AliciaRenee’s Neighborhood

Straitjacket Escape ♥ photo by Dave

Indie pop isn’t usually described as epic. Adorable, precious, and cloyingly cute? Yes. But epic? Not so much. Fanfarlo seems to be the exception, and they proved this point on Friday night, when they had a man suspended upside down from the rafters and escape from a straitjacket. This happened within the first five minutes of the show, during the orchestral behemoth that is “The Walls are Coming Down.” It was like a Bruce Willis movie, but with less explosions and more glockenspiel.

The straitjacket incident was obviously the most epic moment of the night, but the theatrics didn’t end there. There was interpretive dancing, rogue boomerangs, and a pretty intimidating box accordion. Throw in a picturesque stage setting and a watering can attached to the drum kit, and it wasn’t an average Webster Hall show. The band managed to take a spacious, relatively normal venue and shift the atmosphere to match that of the album: warm, enthusiastic, and frenzied.

Frontman, Simon Balthazar, led the charge in a bowtie and further proved my belief that Swedes are musical messiahs when it comes to penning a good pop song. Though he was the lead singer, the audience seemed to focus on the band as a whole as they constantly exchanged instruments and shared singing duties. The arsenal of instruments that night included a banjo, mandolin, violin, clarinet, and a brightly colored melodica – the required instrument for every chamber pop band out there. True, they occasionally succumbed to a few clichés (see: the rampart Arcade Fire comparisons), but their sincerity shone through. When you take away the fanfare, there’s still a pulse to their music that drives it past most conventions. Hence the epic-ness.

With only one album, they had a limited supply of songs to play. My personal favorite, “I’m a Pilot,” drew from the band’s most appealing quality: their infectious camaraderie. This was most apparent during the encore, when they had run out of songs to sing, so they resorted to the obligatory cover, Low’s “Just Like Christmas,” featuring opening band, Freelance Whales. Anything holiday-related is instantly a cheese-fest, but throw in a cavalcade of instruments and a dozen earnest musicians and it becomes easy to suspend any cynicism.

(I really wanted to end this review by writing, “...and by the end of the night, you could say that the entire audience had shed an emotional straitjacket – and put on a fringed vest of love.” But I won’t. Swearsies.)

Photos by Dave: 

I like love Samurai series like Lone Wolf and Cub and Hanzo the Razor (while Lone Wolf is all about bloody violence, Hanzo is all about sex & ultra-violence). I only mention Hanzo, because the "hero" is played by Shintaro Katsu, who also play one of Japan's most popular Samurai, Zatoichi. If you've never heard of Zatoichi, he's a blind swordsman, who wanders Japan in the Edo period as a masseur (although he seems to make most of his money at dice games).

The Zatoichi series ran 26 movies (1962-1982) and a television series ran for five years (1974-1979). Twenty years later, Takeshi "Beat" Kitano reinvented Zatoichi with his version of the character. This was easily one of my favorite movie at the time, I saw it at the independent theater twice in 2003 and ordered a region 3 release of the DVD as soon as it was available on import. Incidentally, to show support for the US market, I also bought the US edition of the DVD, which came with a bonus Sonatine movie (which was originally released in the states by Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder productions).

Considering the movie did quite well, critically and (I'm assuming) in sales, I was hoping for a follow-up movie by Kitano, but unfortunately there's no such plan. However, interestingly enough, one of my all-time favorite Japanese director, Takashi Miike* directed a stage adaption of Zatoichi for live performances in 2007.

I'm happy to report that, I saw a very good re-imagined of the familiar character, reinvented as a female protagonist, called Ichi. I wish the producers had kept the brand of "Zatoichi", as people who hear "Ichi" does not always associate the name with the blind swordsman. To be fair, Ichi is the original character's name. The term "zato" means low-ranking blind person (low-ranking in the Todoza guild). Logically, they could've named this movie Gozeichi, because Goze refers to blind musician women of that time period.

