Turkey Seconds on Mars

Those of us wedded to our cubicles are one day removed from the holiday break. I will be cooking my first turkey this year and likely trashing my apartment's oven, burning off my patience, and serving up a side dish of bitchery. The holidays chafe me rawer than Tegan and Sara's voices.

However, I am thankful for THIS GUY:

He keeps the egosphere inflated so the rest of us don't have to take ourselves too seriously. Is my turkey overcooked? Who cares? Jared Leto can do it better and make it C-O-O-L with black eyeliner.

As if he weren't awesome enough, Leto has a band, 30 Seconds to Mars—a.k.a. his own personal platform for self-worship. Sucking inspiration from Bono's ego jet stream, Leto has just released an homage to cycling culture and his own black-rimmed baby blues with 30 Seconds to Mars' video for "Kings and Queens."



Note how Leto's inflated head looms in front of the setting sun. Cue edgy bikers! (I don't even want to point out the annoying tall mutant cyclist because he's just pedaling for attention, but there's no way I can avoid him.) If we juxtapose the hungry, misunderstood cycle-punks with Leto reaching off to the burnished horizon, oversinging "Into the night..." we get pure Bono gold.

Does this schlock-fest really need to be eight minutes long with credits? Is the gratuitous bike showboating necessary? (Look! I can spin my front wheel while riding!) Apparently, with a hands-on co-director like this, it's all par for the course...

 
At the four-minute mark it all comes to a fantastically awful climax when a square lawyer dude takes out a cyclist with his luxury vehicle, cuing a dream sequence complete with slow-motion white horse. Could it be the soul of the cyclist?! We haven't seen imagery this shoddy since Legends of the Fall. 

Perhaps Leto has been cycling too much of late:

He seems to be spinning the flesh and years right off his bones and morphing into Peter O'Toole:

That could explain the drama.

Unfortunately, hipsters everywhere will be ditching their bikes after watching Leto's video. Gas-guzzlers will become the new fixed gears in protest... "Diesel is so retro!" Gossip Girl, however, is already plotting an entire episode around this video.

Consequences aside, thanks, Jared Leto, for helping us all accept our mediocrity this holiday season. (Dammit, why did your stupid song have to get stuck in my head?!)

Ten Best Soundtracks of the 00s

With only one month to go in the current decade, top 10 lists are popping up like swine flu mutations... Top 10 Songs from Schmaltz-Lacquered TV Shows, Top 10 Tunes to Tweet Like a Twit About, Top 10 Concerts for Naked Crowd Surfing, Top 10 Songs to Listen to While Recycling Tofu Cartons, Top 10 Bands to Mail Body Fluids To, etc.... Everyone loves a list: they're neat, they're concise, they're scannable. They are also, for those of us in a time crunch this holiday week, easy to post about.

And so...

Paste Magazine has compiled its list of 10 Best Movie Soundtracks of the Last Decade. You can listen to each soundtrack in its entirety on the Paste website. The list is as follows:

1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)
2. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
3. Vanilla Sky (2001)
4. High Fidelity (2000)
5. Juno (2007)
6. Almost Famous (2007)
7. Garden State (2004)
8. I'm Not There (2007)
9. Once (2007)
10. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2001)

Obviously, there are some omissions here, including Into the Wild, Royal Tenenbaums, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I haven't had a chance to listen to I'm Not There, but I have owned and cranked copies of High Fidelity and Garden State, and my mom can vouch for O Brother, Where Art Thou? I've also heard good things about the oft-overlooked Vanilla Sky. Once and Juno are both sort of  givens, although The Life Aquatic, which benefited from the bossa nova cool of Seu Jorge, is still a bit of a surprise.

Reader comments on Paste's posting include venomous responses to Twilight's inclusion, as well as calls for I Heart Huckabees, The Whackness, Slumdog Millionaire, The Proposition, (500) Days of Summer, Thumbsucker, and Dan in Real Life. One sex-deprived individual even reminds everyone that, technically, the decade is from 2001–2010, so we are all jumping the gun.

