriarch of a dynastic Italian clan. Betrayal, dueling loyalties, clandestine love. It's all there. The soap opera is fun, but the technical marvels are the reasons to stay - costumes to die for and the most appetizing prawn I've ever seen.
6. Animal Kingdom
When his mother overdoses, a teen is forced to move in with his only family -- a notorious gang of bank robbers. Similar to this year's The Town, it's a fairly traditional crime film that explores loyalty, honor and family. The white trash Australian setting is fascinating and Jackie Weaver deserves all the praise she's receiving as the motley crew's duplicitous matriarch.
7. The Social Network
Yeah, it's been overpraised. Which is too bad, because there's now a bit of a backlash against this witty, insightful look at flawed ambition and social alienation. Few directors working today possess David Fincher's skill and precision, and when paired with Aaron Sorkin's rapid-fire dialogue (so good it warrants comparison to Preston Sturges), it's hard to beat. The opening confrontation between Jesse Eisenberg and Rooney Mara could easily be one of the best first scenes ever, and contains my favorite line of the year, "Dating you is like dating a Stairmaster."
8. Shutter Island
A real treat for lovers of old film, Martin Scorsese approaches this psychological thriller with an eye to Hitchcock and Georges Franju. The technical merits are peerless, and supporting turns from Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow are over-the-top in a great way. This is also, I think, the better of DiCaprio's "tortured soul due to late, crazy wife" performances.
9. Inception
Now for the other DiCaprio as a "tortured soul due to late, crazy wife" film. With The Dark Knight and this follow-up, Christopher Nolan deserves credit for pushing blockbuster filmmaking into an uncharted realm. It's also refreshing to see an original idea (not a franchise, reboot, etc.) get the big budget treatment (even if every line Ellen Page says is a piece of exposition). And as much as this isn't a performance piece, why people haven't been talking about Marion Cotillard's affecting work as Leo's luminous (albeit slightly crazy and dead) wife is beyond me.
10. Exit from the Gift Shop
An engaging look at the art of the scam, which itself might just be a scam. It looks at the rise of street art and the mysterious (and potentially fictitious) Banksy, who along with Shepard Fairey are the empresarios of the movement. It's all about what's art and who decides, or as Jennifer Egan put it in the excellent A Visit from the Goon Squad, "When does a fake mohawk become a real mohawk? Who decides?"
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