Anyway, beside my gripe about the Ichi name as the movie title, I also didn't like the idea that a model (Ayase Haruka) is playing the part of the protagonist. All that was really not worth worrying, because the whole movie is quite entertaining and enjoyable, and there is only once where Haruka is seen 'dolled up' for a music performance (most of the movie, she's covered from head to toe in dirty rags). However, there are at times when the director Fumihiko Sori choose to stay too long on Haruka's beautiful unblemished face. We get it, she's cute.

The story is uncomplicated, Ichi wanders into some town with an inept sword-drawing samurai Toma (the name is close to a slang "tonma" for idiot or fool). The town is in trouble from the Banki gang, and in Zatoichi fashion, Ichi and Toma saves the town. During the course of the film, there are the tried-and-true Zatoichi moments like slashing out the lights and Ichi triumph in complete darkness, the use of sound to throw Ichi off, and, of course, the Cho-Han Bakuchi dice gambling.

What made the film interesting, at least to me, is that the soundtrack is by Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard! So throughout the movie, you do hear that ethereal vocals, similar to her efforts on Ridley Scott's Gladiator. I suspect she only wrote the vocals, the credit I have for composer is Michael Edwards, who previously worked with Gerrad on her solo material. The soundtrack was a bit of a surprise to me, generally these J-movies' music and production team are usually kept inhouse. Although, having said that, the one outro credit song is by Korean J-Pop singer SunMin.

Ichi the movie will be made available in the US market via Bluray and DVD in two days (December 22^nd), just in time for last-minute xmas shoppers. Hopefully those Best Buy tonmas will be smart and order some copies for their store (however, if it costs over $25, I'd rather order it online, or not own it at all - hey times are tough!).

* I love all three billion of his movies! Audition, City of Lost Souls, One Missed Call, Ichi the Killer, Fudoh, The Happiness of the Katakuris, Zebraman, Sukiyaki Western: Django, etc.

Ever since I've first heard "There is a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends" in 1991, I've always known that Morrissey and I would be friends. Longtime readers will know that I'm a huge fan, but post-Ringleader, I found myself not actively collecting various editions (a good example of this is the "expanded" editions of Southpaw Grammar and Maladjusted). While I would love to have them in my collection, I feel like I've already bought them the first time around and I'm contented with the original cd and vinyls.

For this Christmas, I did buy myself Swords deluxe edition via my favorite store, amazon. It was a bit pricey for a CD/DVD combo ($23 vs $12 for the standard disc), but I'm worth it.

I actually have had a digital copy of the B-Sides compilation since late October, thanks to pen pal friend Mel, as it was a "bonus" if you had preordered tickets to see Morrissey in live in 2009. And of course, like most fans, we still buy the physical release anyway, so it's a bit of a win-win situation for everyone.

I'll briefly summarize Morrissey's history: he's a bit of a sensitive, indie songwriter with The Smiths. He went solo in "nineteen-eighty-hate" with some classic modern rock hits with "Suedehead" (aka that "I'm So Sorry" song) and "Everyday is like Sunday". He went a bit rockabilly with Your Arsenal (his previous album Kill Uncle was heading to this direction, especially with the B-Sides and singles from this era), and pretty much stayed in this "muscular" rock type music since. As I previously mentioned, I think this has to do with his musical collaboration with Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte.

If you're new to Morrissey, I don't think Swords would be a good starting point for you. I would recommend starting with Bona Drag, a weird mix of b-sides and oddities. Most of the songs on Swords were co-written by Alain Whyte, and there's a nice cohesive feel to each song as they have similiar song writing structure. When you do run into a non-Whyte song, such as "Sweetie-Pie", it just feels out of place. In fact, I think this is possibly one of the worst Morrissey song, right up there with "Michaels Bones".