An Education

Saturday night my friend and I saw An Education at Ragtag. Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay for this fresh retelling of the old "sophisticate corrupts naif" tale set in early 1960s England. Sixteen-year-old Jenny is torn between two very different forms of education: the Latin and English she studies at an all-girls school by day and the older man, David, she studies in smoky clubs and Paris bedrooms by night.

I've alluded to my love of jazz in previous posts. This soundtrack does not disappoint in the jazz department. With the opening credits, Floyd Cramer's piano rhythms sweep in and set the stage for a cocktail hour of sound soon shaken and stirred by Beth Rowley singing "You've Got Me Wrapped Around Your Little Finger" in a scene at a supper club. I was shocked to find out that one of the catchiest tunes on the soundtrack is actually the Velvet Fog himself, Mel Torme, conjuring Ray Charles with "Comin' Home Baby." We also have sultry-voiced newcomer Melody Gardot singing "Your Heart Is As Black As Night," Madeleine Peyroux, Vince Guaraldi, Juliette Greco, and, much to my chagrin, Duffy, who adds her annoying retro two-cents. Few soundtracks are perfect.

"On the Rebound" by Floyd Cramer

"You've Got Me Wrapped Around Your Little Finger" by Beth Rowley

"Comin' Home Baby" by Mel Torme

"Your Heart Is As Black As Night" by Melody Gardot

I realize this type of music isn't for everyone, and it's a bit different from, say, Rogue Wave or Phoenix, but the best part about being a music lover is loving all forms of music, whether it's Erik Satie or Fela Kuti, and I do enjoy this stuff. It washes over me like a brush on the drums.

In case you're interested in the trailer...

Album of the Week, 11/20/09--"Upper Air" by Bowerbirds

Seems hard to believe now, but just a few months ago we were watching the first stars bleed through twilight's indigo fabric at almost nine each night. These days most of us are lucky to catch a tamped-down sunset before heading home to our dark living rooms. So let's return to July... In the middle of all the summer gloriousness and long before I started this blog, Bowerbirds released their second album, Upper Air (July 7). True, Upper Air isn't necessarily new, but it happens to be splendid and warm and lush, and I want to feature it as Album of the Week, despite the fact that autumn has steeped the air in wet leaves.

Last week I embedded a La Blogotheque Take-Away Show clip of Bowerbirds in a candy store in New York City. This got me thinking about the band and the hill country from whence they sprang—I had a feeling it wasn't the hills of Queens. In this case, members Phil Moore (vocals, guitar, tambourine), Beth Tacular (vocals, accordion, bass drum), and Matt Damron (drums, violin) hail from the misty mountains of Raleigh, North Carolina, where they've been baptized in gospel and nature.

An undercurrent of anti-materialism runs through the album, as in "House of Diamonds," when Moore sings, "You are free from the greed of your culture/ you are free from the lust for the luster." The tracks themselves, with their simple guitar-and-accordion arrangements, may seem short on luster at first, but they do shine up with subsequent listens. There are many subtleties at work—rising instrumental crescendos, perfectly timed lyrical pauses, well-integrated choruses. It would be a mistake to dismiss Bowerbirds' rustic sound before noticing how they open the door to higher spiritual plains through natural imagery and their earnest belief in the interconnectedness of life. It may sound hokey but somehow isn't.

"Northern Lights"


"Teeth"


"Beneath Your Tree"


"Chimes"

Burning Off Steam with the Fiery Furnaces

In my cello lesson Tuesday night, I noticed my A string was near the breaking point, bringing on a bunch of warped jokes between my instructor and I about broken strings and snapped-out eyes. The more I thought about it, though, I realized how much we're all under constant pressure, chafing against the bridge every day, in danger of snapping and altering our vision irreparably. I'm often frustrated by the time-suck known as my job—which is about as much fun as a cello string in the eye—and wish I could devote more time to writing and getting paid for it. Fortunately, I'm lucky in love, music, art, health, and everything else, which takes the edge off the daily eight-hour clock watch.

