Month: May 2012

Neck of the Woods – Silversun Pickups

After just recently releasing a kick-ass EP, Silversun Pickups finally drops their next full length studio album. Will the group continue the trend of adding distortion and noise to a mostly homogenous collection? Although that’s a horrible summation of the direction of Swoon, which is admittedly a great album, the criticism is still fair. Silversun is a group, however, that has a lot more to share than a single trick, and even though Seasick hinted at some good things, it didn’t prepare me for Neck of the Woods.

Brave diversity is a concise description of the collection of tracks. As the album first starts, I actually thought I was listening to new Sigur Ros. Within moments it sounded like the recent Portishead effort. How a band can pull off representing so many influences at once is remarkable. Depeche Mode, She Wants Revenge, My Bloody Valentine- I shit you not, sequences of songs sound like all of these groups.

Busy Bees
Busy Bees

All this variety is immediately confusing- the music is different and although some songs have catchy sections, the expectations of where the music is going keep changing. Inconsistent beats, notes, and melodies will require more listening to than the group’s previous work but high notes and powerful surges excite, making familiarity with the songs and the lyrics elevate the experience. Neck of the Woods is definitely more indie. The songs have less standard pop structures and more changeups and strong melodic dissonances. But the sounds are purposeful with great builds to rocking sections.

Besides the non-conformist song structures, Silversun is adding some other twists to this cocktail. Some tracks are more synth driven at times, especially in their intros. The band thankfully plays with much less distortion. Many of the vocals are simultaneously backed up by the female bassist giving a magical quality to the harmony. Everything here screams love of music and discontent with doing the same thing again and again, and after all, isn’t that kind of what ‘more indie’ is all about?

Out Of Breath
Out of Breath

My recommendation on Neck of the Woods should be clear. This is a landmark album by the Silversun Pickups. This is a snapshot moment of the band maturing into something more than just a signature sound. This is a headphone record. Put those on, turn the volume up, and just enjoy the variety and pacing of the entire album without interruption. It all fits together so well that it will amaze you at how enthralling an experience it can be.

See And Don’t See

Greg Dulli, front man for the influential 90s indie rock group The Afghan Whigs, has had a pretty good post breakup career with The Twilight Singers, The Gutter Twins, and solo. He plays lots of small shows in Los Angeles and I try to go to as many of them as I can. His live performances are famous- he always surprises with a cover, he’s as smooth as any jazz man with a smoke and a drink on his mic stand, and he likes to interact with the crowd. At one small Twilight Singers show in Glendale several years ago, he asked the crowd for any requests, and I yelled out, “MILEZ IS DEAD!”. He laughed for a moment and said, “That one will have to wait for an Afghan Whigs reunion.”

I took it as a joke.

See And Don’t See
See and Don’t See

THE AFGHAN WHIGS RELEASE FIRST NEW TRACK IN FIVE YEARS. So says the news section of theafghanwhigs.com, in all caps to stress the importance of the event. The next news item below it? THE AFGHAN WHIGS ANNOUNCE LOCATION OF FIRST SHOW IN 13 YEARS.

Long story short, Greg Dulli hooked up with his old bandmates for a good old fashioned reunion. There’s no new album announced yet, however, and the tour dates are mostly big shows like Spain’s Primavera Sound and Lollapalooza in Chicago, with many being outside the States. So for now you are stuck with this 1970s cover.

There are no tour dates scheduled in Los Angeles just yet but I can’t believe the man will let down a fanbase that has applauded him all along. And when that time comes, I’ll be there, and I’ll be expecting Greg Dulli to keep his promise and play my request.

Link Bait Headlines

The Escapist was a site that I used to respect. It was video game commentary for adults. Perhaps it was always a bit highbrow but there was enough meat in the philosophizing to give it purpose. Nowadays the site has evolved into a video channel, more or less, with articles and related “news”. While some might bemoan the change, it does fit in with a more modern internet and I can’t really blame the shift.

These days, however, The Escapist is starting to employ link bait techniques. That is, using sensationalist headlines that overblow anything the article actually talks about solely for the purpose of attracting attention.

"Games Aren’t Good For Adults" claims a news link. Clicking through quickly reveals the true headline to be "Games Aren’t Good Enough For Adults", which means something completely different.

Or what about the “Avengers Cost NYC $160 Billion in Damages" story, where reading the article explains that this is the amount of money that a real life execution of the fantasy plot would actually cost the city.

Is the website hurting that much for ad revenue? Please treat us like adults. Right now the headlines are going the way of Yahoo!.

For a bit of background, let me explain that I am a Generation X internet user. This means at one point I used Yahoo! as my main hub for searches. I am a pretty brand loyal type of guy, and while others were moving on to the newfangled Google, I stayed true to the old guard. Did it matter that the new upstart was sleek and clean and didn’t have a page littered with services? Sure, that’s a big deal, but I wasn’t naïve in thinking that Google would never build into the same type of thing. In point of fact, simple searches are often beleaguered with pandering to join Google+ or the like these days. But that’s not why I left Yahoo! years ago.

This is old Yahoo!. You can see the queue of news stories below. All of these have legitimate reporting value. The lead story, however, is a bit curious. Look at that picture of meteors. A dazzling meteor shower “could send up to 200 meteors per hour streaking across the sky.” Cool! Wait a minute- 200 per hour? What is that, about 3 meteors a minute? Isn’t that an awfully deceptive image for 1 meteor every 20 seconds?

Up next is this investigative gem. A 40-yard dash time “is too good for one blogger to believe.” What? This is a “news” story about a blog that takes offense at something? That’s like the AP running an expose and linking to my site because I said Ghost Hunting Shows were stupid. There is no journalistic value to that at all.