There is one non-Morrissey-penned song, and it's a live recording of "Drive-In Saturday" (live at Omaha on 11 May 2007). Morrissey's music obsessions tend to be from the 60s and 70s era, so it didn't surprise me to hear him doing a David Bowie cover from the Aladdin Sane time period. But the two are friends, I know that Bowie showed up at a Morrissey show in Los Angeles in the early 90s to do a duet of a T.Rex's song for "Cosmic Dancer", and, of course, Bowie would later record a soul-ish version of Morrissey's "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" in 1993.

Also, it seems in post-2008, Morrissey's songs have been about fatherhood and retirement. Just looking over his titles: "Good Looking Man About Town", "Don't Make Fun of Daddy's Voice", "Teenage Dad on His Estate", "Children in Pieces", that "constipated look" for Swords, and that controversially album cover for Years of Refusal ... you would think that he's married with kids. Maybe that's not a bad thing, with Morrissey's heath in question, maybe he should take it easy. We all can't be like James Dean, you know.

In the spirit of giving, below are some free music. It's their gifts to you.

DOMINO? YOU MEAN DOMI-YES
dominorecordco.com

You know, I honestly don't know how Ryan does it, keeping up with the various 'tweets'. I personally think twitter become absolutely useless if you have more than 50 friends. There's also so much spam on twitter!

So, I mostly just have it filtered to reading our own twitter to discover new freebies. So below was sent out a few days ago:

weheartmusic
We♥Music

Check out the @DominoRecordCo Xmas Sampler - http://bit.ly/53Thv0 - Final Fantasy, Wild Beasts, The Kills, Franz Ferdinand & King Creosote.
11:49 AM Dec 14th from web

So I did download the eight-track sampler at dominorecordco.com, and was pleasantly surprise to hear a really nice long remix of "Can't Stop Feeling" by Emperor Machine. I normally don't even like remixes, but this one had my head bopping and really appreciating the song... it's like hearing an old song and suddenly it's new again.

I also really dig Joker's Daughter (for non-comic book nerds, yes the Joker had a daughter - I think she mostly fought the 70s Teen Titans). I love "classic" pop girl-group sound, and this band has the vocals and melodies. Although the subject of Gremlins and "Bouncing Liquorish Bears" may be on the weirder side.

OF DOVES AND FISH
harveysidfisher.com

Dovecote Records gathered three of their recording artists to do a mini-tribute to Harvey Sid Fisher. While I don't know much about Fisher, based on hearing the three covers by Mason Proper, Tim Williams, and Trevor Giuliani, I have concluded that Fisher was a bit of a strange songwriter and has a bit of an interesting "older" man's vocals... each of the modern artists do try and emulate the singing style.

My personal favorite is Tim Williams' rendition. Nice backup vocals and the repetitive "hit another wall" refrain.

If you want to hear these songs for yourself - head over to dovecoterecords.com and click on the "Download Now" link. There's no catch either, none of that "give us your email" thing. Just a nice little free EP.

UPDATE 12/18/09: I misread the press info, the songs are all sung by Harvey Sid Fisher (doing covers of Dovecote artists).  This would explain why all the songs sounds like an "older" man.

OLD WAVE MIXTAPE
nouvellesvagues.com

Cover lover band of approval, Nouvelle Vague, made a 10-track free mixtape at whenyouawake.com.

Most of the tracks are by American artists, some classic from Roy Orbison ("You Got It"), Louis Armstrong ("We Have All The Time In The World"), Johnny Cash ("Ring Of Fire"), etc. There are a few weird ones (weird as in didn't fit in) like Sufjan Stevens and Rolling Stones... however, I will admit tapping my feet when I heard the intro to "Let's Spend The Night Together". There is the token French artist Serge Gainsbourg on the mixtape for good measure.