For the Friedbergers, also known as the Fiery Furnaces, rewriting and rewriting and rewriting songs is their snapped-string escape. Earlier this month the brother/sister duo of Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger released Take Me Round Again, a collection of reworked tracks that's being described as "the Friedbergers cover the Friedbergers." The siblings chose six songs from their eighth album, I'm Going Away (July 21, 2009), and each rewrote the tracks separately—Matthew in Michigan, and Eleanor in New York—before compiling them as a sort of covers record. The only remaining identifiable elements of each track are its lyrics.

(album art for Take Me Round Again)

"Keep Me in the Dark" (Eleanor's version)


The Friedbergers have been rewriting songs live since they first started touring together in 2003. Some of their previous albums have a gimmicky concept behind them, and their recent plans to release a Silent Album, which will consist of sheet music they'll ask fans to play for them at shows, is no exception. Whatever. As long as they don't go busting any strings.

Mason Jennings at The Blue Note, 11/18

On Sunday my friend and I took a walk in the rain at Gans Creek with his wild and woolly border collie—wind and mud and cold be damned. Standing on Coyote Bluff looking at the stripped trees massed in the fog, we breathed in wet-earth life, and it was good. Listening to Mason Jennings is a similar experience. Jennings just wants to play good music on his guitar, and his sound is solid as a sycamore tree.

Jennings will be showcasing his good-earth talents at The Blue Note Wednesday night, along with Nathaniel Rateliff and The Wheel. Lest you expect quiet folk, however, let me shed some light on Jennings' latest release, Blood of Man (September 15)... While it's his eighth studio album, it's also his first electric one, and as such, it rocks out a bit more. With raw simplicity Jennings takes on darker subjects, inspired by a new need to be honest and please himself first, releasing intense feelings in the process. He's resisted attempts to clean up the tracks and take the rough edges off.

"The Field" (from Blood of Man)


In the video below, Jennings talks a bit about the new album and what he's been up to lately.

"The Field" (acoustic version... sounding like Jack Johnson's brother)


I've been meaning to spend more time getting to know Mason Jennings; unfortunately, it won't happen at Wednesday night's show, but I need to do more unearthing in the future.

Check out Mason Jennings with Nathaniel Rateliff and The Wheel at The Blue Note, Wednesday, November 18. Doors open at 7:30.

Ezra Furman and the Harpoons at Mojo's, 11/17

Save the whales! Ezra Furman and the Harpoons are sailing into Columbia with Peasant to play Mojo's Tuesday night. Some have compared them to the Violent Femmes and termed their music "unhinged" or "exuberant." Equal parts boyish and equal parts snarky, EF and the Harpoons haven't quite grown up and perhaps never will.

Furman and his harpooning band formed in 2006 at Tufts University and now call Boston home. The 23-year-old Furman recently launched a daunting undertaking—recording personal songs for every fan who buys his band's latest album, Moon Face: Bootlegs and Road Recordings 2006–2009, available at ezrafurman.bigcartel.com. (You can read more about the project at the Chicago Tribune.) Basically, Furman has promised to send each paying customer a copy of his new 10-track cd, plus a personalized song. Most people, he says, have mailed him personal details along with their album requests, asking him to record tracks for ex-girlfriends, weddings, new babies, etc. Furman admits he may not be able to keep up with demand but is willing to give it his best shot for the sake of redefining the artist-fan experience.

So far Ezra Furman and his band have released two traditional albums (sans made-to-order tracks): 2007's Banging Down the Doors and 2008's Inside the Human Body. Their biggest hit to date is probably "Take Off Your Sunglasses," from the second album.

"Take Off Your Sunglasses"


Opening for Furman et al. is Peasant, also known as Damien Nicholas DeRose from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, who plays guitar, piano, and drums and sings like an angel.


Check out Ezra Furman and the Harpoons with Peasant at Mojo's, Tuesday, November 17. Doors open at 7:00.