Up next in Yahoo!’s cutting edge repertoire: a funny animal video. Ok, these light-hearted distractions will always find a way to people’s eyes. Let’s see what the once giant search engine headlines for the “Best videos of ‘09”. A deer walking through a cat door. Except that this video looks awfully familiar, and the timestamp of 1999 is a dead giveaway that this video is REALLY OLD. It was probably first seen on America’s Funniest Home Videos. How is this a best of video for 2009 exactly?

It’s obvious at this point that Yahoo! is scrambling for page views. They don’t have any content so they are referring to opinion blogs and videos from last century to stay afloat. But what happens when even that isn’t enough? Will they just flat out make up facts? This Ke$ha headline explicitly states that she has “the most downloaded track by a female artist ever.” That is a pretty bold claim. Ever? Man, that is unbelievable. I mean, really, super surprising. Let me just read about that.

Oh, I see. The reason I didn’t believe this fact is because is was completely untrue. The song wasn’t the most downloaded track by a female artist ever, it just had the highest weekly sum. That’s impressive for sure, but why the need to lie? Yes, you fooled me again Yahoo!. You got another link click. You know what I got? A new search engine. And that’s when I started using Google.

So back to The Escapist and the internet in general. This kind of link baiting is a desperation move, a last ditch ploy to keep traffic up. What it most certainly is not is a viable long term strategy for providing readers with good content. One thing people seem to have forgotten these days is that respect is hard to gain but easy to lose. Selling it off for a few more years of profit may help the bottom line today but it does significant damage to an ailing brand down the road.

Speaking of which, it’s almost time to find a new, improved, better search engine. Anyone have suggestions?

Movie Rights

This video by MovieBob is pretty fascinating.

 

It basically says that when movie studios hold the rights to certain properties, they can lose the rights if they don’t use them. What studios end up doing is pumping out bad films quickly to keep their licenses intact.

This is the complete opposite of what is good for movie viewers. Instead of someone taking a property and doing something awesome with it, we are instead treated to half assed shovel entertainment that is primarily a business move and not meant to be good. This means we get to see beloved comic book characters repeatedly raped just to make sure no one else can use them.

Ang Lee’s Hulk film did so poorly that they ended up selling the rights back to Marvel and we can all see how much better The Avengers is for it. Not being able to get Spiderman interacting with those guys because of a crappy teen reboot, however, is heartbreaking.

You know, in the video game industry we often comment about how we should look to Hollywood for superior business models but this is a case where I’d rather stay away. Video game licenses are often done on a per game basis, or for a predetermined number of games, rather than some muddled system where the rights holder can essentially besiege a property for as long as they want. I bet you all can’t wait for Ghostrider 3.

The Avengers

The epic saga that Marvel has been slowly laying the groundwork for has finally arrived and comic book junkies everywhere are rejoicing! So you’re expecting me to talk about how this is a hyped up blockbuster that nerds are gonna sing about even though it really isn’t anything special, right? Frankly, I was expecting the same thing. I think myself quite a talent at judging movies from their trailers alone and The Avengers promos had me yawning. Then this movie goes and gets released and completely shatters my presumptions. Not only was it good, it was awesome.

How did this happen? Iron Man disappointed and the sequel was pretty good yet deeply flawed. Captain America was overly cheesy. Thor actually was ok considering its 1950s era space background but plain and predictable. And no one has ever been able to create a good Hulk movie. So how did The Avengers pull off the superhero stew?

This is a case of the sum equaling more than the parts. When you throw a bunch of different superheroes together, the interplay between them is paramount. There really isn’t anything more important than that. Joss Whedon, who I just criticized for forcing the dialog in Cabin in the Woods, delivers a perfect blend of humor and sincerity. Every hero is cast extremely well and each actor gets to show off their skills in a number of scenes unhampered by special effects. I am astonished that even Samuel L. Jackson’s acting was decent. You need to give a director credit where it is due.

As a personal aside, there is another story aspect that I find satisfying, more for its noticeable absence. There is no love interest- no damsel in distress. There are too many characters to focus on each’s high school crush and the film is better for it.

Sure there are a couple of nitpicks. I always hate seeing the deus ex machina of a  destroyed mothership automatically disabling all the bad soldiers on the ground. The Hulk fought all movie to be in control of his monster but at the end it was effortless and sudden- he didn’t overcome his inner conflict, the plot just glazed over it. The classic ‘U.S. government who just wants to nuke everything’ annoyingly comes into play but it is kept to a minimum. So there are eye rolling moments, but when they happen they are over before you can dwell on them too long and you are back to being awed by action.

Speaking of which, the combat scenes feel ripped right out of the comic books. The action is better executed and more entertaining than any of the movies leading up to this one. Ever wanted to know what would happen if Superhero A fights Superhero B? The Avengers has a bit of that spliced about. But there are other interactions to sate our curiosity. What would happen if the Hulk tries to pick up Thor’s hammer, or if Thor slams Mjolnir into Captain America’s shield? Which team members would get along? All these answers are the keys to the film’s success, which is interesting, because the plot isn’t overly complicated and doesn’t have a legitimate ‘twist’ to it, but it unfolds slowly enough to stay fresh. Everybody knows from the get go what the big climactic clash at the end of the movie will be but the ride getting there holds your attention surprisingly well.

One final note. The post-credit reveal that all of these movies are famous for is bound to be very generic for those unfamiliar with the comics. I am not a big Marvel geek but I am overly excited by the possibility of future properties. Two words: Infinity Gauntlet.