While I'm not entirely sure about the legality of this free download, I think it's good promotions for the bands mentioned on the tape. Plus, it's a nice boost of ego, you know?

daffodilpublicity.com confirms these are their forth-coming North American tour dates:

Friday, Jan. 22, Philadelphia, PA, World Café Saturday, Jan. 23, New York, NY, Webster Hall Sunday, Jan. 24, Boston, MA, Somerset Tuesday, Jan. 25, Montreal, PQ, Metropolis Wednesday, Jan. 27, Toronto, ONT, Opera House Thursday, Jan. 28, Detroit, MI, Crofoot Ballroom Friday, Jan. 29, Chicago, IL, Logan Square Monday, Feb. 1, Denver, CO, Bluebird Tuesday, Feb. 2, Salt Lake City, UT, Urban Lounge Thursday, Feb. 4, Seattle, WA, King Cat

Friday, Feb. 5, Vancouver, BC, Venue Sunday, Feb. 7, San Francisco, CA, Regency Monday, Feb. 8, Sant Cruz, CA, Rio Theater Tuesday, Feb. 9, Los Angeles, CA, Henry Fonda Friday, Feb. 12, Dallas, TX, Granada Saturday, Feb. 13, Austin, TX, Mohawk Sunday, Feb. 14, New Orleans, LA, Republic Tuesday, Feb. 16, Miami, FL, Revolution Wednesday, Feb. 17, Orlando, FL, Firestone Thursday, Feb. 18, Atlanta, GA, Loft Saturday, Feb. 20, Washington DC, 9:30 Club

Too bad they're not going anywhere near Minneapolis, I would love to meet the band.

YOU HAVE TO SPEND MONEY TO SAVE MONEY
www.hannspree.com

I don't work for Best Buy, but I wanted to pass along this deal, since it is almost a crime to not buy it. It is $140 for HANNspree 23" HD LCD 16:9 Widescreen Monitor. That's cheap, considering the same monitor would've cost at least $700 a few years ago.

I did buy it and setup was very plug-and-play easy. It came with a disc for a Windows Vista driver, but if you just have XP, it would just recognize the monitor. Hooking it up on the PS3 using the HDMI cable (not included) was also easy - however I did not like the long pauses as PS3 auto adjust when it plays bluray discs (I suspect this has to do with determining that it's a compliant display since HDMI is notorious for anti-piracy junk).

Compare to the old CRT monster monitors, this 23" is superlight - even Mr Burns can easily move the monitor around. The product page lists 9.9lbs, but it feels like it's only one or two pounds.

The monitor does have built-in speakers, but it sounds tinny. Not exactly awesome audio, but for $140, that's just a bonus. I recommend buying monitor headphones and plugging it in the monitor for clearer audio. And speaking of audio, since this is marketed as purely a monitor - there is also no remote control access. If you need to turn down the audio, you have to adjust it on the monitor itself.

Despite my complaint, this is one of best image display I've own. It's native 1920x1080 is pretty sweet when I'm playing Dragon Age (since now I can have more items in the "quick" slots at the bottom).

* practically free

I had a couple of vertebrae fused last October, and so I've been away on a health sabbatical of sorts.  The cold weather is not helping!  I feel so odd saying that I will welcome some warm temperatures again, especially after we got some lovely snow in my home area last weekend.  But when you have metal in your body, or nerve damage, or both, you start feeling the barometric changes more.

I wanted to take a moment to share some other music blogs I have been reading here at VOX.  I promise I will be back with more music, including 2NU's last offering.  (Who is 2NU?  Stay tuned...)  But until then, allow me to share some other blogs of interest, including a side project of mine.

Burl Veneer’s blog was spotlighted at [music is good] recently, with his observations on genre labels as a guide to exploring music, particularly with spiritual jazz.  It's a retrospective look; according to his profile, he is "recapturing the thrill of [his] college radio years, on a smaller scale." It's a very nice sentiment for those who have become rather jaded with corporate/mainstream music as of late, and are still looking back to younger days when one's music experience was more visceral.  I don't mean to say that such leads to an abandoning of new territories in listening opportunities, but for those of us who have outgrown commercial markets and are generally exasperated with what's on the radio airwaves, there is a shift in perspective, is there not?  I remember that for myself, I went back for a time to what I had discovered musically in eight long years of college and university and when I had expressed similar thoughts.

(On a side note, it seems to me that many of the resources I looked at when writing reviews here seem to be very similar to what friends of mine looked at writing for university and college publications, or what they played for college radio.  But I digress...)

Those that have followed my reviews here know that I'm a big fan of mashups and bastard pop.  It's always been a satirical commentary for me, in some part, on how the commercial industry likes to come back to familiar hooks and "radio-friendly" licks-- how else can two or more songs, especially when they seem so radically different, come together?  They can come together, all right, in a rather slick way that can express an entirely new idea that is different from the sum of the mashup's parts.

Mashup Fans is one VOX group devoted to the mashup genre.  For a time it was active, but sadly, due to recent inactivity ( it appears to have succumbed to the splogger disease that has been infecting VOX like a cancer.  If you stick to the Media section, however, you'll find some great mashups and other mixes.  Do me a favor, if you're a mashup fan, won't you?  Go see if you can turn the tide.  Upload some stuff and send Darren a message to see what you can do to revive the group.

Monday Monster Mashup is my side project.  When I started the group, the idea was I would post something every Monday, although clearly, I haven't kept it that regular as of late.  I've included video mashups that accompany mashup tunes whenever possible, although there are some obstacles.  Since Warner Media Group has been throwing its weight around like a 800-lb. gorilla, some of the YouTube videos I've been using have been muted or audio swapped.  I don't think this bothers many mashup artists too terribly much; the savvy ones cover their buttocks by urging listeners to support the original artists.  Even if they don't make such a noble token gesture, most see the genre as transitory-- if the corporate suits kill a work on grounds of copyright infringement, they will have moved on to something new anyways.

BOOTLEGS and MASHUPS is more oriented to bootlegs, according to the description, although, really, I'm not sure what the focus is right now.  If you can follow the rambling posts of late, you're doing better than me.  Anyways, two of the hosts, moien and Ground Countrol To Major Tom, run music-oriented blogs in French, and it turns out there is a sizeable community of French-speaking music bloggers here at VOX.  The following are written in French, unless otherwise specified:

• 

  blog de The Dude
  The Dude’s Blog (Blog de The Dude) has a general focus-- nothing too specific, but that's fairly within the spirit of things at W♥M-- write about what you like.  Obviously, his username is taken from The Big Lebowski, which was referenced by Vu in Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).  His latest post covers his album picks for 2009.
• Aurelio’s blog is a little more general than even that--"Un cocktail de musique, ciné, bouquins, bonne bouffe et rigolade" (A mix of music, film, books, good food, and comedy).  He hosts Albums 2009, so some of his latest posts have also been about his selections of music in 2009.
• niggytardust writes in English and French, so if you don't speak/read/write French, you have an English option.  More of a rock focus.
• Ground Countrol To Major Tom focuses on new artists and independent music.
• Music Is My Radar is written by moien

There are probably some ones I'm forgetting to mention, but I trust that you may explore their Neighborhoods and discover more.
 
Novelty Records is hosted by W. B. Mook, who wrote reviews for W♥M for a time.  You know what "novelty songs" are, right?  Sure you do!  If you don't, according to Wikipedia, it's a genre of music that was coined in Tin Pan Alley to describe a division in popular music that started in 1910 and continued in the '20s and '30s.  But to put it more simply, the term includes most anything that has been classified as parody or comedy music.  In short, it's just about everything that Dr. Demento has spun on his radio show-- you know, that funny-looking bearded guy with the top hat that helped launch Weird Al Yankovic's music career.  (Look for him-- Dr. Demento, that is-- in his music videos and the movie UHF.  Have a Twinkie weiner sandwich while you do so, okay?  It's good, but not like Yappy's Dog Treats-- I promise!)

So there you have it.  I'm probably just scratching the surface, but most of these bloggers and Vox Groups specifically mentioned (if not all) have contributed to W♥M in some form or another, so have a look around.

 12/15/2009 23:56:22 ♥ jaklumen ( / jaklumen.vox.com)